Balanced devotion

For a healthy Christian life today it is of the utmost importance to follow Paul’s example and keep Christian praise and Christian prayer together. Yet many do not manage to preserve this balance. Some Christians seem to do little but pray for new spiritual blessings, apparently oblivious of the fact that God has already blessed them in Christ with every spiritual blessing. Others lay such emphasis on the undoubted truth that everything is already theirs in Christ, that they become complacent and appear to have no appetite to know or experience their Christian privileges more deeply. Both these groups must be declared unbalanced. They have created a polarization which Scripture will not tolerate.

From “The Message of Ephesians” (The Bible Speaks Today series: Leicester: IVP, 1979), p. 52. Excerpted from “Authentic Christianity” by John Stott, p. 227, by permission of InterVarsity Press.