In order for a fundamentalist to demonstrate that he is growing in grace, he must not only maintain the standard but he must also continually increase the amount that he does. If the new Christian prays for ten minutes a day, within a year he’d better be praying thirty minutes, and five years later he needs to have worked up to an hour. To live the fundy life is to have the bar of sanctification continuously raised just out of reach.
The same rule applies to any other external area of the fundamentalist practice. Are you giving 10%? If you want to be holy like the rest of us it had better make it up to 15% by next year. If you’re really serious within a few decades you should be living on the 10% and giving us the rest.
What about your witnessing? Did you see one soul saved last year? Next year shoot for a dozen. Spiritual giants like your pastor see a soul saved every day before breakfast. And he does it without even leaving the house.
The fundamentalist treadmill only runs faster the longer you stay on it.
@Don
Thanks for the reply. How do you suppose James 4:8 means, then? Because what I said is what I’ve been taught my entire life and the illustration has never made sense to me. What if I’m standing right next to God right now? It would then be positionally impossible to improve. And in the context of the illustration, what does being side to side with God even represent? Don, if you could just answer the first question, the rest is just a little rant.
James 4:8 was written to unbelievers as a command to repent and turn to Christ. The Bible never calls saints “sinners.”
Paul is a saint and called himself the chiefest of all sinners.
Spot on.