The Manifest Presence

"The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good" (Proverbs 15:3)

The omnipresence of the Lord is one thing, and is a solemn fact necessary to His perfection.

The manifest Presence is another thing altogether, and from that Presence we have fled, like Adam, to hide among the trees of the garden, or like Peter, to shrink away crying, "Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord" (Luke 5:8).

So the life of man upon the earth is a life away from the Presence, wrenched loose from that "blissful center" which is our right and proper dwelling place, our first estate which we kept not, the loss of which is the cause of our unceasing restlessness.

The Holy Spirit is God, and the most important thing is that the Holy Spirit is present now. There is unseen deity present. I cannot bring Him to you; I can only tell you that He is here.

~A. W. Tozer~

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Saved to Worship

"Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty" (1 Chronicles 29:11)

I believe a local church exists to do corporately what each Christian believer should be doing individually - and that is to worship God.

We are saved to worship God. All that Christ has done for us in the past and all that He is doing now leads to this one end. If we are denying this truth and if we are saying that worship is not really important, we can blame our attitudes for the great wave of arrested development in our Christian fellowships.

Why should the church of Jesus Christ be a spiritual school where hardly anyone ever graduates from the first grade?

Do you love Jesus for the divine glories of His person, for the excellence of His life, for the benefits of His death, for the prevalence of His intercession, for His resurrection, His dominion over the world, and His office as the supreme and final Judge? Are the feelings of your heart drawn out towards Christ as your chief joy? Can you sit down under His shadow with great delight, and find His fruit sweet to your taste?

~A. W. Tozer~