A High Note of Holy Joy

"Walk in the statutes of life, without committing iniquity, he shall surely live, he shall not die" (Ezekiel 33:15)

Our religion must interfere with our private lives [because] we live in a world, the Bible name for human society. The regenerated man has been inwardly separated from society as Israel was separated from Egypt at the crossing of the Red Sea.

The Christian is a man of heaven temporarily living on earth. Though in spirit divided from the race of fallen men, he must yet in the flesh live among them. In many things he is like them, but in others he differs so radically from them that they cannot but see and resent it.

But we must not get the impression that the Christian life is one continuous conflict, one unbroken irritating struggle against the world, the flesh and the devil. A thousand times no. The heart that learns to die with Christ soon knows the blessed experience of rising with Him, and all the world's persecutions cannot still the high note of holy joy that springs up in the soul that has become the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.

There is never a day so dreary,
There is never a night so long,
But the soul that is trusting Jesus
Will somewhere find a song.

~A. W. Tozer~

____________________

Temperance - A Beautiful Word

"And add to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness" (2 Peter 1:6)

The beautiful word temperance occurs strategically in the theology of the New Testament. Temperance is the helmsman in easy control of the powerful ship as it ploughs through the sea with all parts working in harmony.

Temperance is that in the Christian man's life which brings every faculty into harmony with every other, and the total personality into accord with God's plan for the whole man. In a life so directed there can be no place for excess.

Temperance is not automatic. It is listed among the fruit of the Spirit, but it requires prayer, Bible reading, cross-bearing, hard discipline, obedience and self-denial before it can become a fixed part of the Christian's character.

Those who are in the flesh ... live unto themselves; those who are in the Spirit ... live unto Christ. There are but two moral characters that are essentially different, and this is the radical difference between them.

~A. W. Tozer~