Spiritual Warfare and Sin: Mediocre Christianity

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.—Romans 6:12-13

It is disheartening to those who care, and surely a great grief to the Spirit, to see how many Christians are content to settle for less than the best. Personally I have for years carried a burden of sorrow as I have moved among evangelical Christians who somewhere in their past have managed to strike a base compromise with their heart's holier longings and have settled down to a lukewarm, mediocre kind of Christianity utterly unworthy of themselves and of the Lord they claim to serve. And such are found everywhere....

Every man is as close to God as he wants to be; he is as holy and as full of the Spirit as he wills to be....

Yet we must distinguish wanting from wishing. By "want" I mean wholehearted desire. Certainly there are many who wish they were holy or victorious or joyful but are not willing to meet God's conditions to obtain. That Incredible Christian, 64.

"Oh Lord, give me that 'wholehearted desire' that keeps me from being satisfied with mediocre Christianity. I long to be as holy and as full of the Spirit as You want me to be. I commit myself this morning to a willingness to meet Your 'conditions to obtain.' Amen."