Conviction or Convenience

This past weekend our church participated in a Labor Day retreat hosted by Comunidade Cristiana Presbiteriana (Newark, NJ) and other Brazilian PCA churches. There was preaching and teaching in three languages. Pastor Jeremias preached in Portuguese. Pastor Ramon preached in Spanish. Pastor Jacob preached in English. The theme of the weekend was “Conviction or Convenience.” We were confronted with the question: “Do you obey Christ only when it is convenient for you, or is your obedience to him based on solid convictions that grow from the Word of God?”

This reminds me of the following quote from Jerry Bridges classic book, “The Pursuit of Holiness” ...

“The crucial question then is, ‘How do we destroy the strength and vitality of sin?’ If we are to work at this difficult task, we must first have conviction. We must be persuaded that a holy life ... is important. We must believe that the pursuit of holiness is worth the effort and pain required to mortify the misdeeds of the body. We must be convinced that ‘without holiness no one will see the Lord’ (Hebrews 12:14) .... These convictions are developed through exposure to the Word of God. Our minds have far too long been accustomed to the world’s values.... We are bombarded on every hand by temptations to indulge our sinful natures.... Only through God’s Word are our minds remolded and our values renewed.... God’s Word must be so strongly fixed in our minds that it becomes the dominant influence in our thoughts, our attitudes, and our actions.” (Jerry Bridges)