HOW SWEET
ALL AT ONCE IT WAS FOR ME
to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had
once feared to lose!..
You drove them from me,
you who are the true,
the sovereign joy.
You drove them from me and took their place,
you who are sweeter than all pleasure...
O Lord my God, my Light, my Wealth,
and my Salvation.
-Augustine
Confessions, IX, I.
Tozer Quote 1
"Jesus Himself spoke of our hungering and thirsting after righteousness. Hunger and thirst are physical sensations which in their acute stages may become real pain. It has been the experience of countless seekers after God that when their desires became a pain they were suddenly and wonderfully filled. Occasionally there appears on the religious scene a person whose unsatisfied spiritual longings become so big and important in the life that they crowd out every other interest... His yearnings carry him away and often make something of a nuisance out of him. His puzzled fellow Christians shake their heads and look knowingly at each other, but like the blind man who cries out after his sight and was rebuked by the disciples, he "cries the more a great deal."
...It is easy to learn the doctrine of personal revival and victorious living; it is quite another thing to take our cross and plod on to the dark and bitter hill of self-renunciation. Here many are called and few are chosen!"
Tozer Quote 2
"The devil did not know Christ - but apparently he knows Christians! The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life have all been "Christianized" (not by the liberal, mind you, but by the evangelicals) and are now offered along with Christ to everyone who will "believe." Blind leaders of blind souls now insist that Christians should not cut themselves off from the pleasures of the world, so the very values that Christ scorned are now being used to attract people to the gospel.
We stand in need of warning: in spite of prophetic voices that are raised here and there among us, present-day believers are being drawn to the world with irresistible force!"
Tozer Quote 3
"We are often hindered from giving up our treasures to the Lord out of fear for their safety; this is especially true when those treasures are loved relatives and friends. But we need have no such fears. Our Lord came not to destroy but to save. Everything is safe which we commit to Him, and nothing is really safe which is not so committed."
Quote by Hawtin
God is always speaking. But there is a secret to hearing His voice. It will not be heard above the excited babble and din of the throng. He will not shout to drown other voices that clamor to be heard. He waits till all other voices are stilled and you have put away from your heart and mind all your own striving, and the din of the multitude who shouts for your attention has completely died away. You must become insensible to the sound of all other voices and hear only the voice of His Spirit speaking to your spirit.
There is a wonderful peace in silence. When your brain is wracked to a turmoil and you have examined every avenue for a solution to the exasperating problems that confront you only to find that your search leads you to greater confusion, it is time for silence, repentance, and listening to the voice of Jesus. He will speak and give His wisdom, but not until all other voices are silent and all other wisdom has become foolishness. Be still and know that I am God. "Then He breaketh the bow, maketh war to cease, cutteth the spear in sunder, burneth the chariot in the fire, and is exalted among the heathen in all the earth."( Ps. 45) It was after the earthquake, the fire, and the terrific wind that Elijah wrapped his head in this mantel and listened to the still small voice of God. "He leadeth me beside sitll waters", said David. "Be still and know that I am God."
When God speaks to your heart He will not simply help you decide between two or more opinions already in your mind. When He speaks it
is revolutionary and the opinions of men are discarded for they are always contrary to His will. We will never find God building on the old
foundations we have laid. He will throw down every stone and build a temple after His own order. - George R. Hawtin
Loneliness of the Christian - Tozer
THE LONELINESS OF THE CHRISTIAN By A.W. Tozer
The loneliness of the Christian results from his walk with God in an
ungodly world, a walk that must often take him away from the fellowship of good Christians as well as from that of the unregenerate world. His God-given instincts cry out for companionship with others of his kind, others who can understand his longings, his aspirations, his absorption in the love of Christ; and because within his circle of friends there are so few who share his inner experiences he is forced to walk alone.
The unsatisfied longings of the prophets for human understanding caused them to cry out in their complaint, and even our Lord Himself suffered in the same way. The man [or woman] who has passed on into the divine Presence in actual inner experience will not find many who understand him. He finds few who care to talk about that which is the supreme object of his interest, so he is often silent and preoccupied in the midst of noisy religious shoptalk. For this he earns the reputation of being dull and over-serious, so he is avoided and the gulf between him and society widens.
He searches for friends upon whose garments he can detect the smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces, and finding few or none he, like Mary of old, keeps these things in his heart. It is this very loneliness that throws him back upon God. His inability to find human companionship drives him to seek in God what he can find nowhere else.
Quote by John MacDuff
"If He has allured you into the wilderness, it is that He may speak comfortably unto you."
Quote from Horatius Bonar
From his article "Comfort in the Night of Weeping" 1808-1889 Horatius Bonar
"Out of all evil comes good to the saints; out of all darkness comes light; out of all sorrow comes joy. Each pang, sharp or slight, is doing its work - the very work which God designs, the very work which we could not do without.....
In affliction we may be quite sure of learning something more of God than we were acquainted with before, for it is just in order to furnish an opportunity for bringing out this and showing it to us that He sends the trial. How little should we know of Him were it not for sorrow! That fullness of blessing comes out to us, what riches of love are spread out before us in the dark and cloudy day!...."
Another Quote by Horatius Bonar
From "Comfort in the Night of Weeping" by Horatius Bonar
"Each pain is a nail driven through some sin, another blow inflicted on the flesh, destroying the very power of sinning....
The world and we have not yet fully parted company with each other. And, therefore, God drives affliction like a wedge between us and the world; or He sends it like a plowshare right across our most cherished hopes and brightest prospects till He thoroughly wearies us of all below.
