We Love God!

God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)

1. A losing our first love – When iniquity abounds, the love of many waxes cold (Rev 2:4; Mat 24:12). The affections get dull and blunted. 2. Losing the edge of our conscience – The conscience ceases to be sensitive and tender. It does not shrink from sin as it used to do. 3. Callousness as to truth – We get so familiarized with truth that it ceases to affect us. It loses its power over us. 4. Insensibility to sin – Our own evils are not felt as they used to be; sin itself is not so hated and shunned as formerly.
Horatius Bonar

But there are some who say, “It is hard for God to choose some and leave others.” Now, I will ask you one question. Is there any of you here this morning who wishes to be holy, who wishes to be regenerate, to leave off sin and walk in holiness? “Yes, there is,” says someone, “I do.” Then God has elected you. But another says, “No; I don’t want to be holy; I don’t want to give up my lusts and my vices.” Why should you grumble, then, that God has not elected you to it? For if you were elected you would not like it, according to your own confession. If God this morning had chosen you to holiness, you say you would not care for it. Do you not acknowledge that you prefer drunkenness to sobriety, dishonesty to honesty? You love this world’s pleasures better than religion; then why should you grumble that God has not chosen you to religion? If you love religion, He has chosen you to it. If you desire it, He has chosen you to it. If you do not, what right have you to say that God ought to have given you what you do not wish for?
C.H. Spurgeon