tremble

I will never forget a line from a speaking engagement that the late Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias once had. And I will never forget it because I've ended up including it in one of my current WIPs. Ravi said a Hindu friend once asked him: "If (the Christian) conversion is truly supernatural, why is it not more evident in the lives of so many Christians I know?"

Years later, this is the best answer I've found, from preacher Paul Washer:

"I'll give you an illustration that I've used quite frequently from Charles Spurgeon...Let's say I have a bucket of slop, carcass slop, right here, and I have the finest meal that you can prepare on here on this side, and then we let a swine--a pig--go loose in the back. To which would he run? Would he run to the fine meal or would he run to the bucket of slop?

"He would run to the bucket of slop and why would he do that? Because he's a pig, that's what pigs do. It is his nature to run to the bucket of slop. He loves it, he feeds on it, he drinks it down like water. Why? It's his nature. He's a pig!

"But what if, in a second, I could change that pig into a man. What would be his response? He would throw his head out of that bucket, he would vomit up the filth he had been drinking down, he would grab anything near him to wipe off his face, to clean his face, to do whatever he could do and then when he turned around and saw you, he would be ashamed and his heart would be filled with self-hatred.........I just described your conversion, IF you were converted.

"(...) In true conversion, the man will pull his head out...he will be sickened...he will turn away and taste and see that the Lord is good. But although we have a new natures (NOT TWO NATURES! That's a silly little doctrine, I don't know who made that)--not two natures but one new nature, one new heart--now (God) didn't say I'll put in a heart of flesh alongside your heart of stone. He didn't say that. (He said) I'll take out your heart of stone, I'll give you a heart of flesh. 'Then why do I still struggle with sin?' Because this new nature is within unredeemed flesh, trained in sin, ingrained in sin.

"But here's the thing -- when you sit down at the Lord's table with your struggle with the flesh, you may come off of that table--as I have; every time we sin, we come off that table--and we go over and we stick our faces close to that bucket (of slop), we might even stick our mouths in, we might even take a bite. But here's the thing, you NOW have a new nature! So this can't suit you anymore!

"So many people have this idea, 'Okay, I'm going to be a Christian and now I'm going to concentrate on doing the right thing.' What you have to understand is -- do apple trees ... stand out in the yard and twist and writhe and think to themselves and chant, "Apples, apples, apples, apples!"? NO! They will NOT. They will just bear apples! Why? Because they're an apple tree!

"Some of you would have this testimony -- many years of debauchery and filth and immorality and drunkenness and how many resolutions did you make to stop and stop but to no avail? And then one day Christ came in to your life and BOOM, it's gone?

"You see, you can put a wolf in a cage but it's still a wolf. You can bind a man with laws and legalisms and religion but he's still a wolf! That's why religion cannot save you. Only the supernatural working grace of God through the cross, the resurrection, the ascension, the reigning of Christ...that is the the only thing that can save you. And it is supernatural and it has supernatural manifestations!

"(If) you see no supernatural work of God in your life, no supernatural change, no supernatural discipline when you stray from the path, no supernatural correction, no supernatural intervention, no supernatural crushing your idols and cleansing you from filth, then be terribly afraid. Tremble! Because not only do you know not God, God knows not *you*."