Sometimes we Christians are opposed and persecuted for reasons other than our godliness. We like to think it is our spirituality that irritates people, when in reality, it may be our personality.
True, the spirit of this world is opposed to the Spirit of God; he that is born after the flesh will persecute him that is born of the Spirit. But making all allowances, it is still true that some Christians get into trouble through their faults instead of through their likeness to the character of Christ. We may as well admit this and do something about it. No good can come from trying to hide our unpleasant and annoying dispositional traits behind a verse of Scripture.
It is one of the strange facts of life that gross sins are often less offensive and always more attractive than spiritual ones. The world can tolerate a drunkard or a glutton or a smiling braggart but will turn in savage fury against the man of outwardly righteous life who is guilty of those refined sins, which he does not recognize as sins, but which may be more exceeding sinful than the sins of the flesh.
In the sanctified heart, the hatred of sin is supreme.
~A. W. Tozer~
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Detached or Attached?
"And Enoch walked with God and he was not; for God took him" (Genesis 5:24)
Enoch was a spiritual rebuke to his own generation. He fought off the wiles and the temptations of the devil. He purposed withing himself: "I will walk with God by faith even if that means that I must be detached from my generation."
Are you really detached from your generation because you resist the devil and walk in the fullness of the Holy Spirit? Am I? That is a very personal question, and we dare not try to answer it for each other.
Our generation in this world system claims that there is no personal devil, no enemy of our souls. Yet, all the while, satan is busy. He is using a successful, age-old tactic with many people. He is assuring them in a variety of ways that there is no urgency in the matters of faith... "Put off a decision until you feel you are ready." That is the devil's urging to those who are lost. As a result, millions have waited. And in waiting, they have never come to God in repentance and faith.
As of old Christ hung on Calvary between two men that represented at once both heaven and hell, so still it is true that the Cross of Jesus is the dividing line between lost and saved men.
~A. W. Tozer~
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