Notes from the Letters of Francis Schaeffer

Why not ask God to make those who love Him want to help the little children whom He loves, instead of asking help from those who perhaps don’t love Him
- Amy Carmichael

To stand on the knife blade can only be accomplished on the basis of the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ, through moment by moment faith, in the power of hte Spirit.

When problems arise, our natural tendency indeed is to become discourage and then to neglect all the things of the Lord. This is our natural reaction, and it is only as we grow in spiritual things and rest upon the Lord day by day that we gradually come to that opposite reaction, that as the difficulties arise, we would place these more and more in the Lord’s hands and really stay closer to him because of the difficulties.

It is overwhelming important to realize that sin does block the blessing - whether that sin is in our individual life or in the organization and work in which we area. This being the case, we must be very very scrupulous in bringing our sin, and the sin of our organization as a whole, under the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ by faith, when those sins occur. Thus we must learn increasingly to flee to the cross when these things come in upon us. (For the future, realizing how heinous sin is in the christian’s life, learn to cry immediately for the power of the finished work of Jesus whenever temptation arrives.)

Since the Fall, all nature is abnormal, but God still works in his common grace to give sunshine and rain to the lost, but still unjudged, world of men. In this natural work of God, when a thing is dead, it is dead, and there is no hope. But it is not so in the spiritual work of God. In this, the love of God transcends all natural expectancies. And you, in your present spiritual life, are a result of that endless and boundless love of God to us - as that which was dead, but which in Christi is now alive.

Faith is bowing before God. Emotion in Christianity can be right or it can be wrong. We should have emotions as a result of knowing how much God loves us and knowing we belong to him. But the emotion can never be the basis of our faith. The basis of our faith is the content of the Bible; the emotion should be a natural result. (It is not about worshipping God after learning all about God) but He does say that we are to love Him enough to study the Bible to know what He has to say.

The Bible does make plain that we either area a Christian or we are not a Christian - we have either accepted Christ as our Saviour or we have not. There are no other way that even God could provide a way of salvation except by Jesus paying the price for the guilt of our sin. It is not that He chose this way arbitararily, but it was the only way which fulfilled the holiness of God and at the same time the love of God.

The best exegesis of the sin against the Holy Spirit is that it pertains to those who consciously and consistenly resist the work of the Holy Spirit, in His drawing power in their lives.

Things that will help us to grow closer to the God.

1. A continued and careful living in the Bible
2. Prayer. A rather long period set aside for prayer, and also a habit of prayer in the midst of doing things, in which we suddenly speak to God not only of needs, but telling Him we believe Him and the promises He has given us in the Bible about Himself and his care for us.
3. Talking to other people about Christ
4. Fellowship with other Christians. It was necessary to create Eve so that there would be a horizontal relationship with another human being.

The church should have real Biblical content; two, there should be a reality of giving honest answers to honest questions; three, there should be real spirituality involved; and four, there should be an orthodoxy of community in the group.

No one but hte Lord Himself can tell you what to do with your life. There are no formula given in the Bible which we may follow mechanically to know the Lord’s will. It is a matter of taking one step at a time, as the Lord opens the door before us. One could consider Abraham who was led by both a vision and open communication from God. Moses was led in a number of ways, including the cloud which moved before Israel. But there are also cases in the Scripture where God’s people were led in a less specific fashion. [Some have suggested] that leading should always be a sort of streak of lightning from the sky. Of course, God can lead as He wishes, and sometimes the leading is a spectacular as that. But very often His leading is very quiet; and as I have said, in much life we can lead our lives within the circle of the commands of Scripture.

There are two things to be leaned against simultaneously: the first is living as though God did not exist and as though He could not or would not lead us; the second is living as though God’s leading were almost magic without any use of the mind.

Take the Fall and the present abnormality of the world with practical comprehension and seriousness. Everything is abnormal today, and that much of the sickness and in the world and sorrows in the world and sorrows in other areas are a result of this abnormality. (Standing at the tomb of Lazarus, God was angry at the abnormality of death without being angry at Himself.) It was man’s rebellion against God that brought the abnormality and that still continues to spew it forth in our society, even in our own choices.

There are certain things which are given as absolutely sinful in the Scripture, and these things we as Christians should not do …. But then everything else is spiritual… all these things are spiritua if they are done within the circle of what is taught in Scripture, looking to the Lord day by day for His help. Everything is spiritual because the Lord made everything, and Christ died to redeem everything.

Worldliness is seeing anything in life from a materialistic perspective - that is from a perspective which makes the material world the final reality and in which man’s finite wisdom (rather than the Scripture) is everything.

He can heal, and yet at the same time we must not demand to be healed; and we must be realistic that what seems to be a complete healing sometimes proves not to be.

The Westminster Confession of Faith: in the case of adultery or in the case of desertion which cannot be healed (and especially if the one who walks away is a non-Christian walking away from a Christian), the individual then has a right for divorce and for remarriage.

2 dangers: Antinomianism teaches that since we are saved by the blood of Christ plus nothing, therefore after we are saved it does not matter how we live. The opposite danger, is asceticism, which is the devaluation of the whole man - theoretically to enhance the spiritual portion of man. This devaluation of the whole man be be the devaluation of the intellect, the artistic, or the physical. When men forget is that God made the whole man, and no part of man is inherently sinful. Each of the parts of man can be sinful, and in a fallen world, even for Christians, there is no perfection in this life in any portions of our lives. Therefore, we must continually bring our failure in any part of our life under the blood of Christ for forgiveness. And at the same time we must ask Christ to bring forth His fruit in all parts of our life. The idea that the ’spiritual’ is high while the intellectual or physical is low is not Biblical Christianity.

We have a right to love ourselves and even have a duty to do so, because we have been made with value, as God Himself made us in His own image.

We love the whole woman and not a part of the woman; nor do we break her up in pieces of our relationship. The man loves the woman, and the woman loves the man; and in the man-woman relationship this includes the sexual intercourse. This is the way God meant it to be. It is no thtat there is something high and holy and pure in the area of the spirit, and that the other is just a biological necessity in order to have children.