William Knelsen As I wait in hope for the Lord.

Archive for the William Law Category

Nurture Your Soul

December 20, 2011

I decided to pick up William Law’s Serious Call to see if I could find a good quote to put the finishing touches on my last paper of the semester. I still haven’t found one I can use, but in my reading I was reminded of the following passage that has been an encouragement to me in the past. I hope it encourages you as it has for me.

Let your own soul be the object of your daily care and attendance… Nourish it with good works, give it peace in solitude, get it strength in prayer, make it wise with reading, enlighten it by meditation, make it tender with love, sweeten it with humility, humble it with penance, enliven it with psalms and hymns, and comfort it with frequent reflections upon future glory.

William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 2000), 29.

Common Life Part 2

April 17, 2008

William Law Continues…

If our common life is not a common course of humility, self-denial, renunciation of the world, poverty of spirit, and heavenly affection, we do not live the lives of Christians.

A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life

Here Law lists off a few virtues of Christianity, virtues that cannot be neglected if I claim Christ as my Lord. The issue I face most often is remembering that humility, self-denial, renunciation of the world, poverty of spirit, and heavenly affection are actual things I do in my everyday life. It seems as though I have the ability to ignore these virtues when they get in the way of progress and advancement on earth.

Common Life

April 16, 2008

If we are to be in Christ new creatures, we must show that we are so, by having new ways of living in the world. If we are to follow Christ, it must be in our common way of spending every day.

William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life

If I claim that Christ is my saviour and I have been made new by the Life Christ offers me, my daily actions should most certainly reflect that new life.

If I ignore or neglect that new life, it will soon fade. If I forget about it, or not even realized it has ever existed, it quite possibly may have never been there in the first place. Rather, I may have simply intellectually accepted the idea of sin and a saviour, but never even partially understood the true concept of God’s rejection of my natural, sinful self.