"Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think ... unto him be glory" Ephesians 3:20-21)
The truth in received in power shifts the bases of life from Adam to Christ and a new set of motives goes to work within the soul. A new and different Spirit enters the personality and makes the believing man new in every department of his being.
His interests shift from things external to things internal, from things on earth to things in heaven. He loses faith in the soundness of external values, he sees clearly the deceptiveness of outward appearances and his love for and confidence in the unseen and eternal world become stronger as his experience widens.
With the ideas here expressed most Christians will agree, but the gulf between theory and practice is so great as to be terrifying. For the gospel is too often preached and accepted without power, and the radical shift which the truth demands is never made.
Anyone can do the possible; add a bit of courage and zeal and some may do the phenomenal; only Christians are obliged to do the impossible.
~A. W. Tozer~
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From Self to God
"If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me" (Matthew 16:24)
It is a distressing thing that a truth so beautiful as justification should have been so perverted. But perversion is the price we pay for failure to emphasize the moral content of truth; it is the curse that follows rational orthodoxy when it has quenched or rejected the Spirit of Truth.
In asserting that faith in the gospel effects a change of life-motive from self to God I am but stating the sober facts.
Every man with moral intelligence must be aware of the curse that afflicts him inwardly; he must be conscious of the thing we call "ego", by the Bible called "flesh" or "self", but by whatever name called, a cruel master and a deadly foe.
Affections that do not terminate on God, terminate on self. mend who do not "seek the things that are Jesus Christ's, seek their own. Inordinate self-love is the ruling passion of their hearts and the governing principle of their lives. The glory of God the Christian must seek!
~A. W. Tozer~
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