OUR MORAL CLIMATE DOES NOT ENCOURAGE FAITH
“And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved” (MATTHEW 10:22).
There is a plain and evident fact in genuine Christianity that is often overlooked by eager evangelists bent on getting results: that to accept Christ it is necessary that we reject whatever is contrary to Him!

Let us not be shocked by the suggestion that there are disadvantages to the life in Christ. Everyone who has lived for Christ in a Christless world has suffered some losses and endured some pains that he could have avoided by the simple expedient of laying down his cross.

The contemporary moral climate does not favor a faith as tough and fibrous as that taught by our Lord and His apostles. The delicate, brittle saints being produced in our religious hothouses today are hardly to be compared with the committed, expendable believers who once gave their witness among men. And the fault lies with our leaders. They are too timid to tell the people all the truth. They are now asking men to give to God that which costs them nothing!

When will Christians learn that to love righteousness it is necessary to hate sin? that to accept Christ it is necessary to reject self? that to follow the good way we must flee from evil? that a friend of the world is an enemy of God? that God allows no twilight zone between two altogether where the fearful and the doubting may take refuge at once from hell to come and the rigors of present discipline?

A. W. Tozer