The Christian in Complete Armor - Choice Extracts!

wind continues loud about us — truly we are more likely to drive Christ from
us, than to invite Him to us; we are in a more probable way of sinking than
saving of the ship and ourselves in it.
There is nothing (next to Christ and Heaven) that the devil grudges believers
more, than their unity and mutual love. If he cannot rend them from Christ,
stop them from getting Heaven — yet he takes some pleasure to see them go
there in a storm, like a shattered fleet severed from one another, that they
may have no assistance from, nor comfort of each other's company all the
way. One ship is easier taken, than a squadron.
If the gospel will not allow us to pay our enemies in their own coin, and give
them wrath for wrath — much less will it allow brethren to spit fire at one
another's face.
When children fight and wrangle, now is the time they may expect their
father to come and part them with his rod! "He shall turn the heart of the
fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I
come and smite the earth with a curse" (Mal. 4:6). Strife and contention set a
people next door to a curse. God brings a heavy judgment upon a people,
when He Himself leaves them. "Be of one mind," says the apostle, "live in
peace — and the God of love and peace shall be with you" (2 Corinthians
13:11), implying that if they did not live in peace, they must not look to have
His company long with them.
In our divided times, wherein there is so much difference of judgment, had
there been less wrangling among ourselves and more wrestling with God —
we would have been in a fairer way to find the door of truth, which so many
are yet groping for. The way of controversy is dusty, and contentious disputes
raise this dust, and blows it most into their eyes who gallop fastest in it, so
that they miss the truth, which humble souls find upon their knees at the
throne of grace.
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