Hidden from the Face of God – Pursuit of God, A. W. Tozer

One should suppose that proper instruction in the doctrines of man’s depravity and the necessity for justification through the righteousness of Christ alone would deliver us from the power of the self-sins; but it does not work out that way. Self can live unrebuked at the very altar. It can watch the bleeding Victim die and not be in the least affected by what it sees. It can fight for the faith of the Reformers and preach eloquently the creed of salvation by grace, and gain strength by its efforts. To tell all the truth, it seems actually to feed upon orthodoxy and is more at home in a Bible Conference than in a tavern. Our very state of longing after God may afford it an excellent condition under which to thrive and grow. Self is the opaque veil that hides the Face of God from us. It can be removed only in spiritual experience, never by mere instruction.

I am bold to mane the threads out of which this inner veil is woven. It is woven of the fine threads of the self-life, the hyphenated sins of the human spirit. They are not something we do, they are something we are, and therein lies both their subtlety and their power. To be specific, the self-sins are these: self-righteousness, self-pity, self-confidence, self-sufficiency, self-admiration, self-love and a host of others like them. They dwell too deep within us and are too much a part of our natures to come to our attention till the light of God is focused upon them. The grosser manifestations of these sins, egotism, exhibitionism, self-promotion, are strangely tolerated in Christian leaders even in circles of impeccable orthodoxy. They are so much in evidence as actually, for many people, to become identified with the gospel. I trust it is not a cynical observation to say that they appear these days to be a requisite for popularity in some sections of the Church visible. Promoting self under the guise of promoting Christ is currently so common as to excite little notice.

We must prepare ourselves for an ordeal of suffering in some measure like that through which our Saviour passed when He suffered under Pontius Pilate. Let us remember: when we talk of the rending of the veil we are speaking in a figure, and the thought of it is poetical, almost pleasant; but in actuality there is nothing pleasant about it. In human experience that veil is made of living spiritual tissue; it is composed of the sentient, quivering stuff of which our whole beings consist, and to touch it is to touch us where we feel pain. To tear it away is to injure us, to hurt us and make us bleed. To say otherwise is to make the cross no cross and death no death at all. It is never fun to die. To rip through the dear and tender stuff of which life is made can never be anything but deeply painful. Yet that is what the cross did to Jesus and it is what the cross would do to every man to set him free.

Let us beware of tinkering with our inner life in hope ourselves to rend the veil. God must do everything for us. Our part is to yield and trust. We must confess, forsake, repudiate the self-life, and then reckon it crucified. But we must be careful to distinguish lazy “acceptance” from the real work of God. We must insist upon the work being done. We dare not rest content with a neat doctrine of self-crucifixion. That is to imitate Saul and spare the best of the sheep and the oxen. Insist that the work be done in very truth and it will be done. The cross is rough, and it is deadly, but it is effective. It does not keep its victim hanging there forever. There comes a moment when its work is finished and the suffering victim dies. After that is resurrection glory and power, and the pain is forgotten for joy that the veil is taken away and we have entered in actual spiritual experience the Presence of the living God.

Their Hands Hold Our Future

Behind these wrinkles lies a story

My generation has never heard

Years and years of history

The young ones never learned

Each scar tells of a year

All hard work, with joy and tears

but each line sings of memories

that this aged mind holds dear

 

Gather round all you young ones

Listen close to what they say

What you thought was gone forever

Just might reappear someday

Listen closely as they tell you

Of an old and ancient time

For their hands hold our future

Every wrinkle every line

 

Right before us older siblings

Half a century, our parents know

Grandpa’s life spans seventy years

But this memory still knows more

Back some ninety years

As a child it was born

But generations later now

This piece of history lives on

 

Gather round all you young ones

Listen close to what they say

What you thought was gone forever

Just might reappear someday

Listen closely as they tell you

Of an old and ancient time

For their hands hold our future

Every wrinkle every line

The Men To Make A State

It’s kind of fun browsing through your own blogs and finding things like this that you’ve forgotten about!

