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Wednesday, December 9, 2015

The Divine Displacement

"Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh" (1 Peter 3:15)

With the desire to please men so deeply implanted within us how can we uproot it and shift our life-drive from pleasing men to pleasing God?

Well, no one can do it alone, nor can he do it with the help of others, nor by education, nor by training, nor by any other method known under the sun. What is required is a reversal of nature (that is fallen nature does not make it any the less powerful) and this reversal must be a supernatural act.

That act the Spirit performs through the power of the gospel when it is received in living faith. Then He displaces the old with the new. Then He invades the life as sunlight invades a landscape and drives out the old motives as light drives away darkness from the sky.

We ought never to confound the things we do with what God does. We get ready for Him. We place ourselves in position, and the fire descends. We sanctify ourselves that He might sanctify us. It is God's work.

~A. W. Tozer~
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A Switch In Pleasure Source

"And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and ... they loved not their lives unto the death" (Revelation 12:11).

The way faith works in experience is something like this: The believing man is overwhelmed suddenly by a powerful feeling that ONLY GOD MATTERS; soon this works itself out into his mental life and conditions all his judgments and all his values.

Now he finds himself free from slavery to man's opinions. Soon he learns to love above all else the assurance that he is well-pleasing to the Father in heaven.

It is this complete switch in their pleasure source that has made believing men invincible. So could saints and martyrs stand alone, deserted by every earthly friend, and die for Christ under the universal displeasure of mankind.

The gospel has power to deliver men from the tyranny of social approval and make them free to do the will of God.

Nothing is too dear to give to Christ, nothing too great to be cheerfully sacrificed to the promotion of His glory. Such is the disposition of good men, that they place their happiness in the glory of God and the prosperity of His kingdom.

~A. W. Tozer~

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