No Heroic Defiance

"Create in me and in your church a sense of profound respect for questions of conscience. We are so lax. We have nothing of a watchman mentality. We trumpet our freedom in the gospel, but our living looks more like an easygoing indifference to matters of right and wrong. Lord, we even feel superior to previous generations of believers, who at least took moral questions seriously. We view their faith as strict and narrow. But we ourselves are so soft, so casually compliant, so unthinking and undiscerning and uncaring, we are no different from the world around us. We are the influenced, not the influential, because our faith has no moral power, no unbending resolve, no heroic defiance grounded in profoundly held personal conviction. O Lord, awaken us! Enlighten our darkness. Sensitize our dullness. Give us backbone. The world will never be won by Christians like us. "

~Ray Ortlund, Jr., A Passion for God: Prayers and Meditations on the Book of Romans