More from Tozer on God Almighty

Progress in the Christian life is exactly equal to the growing knowledge we gain of the Triune God in personal experience. And such experience requires a whole life devoted to it and plenty of time spent at the holy task of cultivating God. God can be know satisfactorily only as we devote time to Him.

More from Tozer on God Almighty

The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts.

More from Tozer on God Almighty

God communicates to us through the avenues of our minds, our wills, and our emotions. The continuous and unembarrassed interchange of love and thought between God and the soul of redeemed man is the throbbing heart of New Testament religion.

Brother Mark is spending every free moment studying for the state test for the nursing home administrator license. Please pray that I will pass the test on Thursday.

More thoughts from A. W. Tozer

In what I have to say I may not be joined by any ground swell of opinion, but I have a charge to make against the Church. We are not consciously aware of God in our midst. We do not seem to sense the tragedy of having almost completely lost the awareness of His presence. I say this not to condemn. I say it with a grieving spirit. I pray that the churches in this day may yet reap the joys and fruits of gracious revival and the deep inward awareness of God's presence.

Some thoughts from Tozer

Of all of the calamities that have been visited upon the world and its inhabitants, the willing surrender of the human spirit to materialistic values is the worst! We who were meant to commune with the Creator God have decided to settle down here. As well might the eagle leave his lofty domain to scratch in the barnyard with the common hens.

A. W. Tozer

Further thoughts on how loving Jesus frees us from sin #2

We don’t want to be like “them.” Have you met any of “them?”

They are the Pharisees. The Pharisees were a 1^st Century Jewish religious/political group that placed a tremendous emphasis on obeying Old Testament Law. They don’t seem to have had much of an emphasis on loving God. These were the people who lead the way in getting Pontius Pilate to give Jesus the death sentence.

You may know some 21^st Century Christian Pharisees. They know exactly and precisely what they are not supposed to do, and they don’t do it. But for some reason, even though they have this emphasis on living right, they are not very attractive people. Very few people who meet them want to be like them.

People don’t want to be like the Pharisees because the Pharisees invariably have two fatal flaws. They are a hard hearted people. An emphasis on following laws does not transform the human heart. And they are proud people.

Let’s be honest with ourselves. If God were to give you complete, instantaneous victory over every bad habit you have right now, is their any conceivable way that this wouldn’t make you proud?

The only way out of this is to grow in your love for Jesus. To the extent that you fail in this area, all “growth” in the purity of your life is simply of process of moving the throne in indwelling sin from the place of lust to the place of pride in your life.

Further thoughts on how loving Jesus frees us from sin #1

In an earlier posting on this thread I wrote that our focus must not be on trying to overcome this or that particular sin, but rather on growing in our love for Jesus. I feel the need to expand on that a little.

Got hates sin. We probably don’t have a word in our language strong enough to express his loathing of sin. And He wants to teach us to hate sin the way He does.

I don’t want to leave the impression that we should never be prayerfully thinking about what tactics we might use against a particular sin in the spiritual war. God promises us that there is a way of escape from every temptation, and the Holy Spirit wants to show us these ways of escape.

The point that I am trying to make is not that we shouldn’t struggle against sin, but that growing in our love for Jesus is the main focus of the spiritual battle. True spirituality consists in a growing love for Jesus and a growing hatred of sin. But the greater (more important) of these is love.