The Men to Make a State

George Washington Doane

The men to make a State must be intelligent men. The right of suffrage is a fearful thing. It calls for wisdom, and discretion, and intelligence, of no ordinary standard. It takes in, at every exercise, the interests of all the nation. Its results reach forward through time into eternity. Its discharge must be accounted for among the dread responsibilities of the great day of judgment. Who will go to it blindly? Who will go to it passionately? Who will go to it as a sycophant, a tool, a slave? How many do! These are not the men to make a state.

The men to make a State must be honest. I do not mean men that would never steal. I do not mean men that would scorn to cheat in making change. I mean men with a single tongue. I mean men that consider always what is right, and do it at whatever cost. I mean men whom no king on earth can buy. Men that are in the market for the highest bidder; men that make politics their trade, and look to office for a living; men that will crawl, where they cannot climb, – these are not the men to make a state.

The men to make a State must be brave men. I mean the men that walk with open face and unprotected breast. I mean the men that do, but do not talk. I mean the men that dare to stand alone. I mean the men that can stand still and take the storm. I mean the men that are afraid to kill, but not afraid to die. The man that calls hard names and uses threats; the man that stable, in secret, with his tongue or with his pen; the man that moves a mob to deeds of violence and self-destruction; the man that freely offers his last drop of blood, but never sheds the firs, – these are not the men to make a state.

The men to make a State must be religious men. To leave God out of states, is to be atheists. I do not mean that men must cant. I do not men must wear long faces. I do not mean that men must talk of conscience, while they take your spoons. I speak of men who have it in their heart as well as on their brow. The men that own no future, the men that trample on the Bible, the men that never pray, are not the men to make a state.

The men to make a State are made by faith. A man that has no faith is so much flesh. His heart is a muscle; nothing more. He has no past, for reverence; no future, for reliance. Such men can never make a state. There must be faith to look through clouds and storms up to the sun that shines as cheerily, on high, as on creation’s morn. There must be faith that can afford to sink the present in the future; and let time go, in its strong grasp upon eternity. This is the way that men are made, to make a state.

The men to make a State are made by self-denial. The willow dallies with the water, draws its waves up in continual pulses of refreshment and delight; and is a willow after all. An acorn has been loosened, some autumnal morning, by a squirrel’s foot. It finds a nest in some rude cleft of an old granite rock, where there is scarcely earth to cover it. It knows no shelter, and it feels no shade. It asks no favor, and gives none. It grapples with the rock. It crowds up towards the sun. It is an oak. It has been seventy years an oak. It will be an oak for seven times seventy years; unless you need a man-of-war to thunder at the foe that shows a flag upon the shore, where freemen dwell; and then you take no willow in its daintiness and gracefulness; but that old, hardy, storm-stayed and storm-strengthened oak. So are the men that make a State.

The men to make a State are themselves made by obedience. Obedience is the health of human hearts: obedience to God; obedience to father and to mother, who are, to children, in the place of God; obedience to teachers and to masters, who are in the place of father and of mother; obedience to spiritual pastors, who are God’s ministers; and to the powers that be, which are ordained of God. Obedience is but self-government in action; and he can never govern men who does not govern himself. Only such men can make a state.

In Pusuit of God – A.W. Tozer

The world is perishing for lack of the knowledge of God and the Church is famishing for want of His Presence. The instant cure of most of our religious ills would be to enter the Presence in spiritual experience, to become suddenly aware that we are in God and that God is in us. This would lift us out of our pitiful narrowness and cause our hearts to be enlarged. This would burn away the impurities from our lives as the bugs and fungi were burned away by the fire that dwelt in the bush.

When I Went to Hold onto Him, He Was Holding onto Me

I don’t feel like hurting today, I feel like running away

From all the heartache and pain That haunts my soul.

I’m reaching for something bigger; Someone who knows how I feel…

 I just can’t stand, so I’ll kneel Until I learn to let go…

 

Then with all of my might I held on for dear life -

Often scared of embrace until I came to this place

Where I learned about my Keeper -

The One Who said He’d never leave;

 But when I went to hold on to Him He was holding on to me.

 

Two sets of footprints in the sand Proved that He was holding my hand;

And now on my own I can stand And it’s all because of Him.

But when one pair disappeared I felt a hand gently draw me near -

He carried me through all my fears In arms of love He took me in.

