Exchanging One Sin For Another

"Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service" (Romans 12:1)

An offering and the sacrifice and the sanctifying energies of the Holy Spirit are indeed sufficient to prepare the soul for communion with God. This the Bible declares and this ten thousand times ten thousand witnesses confirm.

The big danger is that we assume that we have been delivered from our sins when we have in reality only exchanged one kind of sin for another. This is the peril that lies in wait for everyone. It need not discourage us nor turn us back, but it should make us watchful.

We must, for instance, be careful that our repentance is not simply a change of location. Whereas we once sinned in the far country among the swineherds, we are now chumming with religious persons, considerably cleaner and much more respectable in appearance, to be sure, but no nearer to true heart purity than we were before.

In the deeper experience of a sanctified heart, there must be another conviction, not of sin, but of sinfulness, before the soul is ready to receive the Holy Spirit and the abiding presence of the Lord.

~A. W. Tozer~

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Midwives In the Henhouse

"Which were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John 1:13)

I was once a farm boy. I learned that when it came time for eggs to hatch, we did well not to help the process along. The chick that had been helped in its birth could be spotted every time. It was weak, and it walked with a stagger.

But that is what we do with the penitents who want to get right with God. Well-meaning people kneel down with the seeking sinners, find a Bible text and pray away until they see a little sign of life. Then, like eager midwives in the henhouse, they pull the penitents from their shells, dry them off, write down their names as converts - and later wonder why they do not develop.

But when the Holy Spirit brings penitents to the new birth, they bounce out into the world healthy and howling. Their sins are forgiven; their burdens have been lifted!

The will in man is the point of contact which God acts upon us, and, like the helm and the engine of the vessel, it is the directing and impelling power of life. They greatly err who look for its sphere in the emotions. Its seat is the will. A clear, calm, inflexible choice is the mightiest element in the life of faith.

~A. W. Tozer~