God In The Flesh

"And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger" (Luke 2:16)

The mystery and miracle of the incarnation - God coming to take our humanity and our flesh, yet without sin. Luke quotes the message of the angel Gabriel to Mary.

"Thou hast found favor with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest ... The Holy Spirit shall ... overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God" (Luke 1:30-32, 35)

The overshadowing of the Most High, the Father; the energy of the Holy Spirit; the enfleshment of the eternal Son - here were the Persons of the Godhead cooperating in a gracious act on behalf of lost men and women.

Lord Jesus, reign in us, we pray,
And make us Thine alone,
Who with the Father ever art,
And Holy Spirit, one.

The Holy Spirit is indivisible from the Father and the Son, and He is all Gold and exercises all the rights of God and He merits all worship and all love and all obedience.

~A. W. Tozer~

______________________

Cultivating Simplicity and Solitude

"Thou desired truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom...Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow" (Psalm 51:6-7)

"The thoughtful soul to solitude retires," said the poet of other and quieter times; but where is the solitude to which we can retire today?

Our "vastly improved methods of communication," of which the shortsighted boast so loudly, now enable a few men in strategic centers to feed into millions of minds alien thought stuff, ready-made and predigested. A little effortless assimilation of these borrowed ideas and the average man has done all the thinking he will or can do.

This subtle brainwashing goes on day after day and year after year to the eternal injury of the populace. There was a time, not too long ago, when a man's home was his castle, a sure retreat to which he might return for quietness and solitude. I cannot refrain from remarking that the most ominous sign of the coming destruction of our country is the passing of the American home. Americans live no longer in homes, but in theaters. Let no one smile. Rather should we weep at the portent.

The mansions of the heart will become larger when their doors are thrown open to Christ and closed against the world and sin.

~A. W. Tozer~