Help Heavenward: Guidance and Strength for the Christian's Life-Journey (Winslow)

Description

'A practical handbook on sanctification with heaven ever in view’ — Joel R. Beeke

Admission to heaven is promised and guaranteed to all who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ but they all need help to get there.

Sin, suffering, death and Satan obstruct the believer’s progress in faith and obedience. But God’s grace, his Son’s merit and the Spirit’s might all co-operate to direct, uphold, encourage and restore the believer who persevered on the holy pilgrimage.

Help Heavenward, a practical handbook on sanctification with heaven ever in view, is devotional writing at its finest.  I know of no better book to give to Christians as they struggle in this sinful world to live in obedience to their Saviour.  Use this book to become acquainted with those sacred truths of Scripture that the Spirit uses to mould our thoughts, words, and actions for Christ-like living.

Chapter 1 presents the Christian as someone on the way home to heaven.

Chapter 2 deals with the critical, yet sorely neglected, theme of progressive sanctification, steering between denial and exaggeration of that process.

Winslow focuses in chapter 3 on "the gentleness of Christ," showing how Christ leads burdened believers onward and calls them to imitate that spirit. Every cloud in the believer's life is Christ's chariot to lead him to glory,

Chapter 4 teaches. Chapter 5 shows that trials promote spiritual instruction, prayer, spirituality, moral purity - all of which prepare the Christian for heaven.

Chapter 6 shows that as the believer progresses to his eternal home, Christ loosens his bonds, delivering him from the world and Satan, providing him with the Spirit's seal of adoption, and working evangelical obedience in him.

Chapter 7 shows how the believer transfers all his cares to God, including mental anxiety, depression, and difficulty in discerning God's will.

In chapter 8 Winslow explains how self-examination, when properly undertaken, can aid us in our journey to heaven.

In chapter 9 he urges God's children to repent of all backsliding, and in chapter 10 he provides directions on how to face death.

The book concludes by ushering the believer into his Father's house.

Author 

Octavius Winslow (1808–1878) was born in London, England, and raised in New York. He was ordained as a pastor in 1833 and held pastorates in New York, Leamington Spa, Bath, and Brighton. A prolific author, his devotional writings exhibit his Reformed, experiential convictions and distinctive, warm, ardent style.