Salvation

What We Need is a Sound Conversion – AW Tozer

I am convinced that many evangelicals are not truly and soundly converted. Among the evangelicals it is entirely possible to come into membership, to ooze in by osmosis, to leak through the cells of the church and never know what it means to be born of the Spirit and washed in the blood. A great deal that passes for the deeper life is nothing more or less than basic Christianity. There is nothing deeper about it, and it is where we should have been from the start. We should have been happy, joyous, victorious Christians walking in the Holy Spirit and not fulfilling the lusts of the flesh. Instead we have been chasing each other around the perpetual mountain.

What we need is what the old Methodists called a sound conversion. There is a difference between conversion and a sound conversion. People who have never been soundly converted do not have the Spirit to enlighten them. When they read the Sermon on the Mount or the teaching passages of the epistles that tell them how to live or the doctrinal passages that tell how they can live, they are unaffected. The Spirit who wrote them is not witnessing in their hearts because they have not been born of the Spirit.

– AW Tozer –

Don’t Refine But Save – Charles Spurgeon

Paul saw people sinking toward hell and did not talk of refining them, but of saving them from the wrath to come. He laid aside his preferences to prevent prejudice; He submitted his will in things indifferent, and if humankind would but receive the Gospel, he raised no questions about forms or ceremonies. Are we possessed with the same all-absorbing desire? Jesus died for sinners, can’t we live for them?

– Charles Spurgeon –

Thomas Brooks on the Conquest of Sin

In conquering of those enemies that be within, you make a conquest over the devil and hell itself. … And as this is the most noble conquest, so it is the most necessary conquest. You must be the death of your sins, or they will be the death of your souls. Sin is a viper, that does always kill where it is not killed.

– Thomas Brooks –

Eternity Meant Everything – Oswald J. Smith

In the Irish Revival of 1859, people became so weak that they could not get back to their homes. Men and women would fall by the wayside and would be found hours later pleading with God to save their souls. They felt that they were slipping into hell and that nothing else in life mattered but to get right with God. … To them eternity meant everything. Nothing else was of any consequence. They felt that if God did not have mercy on them and save them, they were doomed for all time to come.

– Oswald J. Smith –

Give Yourself Fully To God – Francis Fenelon

If we look carefully within ourselves, we shall find that there are certain limits beyond which we refuse to go in offering ourselves to God. We hover around these reservations, making believe not to see them, for fear of self-reproach. The more we shrink from giving up any such reserved point, the more certain it is that it needs to be given up. If we were not fast bound by it, we should not make so many efforts to persuade ourselves that we are free.

– François Fénelon –
Spiritual Letters (1651-1715)

So That God Alone May Be Exalted – Walter Searle

This may be counted as our richest gain, to have learned afresh one’s utter impotency so completely that the past axiom of service, ‘I can no more convert a soul than create a star,’ comes to be an awful revelation, so that God alone may be exalted in that day

– Walter Searle –

We Are A Salvation People – William Booth

 

We are a salvation people – this is our specialty – getting people saved and keeping them saved, and then getting somebody else saved…Look at this. Clear your vision. Halt, stand still and afresh and more fully apprehend and comprehend your calling. You are to be a worker together with God for the salvation of your fellow men. What is the business of your life? Not merely to save your soul and make yourself meet for Paradise?… No, you are to be a redeemer, a savior, a copy of Jesus Christ Himself. So consecrate every awakened power to the great end of saving them. Rescue the perishing. They are all around you everywhere, crowds upon crowds, multitudes. Be skillful. Improve yourself. Study your business. Be self-sacrificing. Remember the Master. What you lose for His sake, and for the sake of the poor souls for whom He died, you shall find again. Stick to it. Having put your hand to the salvation plough, don’t look behind you

– William Booth –