by Oswald Chambers We have the idea that God rewards us for our faith, it may be so in the initial stages; but we do not earn anything by faith, faith brings us into right relationship with God and gives God his opportunity. God wants you to understand that it is a life of faith, not a life of sentimental enjoyment of his blessings. Your earlier life of faith was narrow and intense, settled around a little sun-spot of experience that as much of sense as of faith in it, full of light and sweetness; then God withdrew his conscious blessings in order to teach you to walk by faith. You are worth far more to him now than you were in your days of conscious delight and thrilling testimony. …Faith in the Bible is faith in God against everything that contradicts him – I will remain true to God’s character whatever he may do. “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him” (Job 13:15) - this is the most sublime utterance of faith in the whole of the Bible.
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by Thomas a Kempis Every man naturally wants to know, but what is the good of knowledge without the fear of God? …He who knows himself well becomes cheap in his own eyes, and takes no pleasure in the praises of men. And foolish indeed is he who gives his attention to other things than those which make for his salvation. The greater and better your knowledge, so much the more severely will you be judged, unless you have lived a more holy life. This is the highest knowledge and the most useful lesson – to have true understanding and small opinion of oneself. To hold no high opinion of oneself, and always to judge well and highly of others, is great wisdom and high perfection. from A.W. Tozer There seems to be a great throng of professing Christians in our churches today whose total and amazing testimony sounds like this: "I am thankful for God's plan of sending Christ to the cross to save me from hell. ...Surely we know the Bible well enough to be able to answer that: God's highest purpose in the redemption of sinful humanity was based in his hope that we would allow him to reproduce the likeness of Jesus Christ in our once-sinful lives!" "I can safely say, on the authority of all that is revealed in the Word of God, that any man or woman on this earth who is bored or turned off by worship is not ready for heaven." from John Wesley The [new] Society [in Portarlington] now contained above one hundred members, full of zeal and good desires; and in one week the face of the whole town is changed: open wickedness is not seen; the fear of God is on every side; and rich and poor ask, “What must I do to be saved?” How long (I thought with myself) will this continue? In most only till the fowls of the air come, and devour the good seed. Many of the rest, when persecution or reproach begins, will immediately be offended. And in the small remainder, some will fall off, either through other desires, or the cares of the world, or the deceitfulness of riches. A.W. Tozer As for myself, I have learned to talk back to [the devil] on this score. I say, “Yes, Devil, sin is terrible – but I remind you that I got it from you! And I remind you, Devil, that everything good – forgiveness and cleansing and blessing – everything that is good I have freely received from Jesus Christ!” Brethren, we have been declared “Not guilty!” by the highest court in all the universe. It is good to know that on the basis of grace as taught in the Word of God, when God forgives a man, he trusts him as though he had never sinned. John Bunyan God is the only desirable good; nothing without him is worthy of our hearts. Right thoughts of God are able to ravish the heart; how much more happy is the man that has interest in God. God alone is able by himself to put the soul into a more blessed, comfortable, and happy condition than can the whole world; yes, and more than if all the created happiness of all the angels of heaven did dwell in one man’s bosom. Andrew Murray [God] longs and delights to bless. He has inconceivably glorious purposes concerning every one of this children, by the power of his Holy Spirit, to reveal in them his love and power. And, each time you come to wait upon him, or seek to maintain in daily life the holy habit of waiting, you may look up and see him ready to meet you. He will be waiting so that he may be gracious unto you. Yes, it is blessed when a waiting soul and a waiting God meet each other. Let waiting be our work, as it is his. And if his waiting is nothing but goodness and graciousness, let ours be nothing but a rejoicing in that goodness, and a confident expectancy of that grace. Leonard Ravenhill By our attitude to prayer we tell God that what was begun in the Spirit we can finish in the flesh. What church ever asks its candidating ministers what time they spend in prayer? Yet ministers who do not spend two hours a day in prayer are not worth a dime a dozen, degrees or no degrees. But who now “earnestly contends for the faith once delivered to the saints?” Preachers who should be fishing for men are now too often fishing for compliments from men. Preachers used to sow a seed; now they string together intellectual pearls. The LORD waits to be gracious to you… Blessed are those who wait for him. (Isaiah 30:18) from Thomas a Kempis …O Lord, give me true heavenly wisdom, that I may learn to seek you and to find you, and above all things to love, and to understand and know all other things as they are, after the direction of your wisdom, and not otherwise. And give me grace, also, to withdraw myself from those who flatter me, and patiently to tolerate those who grieve me so that the way I have begun will bring me to a good and blessed ending. A man shall not be established by wickedness: but the root of the righteous shall not be moved. (Proverbs 12:3) I love A.W. Tozer, my brother in the Fellowship of the Burning Heart… though he’s often hard to read because of how convicted I usually feel afterward. One of the best collections of his is entitled, The Root of the Righteous. It is well worth getting and reading… and then reading again. By the way, it was first published in 1955. (That fact will explain why he’s often called a modern-day prophet.) Here are a few quotes from the first chapter, also entitled, The Root of the Righteous… One marked difference between the faith of our fathers as conceived by the fathers and the same faith as understood and lived by their children is that the fathers were concerned with the root of the matter, while their present-day descendants seem concerned only with the fruit. Our fathers looked well to the root of the tree and were willing to wait with patience for the fruit to appear. [Impatient Christians today] imitate their fruit without accepting their theology or inconveniencing ourselves too greatly by adopting their all-or-nothing attitude toward religion. The bough that breaks off from the tree in a storm may bloom briefly and give to the unthinking passerby the impression that it is a healthy and fruitful branch, but its tender blossoms will soon perish and the bough itself wither and die. There is no lasting life apart from the root. Much that passes for Christianity today is the brief, bright effort of the severed branch to bring forth its fruit in its season. But the deep laws of life are against it. Preoccupation with appearances and a corresponding neglect of the out-of-sight root of true spiritual life are prophetic signs which go unheeded. A church that is soundly rooted cannot be destroyed, but nothing can save a church whose root is dried up. No stimulation, no advertising campaigns, no gifts of money and no beautiful edifice can bring back life to the rootless tree. In every generation the number of the righteous is small. Be sure you’re among them. |
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