Silence and Self-Examination

"Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah" (Psalm 4:4)

I should like to suggest that we Bible-believing Christians announce a moratorium on religious activity and set our house in order preparatory to the coming of an afflatus from above.

So carnal is the body of Christians which compose the conservative wing of the Church, so shockingly irreverent are our public services in some quarters, so degraded are our religious tastes in still others that the need for power could scarcely have been greater at any time in history. I believe we should profit immensely were we to declare a period of silence and self-examination during which each one of us searched his own heart and sought to meet every condition for a real baptism of power from on high.

More spiritual progress can be made in one short moment of speechless silence in the awesome presence of God than in years of mere study. The exposure may be brief, but the results are permanent.

Jesus calls us o'er the tumult
Of our life's wild, restless sea;
Day by day His sweet voice soundeth,
Saying, "Christian, follow Me."

~A. W. Tozer~

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Only the Spirit

"Receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Spirit. And immediately ... he received sight forthwith" (Acts 9:17-18)

We may be sure of one thing, that for our deep trouble there is no cure apart from a visitation, yes, an invasion of power from above.

Only the Spirit Himself can show us what is wrong with us and only the Spirit can prescribe the cure.

Only the Spirit can show us the Father and the Son.

Only the inworking of the Spirit's power can discover to us the solemn majesty and the heart ravishing mystery of the Triune God.

This is what the Holy Spirit brings to us, the vision of the Lord, power to see divine things as God sees them. Not only does He give knowledge of the truth, but He gives the realization of it. Not only does He reveal to us the promises, but He enables us to appropriate them. The Spirit also things in us by giving us divine instincts, intuitions and enablements.

~A. W. Tozer~