Live a life worthy of your calling. That is a statement one can meditate on. For a very long time. There are many examples of what not to do: the counter examples make good fuel for the blog.
For the calling we have is high. It is not low: it is not permission to be corrupt or licentious. It is to be as Christ. In the jargon of the social justice politicians (a quite corrupt group) it is aspirational: we are to be like Christ. We will fall short of that goal, but it is a worthy goal to attain.
And this we know, that it is not in our strength that we do this, but by the power of Christ within us.
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, To the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae: Grace to you and peace from God our Father. In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel that has come to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God. This you learned from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, and he has made known to us your love in the Spirit. For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
How do we know that someone is among the righteous, the chosen? We see the work of the holy spirit in his or her life, and the fruit of their actions on those around them. Not that we are perfect, but that we build up. Not that we have any righteousness of our own, but that we encourage others. For Christianity is not a zero sum game, unlike the devotees of that demon Allah.
ISIS has issued a call to action to its radical Islamic supporters in the United Kingdom to carry out terror attacks on the streets of London, claiming that they are the “ideal targets” to perpetrate the sort of car-and-knife attack that was carried out in March on the Westminster Bridge.
In the latest edition of ISIS’s Rumiyah magazine, which is published in ten languages and distributed among sympathizers throughout its shadowy network, the terrorist organization provided guides instructing lone-wolf operatives on how to carry out knife and vehicle attacks and how to perform arson.
The publication also specified London’s Regent Street and Piccadilly Circus as locations where terrorists can “flatten [non-Muslims] under trucks,” even going so far as to suggest “double-wheeled, load-bearing” trucks with a “slightly raised chassis and bumper” as the most deadly type of weaponized vehicle to use.
“The language of force, the language of killing, stabbing and slitting throats, chopping off heads, flattening them under trucks, and burning them alive, until they give the jizyah [non-believer’s tax] while they are in a state of humiliation,” the violent manifesto reads in part. Followers are encouraged to procure trucks from non-Muslims by either stealing or deceiving.
In addition to large-scale attacks on groups of pedestrians, the magazine also encourages jihadis to use personals sites like Craigslist to lure non-believers into an unfamiliar location “before attacking, subduing, binding and then slaughtering them.”
The enemy has gone beyond lies to violence. (Admittedly this is nothing new: Islam has been slaughtering Christians for a millennia) We argue for truth, and for peace. We choose to withstand the attacks of the authorities, for we know their time is short and their goal is too small.
For they worship and aspire to things that will fall away. Their goals are too small for their god is too small.
We forget the glory of God. We need to remember this. And we need to, again, live as we are called. To give glory to God, who is greater than all our efforts.