J.C. Ryle, bishop of Liverpool (maybe not when he wrote this, but he was eventually the bishop of Liverpool), wrote these words: “Let me talk to you about true Christianity. There’s a vast quantity of religion current in the world that is not true, genuine Christianity. It passes muster, it satisfies sleepy consciences; but it is not good money. It is not the real thing which was called Christianity 1800 years ago.”

He continues, “There are thousands of men and women who go to chapels and churches every Sunday and call themselves Christians. Their names are in the baptismal register. They are reckoned Christians while they live. They are married with a Christian marriage service. They mean to be buried as Christians when they die. But you never see any ‘fight’ about their religion! Of spiritual strife, and exertion, and conflict, and self-denial, and watching, and warring they know literally nothing at all.”

Then he says just a little farther down over here, “Let us consider these propositions.… The saddest symptom about many so-called Christians is the utter absence of anything like conflict or fight. They eat, they drink, they dress, they work, they amuse themselves, they get money, they spend money, they go through a scanty round of formal religious services once or even twice a week, but the great spiritual warfare … its watchings and strugglings, its agonies and anxieties, its battles and contests … of all this they appear to know nothing at all.”

Then he finally sits down and says, “Do you find in your heart of hearts a spiritual struggle? Are you conscious of two principles within you, contending for the mastery? Do you feel anything of war in your inward man? Well, let us thank God for it! It is a good sign. It is strongly probable evidence of the great work of sanctification. All true saints are soldiers. A real Christian can be known as much by his inward warfare as by his inward peace.”

Somebody says, “Well, I think you’re exaggerating. You’re coming on too strong.” Not necessarily. I’ve seen three babies born. I’m not a doctor. If you’re a doctor, you may have seen hundreds of babies born, but this is what I can tell. Being born is a serious situation. The only right response to a serious situation is violence. If you’re in a house, and it’s beginning to burn, and your life is in danger, you don’t say, “Hmm, I wonder which way out.”

It’s clear you have not grasped the situation. It’s clear your mind is not alive to the serious situation. If it’s alive, there is kicking. There is running. There is fighting. There’s a violence. Anytime you’re really alive to a serious situation, there is violence. There’s a fight; there’s a conflict. When a baby is born, there should be kicking. There should be crying. There should, in many cases, be just a flailing of the arms and a screaming. Why? Because the child has to take the first breath.

It’s very traumatic, and if a child just comes on out, and lies there and says nothing and does nothing, what does that mean? Does everybody say, “Ah, phlegmatic temperament?” Is that what they say? Do they say, “Ah, well, here’s somebody who really knows how to take life as it comes?” Not a bit. You say, “Something is wrong with this child. The child is not alive or the child is not alive to the situation. There’s something wrong. We have to do something. We have to alert it. We have to wake it up.”

Matthew 11:12, says, “And from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.” That’s Jesus talking. A modern translation would go like this: “The kingdom of God advances through violence, and the violent take it by force.” Do you know what that means? It means anybody, who has any spiritual life in him or her, is alert to how urgent the situation is. For example, the only thing you know about your future is you’re going to die. The only thing you know about anybody around you is they’re going to die. That creates urgency.

22 years ago that I’ve never forgotten. Some of you know this one. He was a pastor in a church, and he had two young college women who went to his church. Those two young college women decided, instead of going into graduate school, they were going to go into the mission field.

They were fine Christians, but their parents were not. When the parents found out about it, they came to see the pastor, and they assumed this guy was a fundamentalist loony tune, or their daughters would not have been in this terrible situation of thinking they could run off and become missionaries instead of looking for some security in life. They said, “They should go to grad school. They should go get a job. They should find some security in life. They shouldn’t run off in the blue and be missionaries in who knows where.”

That’s where Dr. Addison Leitch, who is now dead (he was Elisabeth Elliot’s second husband) looked at them, and he said, “Let me get this straight. Every one of us is on a little ball of rock called Earth. This little ball of rock is spinning through space at a zillion miles an hour. Even if it doesn’t ever run into anything, some day from under every single one of us, a little trap door is going to open, and everybody here is going to fall off. Underneath there will be the everlasting arms of God or nothing at all. Maybe you can get some security by getting a master’s degree. Have I got you straight?” he said.