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A fifty-five-year-old woman threw herself from her fourteenth-floor apartment to the ground below. Minutes before her death, she saw a workman washing the windows of a nearby building. She greeted him and smiled, and he smiled and said hello to her. When he turned his back, she jumped. 

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these" (Mark 12:30-31).

Every week I receive letters and phone calls (mainly from pastors), telling me of discouragement, despair and loneliness. People are weary of the battle for reformation. It's not just the nonsense that discourages, but the persecution, both subtle and overt. One's popularity wanes when he or she takes a stand for Christ's lordship, for Classical Christianity and for orthodoxy and orthopraxis. Mention liturgy and every-week communion and you will be accused of being a closet papist. Strike out at democracy in the church? Well, you are an elitist tyrant and your days are numbered.

For shoes, put on the peace that comes from the Good News, so that you will be fully prepared.  (Ephesians 6:15)

The sandals or shoes Paul describes in Ephesians 6 not only provide stability to help the believer hold ground, they also provide mobility.  These are not dress shoes that are uncomfortable or that you want to keep perfectly clean.  These shoes will allow you to move at a moment's notice.

Every church needs a Martha. Change that. Every church needs a hundred Marthas. Sleeves rolled and ready, they keep the pace for the church. Because of Marthas, the church budget gets balanced, the church babies get bounced, and the church building gets built. You don't appreciate Marthas until a Martha is missing, and then all the Marys and Lazaruses are scrambling around looking for the keys and the thermostats and the overhead projectors.

After recording these dire predictions, spoken by the Lord through Elijah, the writer of 1 Kings gives this commentary on the lives of Ahab and Jezebel: "Surely there was no one like Ahab who sold himself to do evil in the sight of the LORD, because Jezebel his wife incited him" (1 Kings 21:25). What a partnership! They were partners in unparalleled evil, until God finally said, "That's enough."

Here are two sobering and solemn reminders for us to consider:

First, there is an end to God's patience. No one knows it. God's wheels of justice grind slowly but exceedingly fine. God, in gracious patience and mercy, waits for us to hear His voice and obey. People hear the Gospel of salvation and do not respond. Yet God waits. Some claim His name, but live in a way that says otherwise. Still God waits.