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As we know, having heard and read this many times before, the saving grace and defense for the faithful is love. If the words of others are full of anger and wrath, turning even simple differences into sources of hatred and division, then we know that they are not from the Lord, but from the divider. We know that in these days the fallen will speak through their followers with cleverness and well crafted arguments, so as to persaude many. They are able to imitate wisdom and sway the minds of many with clever speeches woven from passionate hatreds.
But they will not be able to counterfeit love, because it has become alien to them. They will have none of it in their hearts, for it is a poison to him who they serve, whether they realize it fully or not.
"I urge you, brothers and sisters, to be wary of those who cause divisions and undermine the faithful, in opposition to the teaching that you have learned;. Aavoid them. For such people do not serve our Lord, but their own appetites. And by clever words and flattery they deceive the hearts of the innocent and naive."
Romans 16:17-18
"Dividers like this speak evil about things that are different, 'the other,' or which they do not understand. Like instinctive animals, they follow wherever their passions lead them, and so they bring about their destruction. What sorrow awaits them. For they follow in the footsteps of Cain, who killed his own brother. Like Balaam, they deceive other people for money. And like Korah, they destroy themselves with their rebellious natures.
If they eat with you in your fellowship meals of the Lord’s love, they are hidden and dangerous reefs that can shipwreck you. They are shameless shepherds who care only for themselves. They are like clouds blowing over the land but not giving any rain. They are like wild waves of the sea, which churn up foam with their shameful deeds. They are orphaned stars, doomed to wander forever in blackest darkness.
People like this are detractors and complainers, living only to satisfy their desires. They are loudly boastful and arrogant, bragging loudly about themselves, and flattering others to get what they want."
Jude 1:10-13,16
"Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another. And, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful."
1 Colossians 3:12-15
"When you pray, you come into His presence. Now reflect on yourself, what your feelings are in coming. They are these: you seem to say— I am in myself nothing but a sinner, a man of unclean lips and earthly heart. I am not worthy to enter into His presence. I am not worthy of the least of all His mercies. I know He is All-holy, yet I come before Him; I place myself under His pure and piercing eyes, which look me through and through, and discern every trace and every motion of evil within me. Why do I do so?
First of all, for this reason. To whom should I go? What can I do better? Who is there in the whole world that can help me? Who that will care for me, or pity me, or have any kind thought of me, if I cannot obtain it of Him?
I know He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity; but I know again that He is All-merciful, and that He so sincerely desires my salvation that He has died for me. Therefore, though I am in a great strait, I will rather fall into His hands, than into those of any creature.
This is the feeling in which we come to confess our sins, and to pray to God for pardon and grace day by day; and observe, it is the very feeling in which we must prepare to meet Him when He comes visibly.
If indeed we have habitually lived to the world, then truly it is natural we should attempt to fly from Him whom we have pierced. Then may we well call on the mountains to fall on us, and on the hills to cover us. But if we have lived, however imperfectly, yet habitually, in His fear, if we trust that His Spirit is in us, then we need not be ashamed before Him.
We shall then come before Him, as now we come to pray—with profound abasement, with awe, with self-renunciation, still as relying upon the Spirit which He has given us, with our faculties about us, with a collected and determined mind, and with hope."
John Henry Newman
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