"Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created" (Revelation 4:11)
Every soul belongs to God and exists by His pleasure. God being who and what He is, and we being who and what we are, the only thinkable relation between us is one of full Lordship on His part and complete submission on ours. We owe Him every honor that is in our power to give Him. Our everlasting grief lies in giving Him anything less.
The pursuit of God will embrace the labor of bringing our total personality into conformity to His. And this not judicially, but actually. I do not here refer to the act of justification by faith in Christ. I speak of a voluntary exalting of God to His proper station over us and a willing surrender of our whole being to the place of worshipful submission which the Creator-creature circumstance makes proper.
Made as we were in the image of God we scarcely find it strange to take again our God as our All. God was our original habitat and our hearts cannot but feel at home when they enter again that ancient and beautiful abode.
Father, I am Your creation, and I owe You every honor I can give. I bow in complete submission to Your Lordship. How can I do any less? Amen
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Some Things Must Go
"Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
I repeat my view of worship - no worship is wholly pleasing to God until there is nothing in me displeasing to God.
There is nothing in either of us that an be made good until Jesus Christ comes and changes us - until He lives in us and unites our nature with God, the Father Almighty. Not until then can we call ourselves good.
That is why I say that your worship must be total. It must involve the whole you. That is why you must prepare to worship God, and that preparation is not always pleasant. There may be revolutionary changes which must take place in your life.
If there is to be true and blessed worship, some things in your life must be destroyed, eliminated. The gospel of Jesus Christ is certainly positive and constructive. But it must be destructive in some areas, dealing with and destroying certain elements that cannot remain in a life pleasing to God.
Search me, O God, and know my heart. May there be nothing in me displeasing to You, that I may worship You totally. If there is anything to be destroyed within me, I yield myself to the Holy Spirit's work. Amen
~A. W. Tozer~
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