I received the following excellent comments on the earlier blog called Using Biblical Terminology. I often can see points in the different sides of arguments and wanted to give everyone a chance to see another side of this. My thanks to the one who gave this response (I will leave you anonymous): "Brother I greatly enjoy David Cloud's material, but on this issue of asking Jesus into our hearts I think he is making a mountain out of a mole hill. Consider the following verses: Galatians 4:6 - God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts. Ephesians 3:17 - That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. While these verses are not exactly a sinner's prayer, the idea of Jesus in our hearts is in there sufficiently and so I don't understand why Bro Cloud 'blasts' asking Jesus into your heart so adamantly."
An article called "Who's in Charge Here?" in the Summer, 2006, edition of "the Wilson Quarterly" opens with these words: "The 20th century taught us that repressed desires are the source of human unhappiness. Now, with more possibilities for pleasure and fewer rules and constraints than ever before, the happy few will be those able to exercise self-control." The article continues with an excellent assessment of the dangers of modern temptations. One section deals with the removal of restraints. Very little keeps people from doing whatever they desire to do. Among those restraints that are weakened today are stigma (social shame for wrong doing), financial constraints (there is always credit), family (broken families provide little reason to do right), neighbors (they used to watch out for each other), and church (where sin has all but disappeared). But in the Bible, temperance (self-control) is a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) and "every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things" (1Corinthians 9:25). Where are the Christians who will re-establish the virtue of self-control?
