As They Are, So He Is

"Behold my servant, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom my soul is well-pleased: I will put my spirit upon him" (Matthew 12:18)

To the reverent question, "What is God like?" a proper answer will always be, "He is like Christ." For Christ is God, and the Man who walked among men in Palestine was God acting like Himself in the familiar situation where His incarnation placed Him.

To the question, "What is the Spirit like?" the answer must always be, "He is like Christ." For the Spirit is the essence of the Father and the Son. As they are, so is He. As we feel toward Christ and toward our Father who art in heaven, so should we feel toward the Spirit of the Father and the Son.

Holy Father, Holy Son, Holy Spirit -
Three we name Thee;
Though in essence only one,
Undivided God we claim Thee,
And adoring bend the knee
While we sing our praise to Thee. Amen

Somebody pointed out that hymnody took a downward trend when we left the great objective hymns that talked about God and begin to sing the gospel songs that talk about us.

~A. W. Tozer~

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The Experience of Knowing

"The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God ... because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Corinthians 2:14)

When the Spirit illuminates the heart, then a part of the man sees which never saw before; a part of him knows which never knew before, and that with a kind of knowing which the most acute thinker cannot imitate. He knows now in a deep and authoritative way, and what he knows needs no reasoned proof. His experience of knowing is above reason, immediate, perfectly convincing and inwardly satisfying.

"A man can receive nothing." That is the burden of the Bible. Whatever men may think of human reason, God takes a low view of it.

The inability of human reason as an organ of divine knowledge arises not from its own weakness but from its unfittedness for the task by its own nature. It was not given as an organ by which to know God.

It takes the Holy Spirit to unlock the Book. He who reads simply with the eye of the Intellect will miss the glory of the Book, and never realize the soulfood with which it is stored. it is well to ask the light and blessing of the Holy Spirit upon us each time that we read.

~A. W. Tozer~