We Love God!

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

Our self-abnegation is thus not for our own sake but for the sake of others. And thus it is not to mere self-denial that Christ calls us but specifically to self-sacrifice, not to unselfing ourselves but to unselfishing ourselves. Self-denial for its own sake is in its very nature ascetic, monkish. It concentrates our whole attention on self—self-knowledge, self-control - and can therefore eventuate in nothing other than the very apotheosis of selfishness. At best it succeeds only in subjecting the outer self to the inner self or the lower self to the higher self, and only the more surely falls into the slough of self-seeking, that it partially conceals the selfishness of its goal by refining its ideal of self and excluding its grosser and more outward elements. Self-denial, then, drives to the cloister, narrows and contracts the soul, murders within us all innocent desires, dries up all the springs of sympathy, and nurses and coddles our self-importance until we grow so great in our own esteem as to be careless of the trials and sufferings, the joys and aspirations, the strivings and failures and successes of our fellow-men. Self-denial, thus understood, will make us cold, hard, unsympathetic—proud, arrogant, self-esteeming—fanatical, overbearing, cruel. It may make monks and Stoics, it cannot make Christians.

B.B. Warfield

Removing a person from church membership is what a church must do when the reverberating of God’s Word appears to have grown utterly silent in someone’s heart. Given a choice between obedience to God’s Word and a particular sin, the individual chooses the sin. And he shows no sign of wanting to do otherwise. It’s not any sin, of course. It’s an unrepentant sin. It’s a serious sin. And it’s a sin that can be seen with the eyes or heard with the ears. The Lord has not given us the ability to judge the heart, so a church should not discipline for suspected sins of the heart, like pride or greed. We can only assess by external fruit (Matt. 3:8; 7:17-20). But based on that external fruit, discipline must happen when a person’s profession of faith in God’s gospel Word no longer appears credible.

Jonathan Leeman

We Love God!

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

Egg Drop Soup

January 23, 2023

CATEGORY	CUISINE	TAG	YIELD
Meats, Eggs		Soups	6	Servings

INGREDIENTS

1	qt	Chicken broth
1	tb	Tomato sauce
1	tb	Soy sauce
2	x	Eggs ;beaten
4	x	Scallions (white and tender, green part chopped)

INSTRUCTIONS

In 2 quart pot, combine the chicken broth, tomato sauce and soy sauce.
Bring the soup to the boil, turn off the heat, then stir in the beaten
eggs. Stir rapidly for about 30 seconds to distribute the egg.
Transfer the soup to a tureen or serving bowl, sprinkle scallions over the
top and serve at once.
Posted to MM-Recipes Digest V4 #033 by Tonya <imbri@oz.net> on Jan 31,
1997.

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