The Hour To Be Serious

"Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end" (1 Peter 1:13)

The spirit of the prophet is always subject to the prophet. When the Spirit of God moves into a man's heart, He will never make a fool out of him. He will make the man happy but He will never make him silly.

He may make him sad with the woe and the weight of the world's grief but He will never let him become a gloomy cynic. The Holy Spirit will make him warm-hearted and responsive but He will never cause him to do things of which he will be ashamed later.

Peter was not promoting or predicting a cold and lifeless and formal spirituality in the Christian Church when he advised believers to gird up the lions of their minds and be sober. He was saying to the early Christians as he hopes to say to us now: "Brethren, if ever there was an hour when we needed to be serious about our Christian faith, this is the hour!

There is nothing so delightful as this consciousness of the very life and heart of Christ within us, the trust that springs spontaneously within our breast, the prayer that prays itself, and the song that sings its joyous triumph even when all around is dark and strange.

~A. W. Tozer~

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Study, Then Do

"This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein ... to do ... all that is written therein." (Joshua 1:8)

The great American evangelist, Charles Finney, went so far as to declare bluntly that it is sinful to teach the Bible without moral application. He asked what good is accomplished merely to study a course in the Bible to find out what it says, if there is to be no obligation to do anything as a result of what has been learned?

There can be a right and a wrong emphasis in conducting Bible classes. I am convinced that some Bible classes are nothing more than a means whereby men become even more settled in their religious prejudices.

Only when we have moral application are we in the Bible method! When we give ourselves seriously to Bible study, we discover the Holy Spirit's method. "This is what God did, and this is what God did. Therefore, this is what you ought to do!"
That is always the Bible way.

Let's practice the art of Bible meditation. Let us open our Bibles, spread them out on a chair and meditate on the Word of God. It will open itself to us, and the Spirit of God will come and brood over it. Put away the questions and answers and the filling in of blank lines ... and in faith say, "Father, here I am. Begin to teach me!"

~A. W. Tozer~