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Matthew 16:24.<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0“If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”\u00a0<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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One of Satan\u2019s greatest triumphs was persuading people, for reasons unsupported by Scripture and within a system foreign to true Christianity, to establish religious orders devoted to poverty and outward humiliation. Yet in rejecting that error, Protestantism may also have rejected the truth it distorted. Christianity teaches that believers may voluntarily surrender status, wealth, or comfort so that their sincerity, faith, contentment, hope, and love can be clearly displayed. Although this teaching rests on as broad and firm a foundation in Christ\u2019s words as almost any other doctrine, it is now often dismissed as foolishness, if not heresy. Anyone who teaches and practices it must show exceptional wisdom in other matters merely to be tolerated. Few obligations are more sacred for Christians than demonstrating the divine origin of their faith through lives that offer compelling evidence to the world. God loves his people and does not oppose their comfort, but he also loves his truth and seeks to remove obstacles from the paths that lead to Christ. When he says, \u201cSell all that you have, give to the poor, and follow me,\u201d he does not speak from harshness or indifference. He knows that even amid poverty and lowly circumstances, he can give peace and joy that riches can never provide. \u201cBut,\u201d you may ask, \u201cwhat can one person do? If someone resolves to follow the Lord\u2019s command exactly, will that person\u2019s conduct not seem eccentric and accomplish little? What value can one example have?\u201d Yet the earlier question remains: Must Christ\u2019s words be adjusted to the Church\u2019s unbelief? Are all his demands relaxed simply because Christians everywhere choose to ignore them? (Bowen)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Matthew 16:24.\u00a0 \u00a0“If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”\u00a0 One of Satan\u2019s greatest triumphs was persuading people, for reasons unsupported by Scripture and within a system foreign to true Christianity, to establish religious orders devoted to poverty and outward humiliation. Yet … Continue reading “70.y. Matthew 16:24”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-prayers"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200115"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":200118,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200115\/revisions\/200118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}