"He hath made me weary," said Job (Job. 16:7). Nor do we wonder at the complaint. Wearisome nights were His....He might well by weary. So with us. God makes us weary, too, weary all over - thoroughly weary. We get weary of a present evil world, weary of self, weary of sin, weary of suffering, weary of this mortal body, weary of these vile hearts, weary of earth - weary of all but Jesus! Of Him no trial can weary us. Suffering only endears Him the more. Blessed suffering - that makes Him appear more precious and the world viler; that brings Him nearer to our hearts and thrusts the world away."
Spurgeon Quote 1
"In seasons of severe trial, the Christian has nothing on earth that he can trust to and is therefore compelled to cast himself on his God alone....
Happy storm that wrecks a man on such a rock as this! O blessed hurricane that drives the soul to God and God alone!
There is no getting at our God sometimes because of the multitude of our friends; but when a man is so poor, so friendless, so helpless that he has nowhere else to turn, he flies into his Father's arms and is blessedly
clasped therein! When he is burdened with troubles so pressing and so peculiar, that he cannot tell them to any but his God, he may be thankful for them, for he will learn more of his Lord then than at any other time." -Spurgeon
Nothing But God -Tozer
Nothing But God
"So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God." - Romans 14:12 What we need very badly these days is a company of Christians who are prepared to trust God as completely now as they know they must do at the last day. For each of us the time is surely coming when we shall have nothing but God. Health and wealth and friends and hiding places will all have only God. To the man of pseudo-faith that is a terrifying thought, but to real faith it is one of the most comforting thoughts the heart can entertain.
It would be a tragedy indeed to come to the place where we have no other but God and find that we had not been trusting God at all during the days of our earthly sojourn. It would be better to invite God now to remove every false trust, to disengage our hearts from all secret hiding places and to bring us out into the open where we can discover for ourselves whether or not we really trust Him. That is a harsh cure for our troubles, but it is a sure one. Gentler cures may be too weak to do the work. And time is running out on us.
A. W. Tozer
Quote by T. Austin Sparks
Does it feel like your whole world is spinning out of control? Have you lost your way and can't find which way is up? If so, I have a quote here for you by T. Austin Sparks-
~~ Seek to have your life in God, not in things, not in people, not in places, not in circumstances, not in arguments, not in human intelligence, but in God. ~~ End quote.
Tozer Quote 4
A spiritual kingdom lies all about us, enclosing us, embracing us,
altogether within reach of our inner selves, waiting for us to recognize it. God Himself is here waiting for our response to His Presence. This eternal world will come alive to us the moment we begin to reckon upon its reality....
...A new God-consciousness will seize upon us and we shall begin to taste and hear and inwardly feel the God who is our life and our all. There will be seen the constant shining of the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. More and more as our faculties grow sharper and more sure, God will become to us the great ALL, and His Presence the glory and wonder of our lives! This is what will make heaven more real to us than any earthly thing has ever been.
-Tozer
Tozer Quote 5
...Even Christ could endure the cross only because of the joy set before Him.
The strongest steel breaks if kept too long under unrelieved tension. Believe it that God knows exactly how much pressure each one of us can take! He knows how long we can endure the night, so He gives the soul relief, first by welcome glimpses of the morning star and then by the fuller light that harbingers the morning.
Slowly you will discover God's love in your suffering.... You will feel and understand the ministry of the night; its power to purify, to detach, to humble, to destroy the fear of death, and what is more important to you at the moment, the fear of life. And you will learn that sometimes pain can do what even joy cannot, such as exposing the vanity of earth's trifles and filling your heart with longing for the peace of heaven!...
-Tozer
Tozer Quote 5
"The church is found wherever the Holy Spirit has drawn together a few persons who trust Christ for their salvation, worship God in spirit and have no dealings with the world and the flesh. The members may by necessity be scattered and separated by distance and circumstances, but in every true member of the Church is the homing instinct and the longing of the sheep for the fold and the shepherd." -Tozer
Tozer Quote 6
"A simple-hearted man was once asked how he managed to live in such a state of constant tranquility even though surrounded by circumstances anything but pleasant. His answer was as profound as it was simple: "I have learned to cooperate with the inevitable!" -Tozer
Tozer Quote 7
We Christians must simplify our lives or lose untold treasures on earth and in eternity!
Modern Civilization is so complex as to make the devotional life all but impossible, multiplying distractions and beating us down by destroying our solitude. "Commune with your own heart upon your bed and be still" is a wise and healing counsel, but how can it be followed in this day of the newspaper, the telephone, the radio and the television? These modern playthings, like pet tiger cubs, have grown so large and dangerous that they threaten to devour us all.
No spot is now safe from the world's intrusion. One way the civilized would destroy men is by preventing them from thinking their own thoughts. 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.
The need for solitude and quietness was never greater than it is today. Even the majority of Christians are so completely conformed to this present age that they, too, want things the way they are.
However, there are some of God's children who have had enough. They want to relearn the ways of solitude and simplicity and gain the infinite riches of the interior life. They want to discover the blessedness of what has been called "spiritual aloneness" -a discipline that will go far in making us acquainted with God and our own souls! -Tozer
Quote by N.A.
Why do I worry and wonder?
Why do I feel depressed?
Because for an instant I silenced the thought
That my Lord is my HAPPINESS! By N.A.
Tozer Quote 8
"A good way to avoid the snare of empty religious activity is to appear before God every once in awhile with our Bibles open to the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. This passage, though rated one of the most beautiful in the Bible, is also one of the severest to be found in Sacred Writ.
The apostle takes the highest religious service and consigns it to futility unless it is motivated by love. Lacking love, prophets and teachers, orators, philanthropists and martyrs are sent away without reward. To sum it up, we may say simply that in the sight of God we are judged not so much by what we do as by our reasons for doing it! -Tozer
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