No Worship Without The Holy Spirit

"God is the King of all the earth: sing ye praises with understanding ... God sitteth upon the throne of his holiness" (Psalm 47:7-8)

We find much spiritual astonishment and wonder in the book of Acts. You will always find these elements present when the Holy Spirit directs believing men and women.

On the other hand, you will not find astonished wonder among men and women when the Holy Spirit is not present.

Engineers can do many great things in their fields, but no mere human force or direction can work the mysteries of God among men.

If there is no wonder, no experience of mystery, our efforts to worship will be futile. There will be no worship without the Spirit.

Worship has to be in the Spirit and by the Spirit. The notion that just anybody can worship is all wrong. The notion that we can worship without the Spirit is all wrong. The notion that we can crowd the Spirit into a corner and ignore Him, quench Him, resist Him and yet worship God acceptably is a great heresy which we need to correct.

~A. W. Tozer~

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Cultivation Means Fruitfulness

"Charity suffereth long, and is kind, charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up" (1 Corinthians 13:4)

This is the problem. We try to arrive at the fruits of Christianity by a shortcut. Everybody wants to be known as being spiritual, close to God and walking in the Truth. This is the answer. Every flower and every fruit has a stalk and every stalk has a root, and before there is any bloom there must be a careful tending of the root and the stalk. This is where the misunderstanding lies - we think that we get the flower and the fragrance and the fruit by some kind of magic, instead of by cultivation.

"Be ye therefore followers of God ... and walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us ..." (Ephesians 5:1-2. This is the likeness of Christ in the human heart and life - and our neighbors are waiting to see Him in our lives!

What a multitude of words the Holy Spirit has given us for the various forms of love and patience. The list includes: love, charity, brotherly kindness, tenderness, meekness, longsuffering, patience, forbearance, unity, gentleness. They are like many shades of a color - all in the same class, yet no two exactly alike.

~A. W. Tozer~