Someone has drawn a picture of a wagon with a horse hitched to the front and another horse hitched to the back, both pulling as hard as they can. Of course, they cannot get anywhere. In a tug of war you do not go very far just back and forth. There is a tug of war in the Christian's life, and the only one who can stop it is the Holy Spirit.
I know a little girl who is very shy. One day I wanted to give her | something, but I couldn't! Over and over I asked her if she would not like it, but she would not stretch out her hand to take it, and finally I had to give up, and the little girl never got the present.
Did you ever see a kaleidoscope? It is a little instrument into which you look, and see beautiful figures. Then you turn it and the shapes of the figures change. You can never see the same thing in it twice, turn and twist it as you may.
Our salvation is something like the kaleidoscope, for it is different every time you look at it. No matter how long you may be saved, you can never find out all the riches that God has for us in salvation.
There was once a problem that God had to solve. Of course nothing is hard for Him because He knows everything. Yet this problem has only one answer. The problem was, how could God save men who are sinners? The reason this is a real problem is because God is holy. He could not just forget about sin. Sin had to be punished. But He could not just punish us all without any mercy, for He is love too. How were Gods holiness and love to work together to save men? God found a way– just one way.
Did you ever see a decayed bridge across a stream? Suppose you were standing beside such a bridge when an automobile full of people drove up, and asked you whether the bridge were safe, what would you say? Would you tell them to go across, because you didn't want to say something unpleasant about the bridge? Of course not. That would be dishonest and would make it unsafe for the people. Such a thing would be terrible. Yet some people do not like it because God does not say nice things about them in the Bible. They do not like to hear that they are sinners, lost, condemned, children of the devil. They would rather not hear the truth, even though they need to know it.
