Discipleship Blog - New Brothers Inc.

Responding To Temptation

St. Frances de Sales once wrote: “All the temptations of hell do not stain the soul who does not love them.” It’s a terrible moment when we discover that we love the things that God hates, and all the more horrible to realize that there’s nothing we can do about it except throw ourselves on the mercy of God. Thus God uses our plight to crucify our flesh. The only way to handle this insufferable condition is to embrace the humiliation of death to self and yield ourselves to God as vessels of God’s Spirit.

It begins with receiving freely the grace of God through Christ’s work on our behalf and ends the same way. We never actually become self-contained agents of righteousness, but rather become containers of His righteousness. Galatians 2:20 says it plainly: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Paul later adds in Romans 6:6-7: “

Laying The Foundation Of The Cross

Sometimes the things we think we know the most about can be the things we actually know the least about. The Cross of Jesus Christ is just one of those things. It’s something we’ve read about and heard about, many of us, all our lives. One consequence of this familiarity, is a diminished sense of needing to know more. And so the ancient Christian discipline of meditating on the Cross rises to its deserved place of prominence only periodically through history, usually during times of persecution.

For those in bondage to sin, (isn’t that everyone?) meditating on the Cross is one of the most powerful means of finding permanent freedom and transformation for the soul -i.e., sanctification.

The Purpose Of Life

It hits everyone at some time in their life. The big question. Why am I here? What is the purpose of my existence? I for one refused to let go of the question until I got an answer.

After observing the seeming futility of human existence in the face of war and hatred and famine and disease, I became fiercely unwilling to acquiesce to the “just go along with it and don’t ask questions” mentality of the world. I was not created a lemming and I would not live my life as if I had been, fated to tumble off some unseen abyss into a nevernever land of meaninglessness. If there was no transcendent meaning to life, I did not want to live it. To do so would make life a sad joke played by a ridiculous excuse for a God. On the other hand, if God did exist, I was going to get an answer from Him on this most important question and, hopefully, fulfill what it was He created me to do.

Last newsletter, we dealt with the fundamental question of why evil exists. Now we want to examine what, in the face of evil, we are meant to do with our lives here on earth.