{"id":5633,"date":"2020-03-08T07:59:30","date_gmt":"2020-03-08T07:59:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/?p=5633"},"modified":"2020-03-08T07:59:30","modified_gmt":"2020-03-08T07:59:30","slug":"idling-life-away-like-an-idiot-or-a-madman%ef%bb%bf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/?p=5633","title":{"rendered":"Idling life away like an idiot or a madman\ufeff"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Idling life away like an idiot or a madman<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Joseph Philpot, \u201cThe Soul\u2019s Growth in Grace\u201d 1837)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When one is spiritually reborn, he sees<\/p>\n\n\n\n

at one and the same moment . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

God and self,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

justice and guilt,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

power and helplessness,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a holy law and a broken commandment,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

eternity and time,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the purity of the Creator, and<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the filthiness of the creature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And these things he sees, not merely as<\/p>\n\n\n\n

declared in the Bible, but as revealed in<\/p>\n\n\n\n

himself as personal realities, involving all<\/p>\n\n\n\n

his happiness or all his misery in time and<\/p>\n\n\n\n

in eternity. Thus it is with him as though<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a new existence had been communicated,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and as if for the first time he had found<\/p>\n\n\n\n

there was a God!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is as though all his days he had been asleep,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and were now awakened; asleep upon the top of<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a mast, with the raging waves beneath; as if all<\/p>\n\n\n\n

his past life were a dream, and the dream were<\/p>\n\n\n\n

now at an end. He has been . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

hunting butterflies,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

blowing soap bubbles,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

angling for minnows,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

picking daisies,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

building houses of cards, and<\/p>\n\n\n\n

idling life away like an idiot or a madman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had been perhaps wrapped up in a religious<\/p>\n\n\n\n

profession, advanced even to the office of a deacon,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

or mounted in a pulpit. He had learned to talk about<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christ, and election, and grace, and fill his mouth<\/p>\n\n\n\n

with the language of Zion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what did he experimentally know of these<\/p>\n\n\n\n

things? Nothing, absolutely nothing!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ignorant of his own ignorance (of all kinds of<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ignorance the worst), he thought himself rich,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and increased with goods, and to have need of<\/p>\n\n\n\n

nothing; and knew not that he was wretched,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Idling life away like an idiot or a madman (Joseph Philpot, \u201cThe Soul\u2019s Growth in Grace\u201d 1837) When one is spiritually reborn, he sees at one and the same moment . . . God and self, justice and guilt, power and helplessness, a holy law and a broken commandment, eternity and time, the purity of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,22,117],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-j-c-philpot","category-regeneration","category-salvation-deliverance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5633"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5634,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5633\/revisions\/5634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}