 

Then with all of my might I held on for dear life -

Often scared of embrace until I came to this place

 Where I learned about my Keeper -

The One Who said He’d never leave;

But when I went to hold on to Him He was holding on to me.

Wrestling with God

     Faith is assurance, trust. Trust is confidence, hope. The two together require a complete yielding of self by placing sacrificed will and desires at the feet of hope’s origin. Sacrifice executes the flesh, causing pain that for the present is nigh to unbearable, but once accomplished provides for such sweet relief that peace and joy claim their time and share in a sudden overcoming.  As believers we have the knowledge of this beautiful aftermath, and of course we recognize the essentiality of sacrificing the flesh, but to actually make it happen is an entirely different case! Just as it is impossible to force God or his ways on another soul, it is impossible to cohere in submission our will to his and our desires to his own. Desperately we can struggle, constantly in our humanness can we try to release ourselves into his hold, but it is useless and vein effort if it is not the Master who gathers us and brings us in.

A young girl once knew that her faith was at stake and was reminded of the fact that her trust lay on the line. She knew the danger of such a crisis and was more than willing to take every step to avoid it, but how? She delved into the Holy Scriptures trying to find the faith she’d lost; she plead with the Book’s Author for renewal of her trust. But all was in vain. Nothing would happen and with mere time she knew her soul’s death was imminent. She had tried everything in her power, but to no avail. Finally, when the very last bit of herself, her power, and her will, had gone, she woke to find herself at the foot of her Savior renewed in body and soul by an up-springing fountain of the faith and trust she had so longed for.

She remembered the crisis and the place it had held in her heart. A loved one, so dear, was claimed by the devil in both body and soul. She knew not if there was aught she could do to bring him back. She secretly quarreled with herself as to whether she might hold but the smallest bit of influence with him. As much as she denied it with her flesh, she would still acknowledge that the Master alone could draw such a one back again. As time slowly passed, she came to realize that her hope of influencing him was useless and that there was nothing within her reach to point him in another direction. It then began playing in her mind that there was one who could influence him; there was one being who could point him in another way, even bring him back. But what did she hear within herself? What was the voice perfidiously whispering in her mind? If this one could bring him back, why hadn’t He? Why did he leave this soul bound helplessly within the devil’s deadly grasp? Why did he leave the onlookers like herself torn apart and writhing in pain? Bitterly, she spat in contempt.

Because she knew of the danger herself was in, when she first searched the Scriptures she decided that she could have faith, she could find trust: if … the Divine promised to take charge of the soul. She knew that she could once again be free of spirit, even bury her hurt, if … she could be assured that all would come out in the right fashion. She knew that something more had to be done, but that she could not do. As she continued her search for faith and plead for trust, she was forced to resign first her power, then her will, and slowly everything she held in her own hands. Finally, at last, when all was gone there was only one thing she could do, and that was to take up His will, His power, His desires. It was here that she came to understand just the slightest bit about the Divine and His work. It mattered not whether this soul was ever brought into subjection of the great shepherd. It mattered not whether she could bury her hurt and once again have that certain joy. It mattered not… But what did matter is how the Master would use this helpless wanderer in so many ways. Though the heart could ache at the very thought, and tears would threaten to spill over, through Satan’s hold on this bedraggled soul and its years of hopeless wandering, many lives had been affected and changed. Many hearts had turned in warmth toward their Creator following their ever so slight turn in cold disdain. This soul, for whatever reason of the Highest Power, had more than likely brought more glory to the name of the Father, than hers as one of his own children. And that was enough to break the heart.

The learned truth was that as the Son cried thousands of years ago, “Father, glorify thyself”! so it will be done (though we will never understand).

A Letter to the President

Dear President Obama:

 

             You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me.

 

             You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.

 

            You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

 

            You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

 

           You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

           

           You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don’t understand it at its core.

 

           You scare me because you lack humility and ‘class’, always blaming others.

 

             You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

 

             You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the ‘blame America crowd and deliver this message abroad.

 

            You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.

 

             You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.

 

           You scare me because you prefer ‘wind mills’ to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.

 

             You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.

 

           You scare me because you have begun to use ‘extortion’ tactics against certain banks and corporations.

 

           You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

 

             You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.

