The Hour to be Serious

"Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end" (1 Peter 1:13)

The spirit of the prophet is always subject to the prophet. When the Spirit of God moves into a man's heart, He will never make a fool out of him. He will make the man happy but He will never make him silly.

He may make him sad with the woe and the weight of the world's grief but He will never let him become a gloomy cynic. The Holy Spirit will make him warm-hearted and responsive but He will never cause him to do things of which he will be ashamed later.

Peter was not promoting or predicting a cold and lifeless and formal spirituality in the Christian Church when he advised believers to gird up the loins of their minds and be sober. He was saying to the early Christians as he hopes to say to us now; "Brethren, if ever there was an hour when we needed to be serious about our Christian faith, this is the hour!"

There is nothing so delightful as this consciousness of the very life and heart of Christ within us, the trust that springs spontaneously within our breast, the prayer that prays itself, and the song that sings its joyous triumph even when all around is dark and strange.

~A. W. Tozer~