DISCIPLE

by C.H.Spurgeon      ..."Read the text, and note it well: "If ye love me, keep my commandments."       What a great amount of religion may be cast out as worthless by this text! Men may keep on going to church, they may be religious throughout their whole loves, and they may be apparently blameless in their moral conduct, and yet there may be nothing in them because there is no love for the ever blessed Christ at the foundation of their profession of faith...      Yes, it was necessary to speak in this way even to the apostles. He said to the chosen Twelve, "If ye love me." We would never have doubted one of them. We now know, by the outcome, that one of them was a traitor to his Lord and sold Him for pieces of silver. But no one suspected him, for he seemed as loyal as any one of them. And if that question, "If ye love me," needed to be raised in the sacred college of the Twelve, how much more must it be a...

from -- http://www.bibleandlife.org/Newsletters.htm  by Lehman Strauss (1911-1997)       "Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts [pleasures]" - (James 4:3)      We are all naturally and basically selfish. We must honestly admit that even our prayers are selfish. It is possible that some of the good things we do are motivated by a selfish spirit. We will do well to examine our motives periodically and especially in regard to praying. James tells us that one reason for our spiritual poverty and powerlessness in prayer is a wrong motive. It is not necessarily the thing for which we are asking that is wrong, but rather the reason we ask for it. Praying with Selfish Motives      A member in a church where I was pastor expressed a concern for the salvation of her husband. She had gone to several members of t...