My apologies for being so long in getting back to my blog! There have been so many things going on--I ended up with some health problems which I'll be going into surgery probably within the next 3 weeks; then I went to Flordia for 2 weeks on my own (tickets were bought and I got the green light from the gyn to go), then on to Houston for 5 days for the Texas State Home Convention... and now I'm waiting on hearing from the gyn for a surgery date. Discipline is something I am striving for, and not exactly attaining. So, without further ado, here's chapter 4 of Tozer's The Pursuit of God.
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To most people God is an inference, not a reality. He is a deduction from evidence which they consider adequate; but He remains personally unknown to the individual. `He must be,' they say, `therefore we believe He is.' Others do not go even so far as this; they know of Him only by hearsay. They have never bothered to think the matter out for themselves, but have heard about Him from others, and have put belief in Him into the back of their minds along with the various odds and ends that make up their total creed. To many others God is but an ideal, another name for goodness, or beauty, or truth; or He is law, or life, or the creative impulse back of the phenomena of existence. These notions about God are many and varied, but they who hold them have one thing in common: they do not know God in personal experience. The possibility of intimate acquaintance with Him has not entered their minds. While admitting His existence they do not think of Him as knowable in the sense that we know things or people.
Isn't it sad, yet oh so true, that so many either do not recognize God or only know Him by the above labels--parts of who He is, but not the only Name for Him.
Christians, to be sure, go further than this, at least in theory. Their creed requires them to believe in the personality of God, and they have been taught to pray, `Our Father, which art in heaven.' Now personality and fatherhood carry with them the idea of the possibility of personal acquaintance. This is admitted, I say, in theory, but for millions of Christians, nevertheless, God is no more real than He is to the non-Christian. They go through life trying to love an ideal and be loyal to a mere principle.
How even more sad that so many Christians do not know Him for who He is, a True Person not just an ideal or a principle.
A loving Personality dominates the Bible, walking among the trees of the garden and breathing fragrance over every scene. Always a living Person is present, speaking, pleading, loving, working, and manifesting Himself whenever and wherever His people have the receptivity necessary to receive the manifestation.
Those who see God as angry and full of vengence, with neither patience nor love do not see Him in His fullness. There are times that He has to discipline and does allow bad things to happen for the purifying of His people (and also so that they may offer others His love because they've gone thru the same experiences as those others). He is so patient, not wanting any to miss His presence, wanting all to come to the saving knowledge of His person. It's a shame that those who can not see this "loving Personality" choose so often to focus on His judgments.
That a saving work must first be done in the heart is taken for granted here. The spiritual faculties of the unregenerate man lie asleep in his nature, unused and for every purpose dead; that is the stroke which has fallen upon us by sin. They may be quickened to active life again by the operation of the Holy Spirit in regeneration; that is one of the immeasurable benefits which come to us through Christ's atoning work on the cross.
But the very ransomed children of God themselves: why do they know so little of that habitual conscious communion with God which the Scriptures seem to offer? The answer is our chronic unbelief. Faith enables our spiritual sense to function. Where faith is defective the result will be inward insensibility and numbness toward spiritual things.
Oh, that God's people will experience a true revival of the soul--seeing that they walk in unbelief... May I experience a true revival of my soul! I so often have to say, like the man with Jesus, "I believe; help me in my unbelief!" May we all no longer by numb toward spiritual things!
God has objective existence independent of and apart from any notions which we may have concerning Him.The worshipping heart does not create its Object. It finds Him here when it wakes from its moral slumber in the morning of its regeneration.
We habitually think of the visible world as real and doubt the reality of any other. We do not deny the existence of the spiritual world but we doubt that it is real in the accepted meaning of the word. The world of sense intrudes upon our attention day and night for the whole of our lifetime. It is clamorous, insistent and self- demonstrating. It does not appeal to our faith; it is here, assaulting our five senses, demanding to be accepted as real and final. But sin has so clouded the lenses of our hearts that we cannot see that other reality, the City of God, shining around us. The world of sense triumphs. The visible becomes the enemy of the invisible; the temporal, of the eternal. That is the curse inherited by every member of Adam's tragic race.
One of our weaknesses as humans is to rely so heavily on what we can see, touch, taste, hear, and experience. It truly is a step of faith to reach out and know that which we see all around us, touching, tasting, hearing, experiencing, feeling, is "as looking through a glass darkly" - old bronze "mirrors" reflect so poorly, and yet that is what we see when we gaze on this material world. The world of sense does indeed so often triumph and we must fight it and battle with it, to step out in faith and do what we know God has given us to do. "What does it matter if a man loses the world, when he has gained his soul" in knowledge of the One who created this world as well as our souls? We have to step out into the dark, the unseen road, in obedience to the Lord of the Journey--the Lord of the Destination!
For the great unseen Reality is God. `He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.' (Hebr 11:6) This is basic in the life of faith. From there we can rise to unlimited heights. `Ye believe in God,' said our Lord Jesus Christ, `believe also in me.' (John 14:1) Without the first there can be no second.
It seems as if believing there is a God is the first step... or even just the hope of His existence. Then the seeker must come to hope and believe that He will reward them when they seek Him. Those who cry in the dark watches of the night begging a change in their lives, hope that He hears and will answer. That in itself is believing that He is a rewarder to those who diligently seek Him. If you cry out to Him, must you not believe to some small degree that He will answer--even if you are just hoping against hope that "something" will happen once you call His Name. The Holy Spirit can woo and draw one closer to His presence, and to Who He is: Three Personalities in One; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
The soul has eyes with which to see and ears with which to hear. Feeble they may be from long disuse, but by the life-giving touch of Christ alive now and capable of sharpest sight and most sensitive hearing.
As Tozer says in his closing prayer, " Make heaven more real to me than any earthly thing has ever been." |
Friday, September 15, 2006 - single child homeschooler