Whom have I in heaven but You?
And besides You, I desire nothing
on earth.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
But God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever. Psalm 73:26
NASB
...O God, YOU are my God;
I shall seek YOU
earnestly;
My soul thirsts for
YOU,
My flesh yearns for
YOU, ……….. Psalm 63:1 NASB
When You said,
"Seek My face,"
my heart said to You,
Your face, O LORD, I shall
seek." Psalm 27:8 NASB
Seek the LORD and His
strength;
seek His presence
continually! I Chr 16:11 ESV
For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself,
and unless and until the hearers find God
in personal experience, they are
not the better for having heard the
truth.
The Bible is not an end in itself, but a
means to bring men to an intimate and
satisfying knowledge of God,
that they may enter into Him,
that they may delight
in His Presence,
may taste and know the inner sweetness
of the very God Himself in the core and center of their
hearts. ~ A.W. Tozer
You just mumble a ‘sinner’s prayer’ or have
some fellow lay his hands on you, and there you are, a card-carrying
Christian.
“He who comes to God must believe that He is,
and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently
seek Him” (Heb 11:6).
But the sad fact is that today, by and
large, men and women do not seek
God.
It is too much like hard work.
They are satisfied with a superficial
knowledge of Him;
and because they know
Him superficially,
they worship Him
superficially
and they pray to Him superficially
and they teach about
Him superficially,
and young people, who have a fine
nose for fraud, see right through them and conclude, quite
rightly,
that their religion is a
sham,
and that is why the Church in the West is where it is today
a joke and an
irrelevance to the world,
given over by God because they will not seek His face.” ~ Martin Marprelate
The benchmark of success in church services has become more about attendance than the movement of the Holy Spirit.
The “entertainment” model of church..... has filled our churches with self-focused consumers rather than self-sacrificing servants attuned to the Holy Spirit….
Without The Holy Spirit, people operate in their own strength and only accomplish human-size results.
The world is not moved by love or actions that are of human-size results.
And the church is not empowered to
live differently from any other gathering of people without the Holy Spirit.
But when believers live in the power of the Holy Spirit, the
evidence in their lives is
supernatural.
The church cannot help but be different, and
the world cannot help but notice…… ~ Francis
Chan
We have measured ourselves by ourselves
until the incentive to seek higher plateaus in the
things of the Spirit is all but gone…..
We have imitated the world,
sought popular favor,
manufactured delights to
substitute for the joy of the Lord
and produced a cheap and synthetic power to substitute for the power of the
Holy Ghost.
Right now we are in an age of
religious complexity.
The simplicity which is in Christ
is rarely found among us.
In its stead are programs, methods, organizations and a
world of nervous activities which occupy
time and attention
but can never satisfy the
longing of the heart.
The shallowness of our inner experience,
the hollowness of our worship,
and the servile imitation of the world which marks our
promotional methods
all testify that we, in this day, know God only
imperfectly,
and the peace of God scarcely at all. ~ A.W. Tozer
…..“The truth is that the Spirit of the living God is guaranteed to ask you to go somewhere or
do something you wouldn’t normally want or choose to do.
The Spirit will lead you into the way of the cross,
as He led Jesus to the cross,
and that is definitely not a
safe
or pretty
or comfortable place to be.
The Holy Spirit of God will mold you into the person you were made
to be…” ~ Francis Chan
Acute desire must be present or there
will be no manifestation of
Christ to His people.
He waits to be wanted.
If we would find God amid all the
religious externals
we must first determine to find
Him,
and then proceed in the way of
simplicity.
…God discovers Himself to “babes” and hides Himself in thick
darkness from the wise and the prudent.
We must simplify our approach to
Him.
We must strip down to
essentials
We must put away all effort to
impress,
and come with the guileless
candor of childhood.
O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty
for more.
I am painfully conscious of my need of further
grace.
I am ashamed of my lack of desire.
O God, the Triune God, I want to
want Thee;
I long to be filled with longing;
I thirst to be made more thirsty still.
Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee,
that so I may know Thee indeed.
79
Begin in mercy a new work of love
within me.
Say to my soul, “Rise up, my
love, my fair one, and come away.”
Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long. In Jesus’ name,
Amen ~ A.W. Tozer
They entered into the covenant
to seek the LORD God of their
fathers
with all their heart and soul; II Chr 15:12 NASB