What is indispensable for teach

New converts must be taught carefully that, when the duty comes to them, they must do so. Whatever may be their feelings, if the duty calls, THAT THEY DO. Most likely the feelings you expect will come only when you start doing your homework. If this duty is prayer, and you do not have the feelings you desire, do not wait for them to pray, but pray first and "open your mouth wide" (Psalms 81:10). In doing so, it is most likely that you will have the emotions you expect and that constitute the conscious happiness of piety.

New converts must be taught that they have, as such, renounced their property and themselves and that, if they have not done so, they are not Christians. We must not let them believe that they have anything of their own : time, goods, influence, faculties, body or soul. "You are not your own" (1 Corinthians 6:19). They belong to God. When they submitted themselves to God, they freely gave Him everything to lead everything and have everything according to His pleasure. They do not have the right to spend a single hour as their own, to go somewhere or do something for themselves ; they must put everything at God's disposal and use everything for His glory. If they do not, do not call themselves Christians ; because to be a Christian is to have renounced oneself and to be entirely devoted to God.

Frustrating God is a theft in the broadest sense of the word. It is an infinitely greater crime than would a shop assistant who would take money from his boss and use it for his passions and pleasures. I mean that any crime committed by a man against his fellows would not be as serious as that of taking anything away from GOD.

We must tell them that they deserve condemnation (and that the church can not live in communion with them) if they show a spirit of greed, if they remain deaf when the whole world calls for help, only if they lived in adultery and in the daily worship of idols.

Jeremy Sourdril