 

           You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.

 

            You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

 

            You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaugh’s, Hannitys, O’Reillys and Becks who offer opposing conservative points of view.

 

            You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

 

           Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

 -            Lou Pritchett

. ~ . Prayer . ~ .

God’s will is like a train whereas our prayer is like the rails of a train. A train may travel to any place, except that it must run on rails. It has tremendous power to go east, west, south and north, but it can only run to places where rails have been laid. So that it is not because God has no power (He, like a train, has power, great power); but because He chooses to be governed by man’s prayer, therefore all valuable prayers (like a train’s rails) pave the way for God. Consequently, if we do not take up the responsibility of prayer, we will hinder the fulfillment of God’s will.

 - Watchman Nee

: : Forgiveness : :

Is it anger? Is it resentment? Is it bitterness? Day after day, I searched deep within my soul trying somehow to diagnose my present condition. Where once feelings of love, joy, and pride would swell at the thought, now it brought an immediate abduction of any present emotion leaving my inner being as hard as a rock. With the fleeing of emotions came not vile cursings or connivings; either it was an absence of all emotion or else a shocked state in which none where accessible. If it was anger, then I should become angry. If it was resentment I should be shrinking in resentfulness. If it was bitterness I should be plotting – scheming.  But no it was none of these! It was nothing – it was nothingness. There was nothing to diagnose, there was nothing there. But it was something. It had to be something, because it was something different than had been before. It was a change of state from what had used to be normal. Day after day my mind fought the battle, it cried in desperation for understanding.

And then it took one small instance. One small moment and anger rose within me. Ahah! At last! I knew I was angry. But wait! Why was I angry? I had been hurt; I ached at the pain I had experienced. More than just angry, I was resentful. How had I been hurt, though? Everything flooded in like a wave. Years of emotions, images, and sounds swirled through my head. Time, place, and instance, each took their turn as my mind played every event one by one. I was angry; I was resentful; but furthermore, I was bitter. All these, what next? It was after this that suddenly I knew these were all simply manifestations of one underlying issue. I was unforgiving. I had refused to forgive.

I knew now that the only way to make restitution between the three parties, was to forgive. But how simple, exactly, is forgiveness? I knew I needed to forgive. I knew “how” to forgive. But how do you make yourself forgive? Forgiveness requires a change of heart and sadly you can’t just change your heart! I tried thinking nice thoughts. I tried feeling nicely. I tried nice this and I tried nice that. Nope; it resulted in nothing – there was still nothing there. I prayed. I prayed for God to change my heart. I prayed for God to make me forgive.  It took time – it took a while, but then all at once He spoke to me. He made me look Him in the eye and He said, “You foolish child! And to think that I call you my own! Exactly what have I not done for you that you would dare, that you would dare to not forgive one person for a little bit of pain and hurt that you’ve felt for a short time in your life? Little do you know of the pain you have caused me just in this one area of un-forgiveness! You will never know of the pain I’ve felt over your lifetime. You could never even come close to imagining the pain I’ve felt since the beginning of the world, nor the depths of my hurt! Furthermore, do you think that you have not pained this other party? If only you knew what they’ve experienced at your hands! Your anger, your resentfulness, your bitterness, has taken them to places for which you are responsible. You have carved wounds that threaten to never heal. What pain and hurt you have caused me and them!

I’ve forgiven you of it all child, everything! How dare you deny one this very small amount?

I found then, the heart He gave me to forgive.

Only Daddy Will Do

There are some things only Daddy can do

When I need help I go to Daddy

When I can’t sort things out I turn to Daddy

When I don’t know what to do I ask Daddy

Daddy’s always there for me.

When I need advice I ask Daddy

When I have to make decisions I ask Daddy

When I’m at a loss I ask Daddy

When I’m at the end of my rope I turn to Daddy

Daddy’s always there for me.

Daddy’s the reason I do the things I do

Daddy’s the reason I have values

Daddy’s the reason I want more from life

Daddy’s opinion is what matters

Daddy’s the one I can count on

Daddy’s always been there for me

Daddy’s still here for me

Daddy’s my protector

Daddy’s my motivation

Daddy’s my hero

Daddy’s my dream in another man

Only Daddy will do