Holiness for Tainted Souls

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding" (Proverbs 9:10)

We come to the presence of God with tainted souls. We come with our own concept of morality, having learned it from books, from newspaper and from school. We come to God dirty ... and do nothing about it!

If we come to God dirty, but trembling and shocked and awestruck in His presence, if we knelt at His feet and cried with Isaiah, "I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips" (Isaiah 6:5), then I could understand. But we skip into His awful presence. We're dirty, but we have a book called "Seven Steps to Salvation" that gives us seven verses to get us out of our problems. And each year we have more Christians, more people going to church, more church buildings, more money - and less spirituality and less holiness. We're forgetting "holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord" (Hebrews 12:14). I tell you this: I want God to be what God is: the impeccably holy, unapproachable Holy Thing, the All-Holy One. I want Him to be and remain THE HOLY.

Lay aside the garments that are stained with sin
And  be washed in the blood of the Lamb;
There's a fountain flowing for the soul unclean;
Oh, be washed in the blood of the Lamb.

~A. W. Tozer~

___________________

As Happy As You Are Holy

"Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God" (Psalm 146:5)

The childish clamor after happiness can become a real snare. One may easily deceive himself by cultivating a religious joy without a correspondingly righteous life.

No man should desire to be happy who is not at the same time holy. He should spend his efforts in seeking to know and do the will of God, leaving to Christ the matter of how happy he shall be.

For those who take this whole thing seriously, I have a suggestion: Go to God and have an understanding. Tell Him that it is your desire to be holy at any cost, and then ask Him never to give you more happiness than holiness. When your holiness becomes tarnished, let your joy become dim. And ask Him to make you holy whether you are happy or not.

Be assured that in the end you will be as happy as you are holy.

The work of the Holy Spirit is, among other things, to rescue the redeemed man's emotions, to restring his harp and open again the wells of sacred joy which have been stopped by sin.

~A. W. Tozer~