Tag: François Fenelon

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Torn Between God and the World

You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

James 4:4 NLT

Worldliness is being in love with the things of this life instead of maintaining a child-like trust and tender affection for our blessed Savior. The spirit of the world is embodied in the love of money, a hunger for unbridled sex, and a thirst for power. A worldly attitude is an arrogance that takes pride in our accomplishments, status, or rank over and above the majesty and glory of God (1 John 2:15-17).

Worldliness is any passion, craving, or hunger for the pleasures of sin while simultaneously desiring to receive the approval of others for our poor choices. Worldliness uses and misuses people for personal satisfaction, political influence, and fleshly pleasure. Worldliness is an organized scheme of humankind that uses our flesh (i.e., sin nature) to draw us away from an intimate relationship with God. Worldliness is a heart attitude intrinsic to being born in Adam and living in a fallen world.

The solution to breaking the world’s all-pervasive grip on our lives is the Cross of Christ (Gal. 6:14). Satisfaction in Christ’s love and mercy fulfills our hearts keeping us from being attracted to the world. We realize the utter emptiness of the world’s promises as we experience the depths of God’s grace. The Cross breaks the world’s hold on us: we live for Christ committed to the kingdom of God hungering to be like him.

We and the world have parted company. Each has been ‘crucified’ to the other. ‘The world’ is the society of unbelievers. Previously we were desperately anxious to be in favour with the world. But now that we have seen ourselves as sinners and Christ crucified as our sin-bearer, we do not care what the world thinks or says of us or does to us. ‘The world has been crucified to me, and I to the world”

John Stott, The Message of Galatians

Woe to those weak and timid souls who are divided between God and their world! They want and they do not want. They are torn by desire and remorse at the same time . . . They have a horror of evil and a shame of good. They have the pains of virtue without tasting its sweet consolations. O’ how wretched they are.

François Fénelon

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What Is a Consecrated Life?

I Surrender All

Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ.

Phil. 3:8 NLT

Consecration is the abandonment of our lives without reserve to the loving purposes of God. A consecrated life is the conviction held deep within our beings that we are God’s without reserve, qualification, or equivocation. We do not hold back from Christ’s Lordship any rights, gifts, possessions, relationships, or privileges: all that we are and have are His.

God is not satisfied by the sound of our lips, nor the position of our bodies, nor external ceremonies. What he asks is a will which will no longer be divided between him and any creature, a will pliant in his hands, which neither desires anything nor refuses anything, which wants without reservation everything he wants, and which never, under any pretext, wants anything which he does not want.

Francois Fenelon, Christian Perfection  (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 1975), 64.

 

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The Heart of a Great Receiver

The Father is Waiting to Find Our Hearts Open

Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.

Isa. 26:3 (KJV)

God has called us to be great receivers. Christ’s work on the Cross has brought about our acceptance before God. Therefore, all the promises of God are “yes” and “amen” in Christ (2 Cor. 1:20). We can without hesitation or equivocation receive God’s grace to meet any need, to quell any fear, and to help in the midst of any temptation (Heb. 4:15-16). We do not need to whine to prove our humility, to cajole to demonstrate our conviction, or to perform perfectly to prove our sincerity in order to receive God’s grace. With hearts wide open, we cry out to God and our God who is grace and love pours forth his blessing and goodness (2 Peter 1:3-4).

When you find that weariness depresses or amusement distracts you, you will calmly turn with an untroubled spirit to your Heavenly Father, who is always holding out His arms to you. You will look to Him for gladness and refreshment when depressed, for moderation and recollection when in good spirits, and you will find that He will never leave you to want.

A trustful glance, a silent movement of the heart towards Him will renew your strength; and though you may often feel as if your soul were downcast and numb, whatever God calls you to do, He will give you power and courage to perform. Our Heavenly Father, so far from ever overlooking us, is only waiting to find our hearts open, to pour into them the torrents of His grace.

François Fenelon cited in Joy and Strength for the Pilgrim’s Day, ed., Mary Wilder Tileston (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1901), 21.