Tozer: The Pursuit of God. Whither shall I go from thy spirit? In all Christian teaching certain basic truths are found, hidden at times, and rather assumed than asserted, but necessary to all truth as the primary colors are found in and necessary to the finished painting. Such a truth is the divine immanence. Blind Faith Presence Of The Lord Table Diet FoodGod dwells in His creation and is everywhere indivisibly present in all His works. This is boldly taught by prophet and apostle and is accepted by Christian theology generally. That is, it appears in the books, but for some reason it has not sunk into the average Christian's heart so as to become a part of his believing self. Christian teachers shy away from its full implications, and, if they mention it at all, mute it down till it has little meaning. I would guess thereason for this to be the fear of being charged with pantheism; but the doctrine of the divine Presence is definitely not pantheism. Pantheism's error is too palpable to deceive anyone. It is that God is the sum of all created things. Nature and God are one, so that whoever touches a leaf or a stone touches God. That is of course to degrade the glory of the incorruptible Deity and, in an effort to make all things divine, banish all divinity from the world entirely. The truth is that while God dwells in His world He is separated from it by a gulf forever impassable. However closely He may be identified with the work of His hands they are and must eternally be other than He, and He is and must be antecedent to and independent of them. He is transcendent above all His works even while He is immanent within them. What now does the divine immanence mean in direct Christian experience? ACT I SCENE I. Enter GLOUCESTER, solus GLOUCESTER Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York; And all the clouds. It means simply that God is here. Wherever we are, God is here. There is no place, there can be no place, where He is not. Ten million intelligences standing at as many points in space and separated by incomprehensible distances can each one say with equal truth, God is here. No point is nearer to God than any other point. It is exactly as near to God from any, place as it is from any other place. No one is in mere distance any further from or any nearer to God than any other person is. Andrew Wommack Ministries' Christian Survival Kit is a free online resource of scriptures and information every Christian should know when troubles come. Three Minutes a Day offers brief, thought-provoking meditations for every day of the year. No matter how busy you are, Three Minutes a Day offers a positive. Jesus -is-Lord.com Jesus Christ is the ONLY way to God "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me." -- Jesus Christ, John 14:6. To the solutions! Before viewing my diet suggestions, please understand that health begins with what you eliminate from your diet, not with what you add. These are truths believed by every instructed Christian. It remains for us to think on them and pray over them until they begin to glow within us. It requires an antecedent cause, and God is that Cause. Not law, for law is but a name for the course which all creation follows. That course had to be planned, and the Planner is God. Not mind, for mind also is a created thing and must have a Creator back of it. In the beginning God, the uncaused Cause of matter, mind and law. There we must begin. Adam sinned and, in his panic, frantically tried to do the impossible: he tried to hide from the Presence of God. David also must have had wild thoughts of trying to escape from the Presence, for he wrote, ? If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. Solomon exclaimed, ? The patriarch Jacob, . He saw a vision of God and cried out in wonder, . But he knew it not. That was his trouble, and it is ours. Men do not know that God is here. What a difference it would make if they knew. The Presence and the manifestation of the Presence are not the same. There can be the one without the other. God is here when we are wholly unaware of it. He is manifest only when and as we are aware of His Presence. On our part there must be surrender to the Spirit of God, for His work it is to show us the Father and the Son. If we co- operate with Him in loving obedience God will manifest Himself to us, and that manifestation will be the difference between a nominal Christian life and a life radiant with the light of His face. Always, everywhere God is,present, and always He seeks to discover Himself. To each one he would reveal not only that He is, but what He is as well. He did not have to be persuaded to discover Himself to Moses. It will be a great moment for some of us when we begin to believe that God's promise of self- revelation is literally true: that He promised much, but promised no more than He intends to fulfill. Our pursuit of God is successful just because He is forever seeking to manifest Himself to us. The revelation of God to any man is not God coming from a distance upon a time to pay a brief and momentous visit to the man's soul. Thus to think of it is to misunderstand it all. The approach of God to the soul or of the soul to God is not to be thought of in spatial terms at all. There is no idea of physical distance involved in the concept. It is not a matter of miles but of experience. To speak of being near to or far from God is to use language in a sense always understood when applied to our ordinary human relationships. A man may say, . What then can the father mean? Obviously he is speaking of experience. He means that the boy is coming to know him more intimately and with deeper understanding, that the barriers of thought and feeling between the two are disappearing, that father and son are becoming more closely united in mind and heart. So when we sing, . It is for increasing degrees of awareness that we pray, for a more perfect consciousness of the divine Presence. We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts. Why do some persons ? Why does God manifest His Presence to some and let multitudes of others struggle along in the half- light of imperfect Christian experience? Of course the will of God is the same for all. He has no favorites within His household. All He has ever done for any of His children He will do for all of His children. The difference lies not with God but with us. Pick at random a score of great saints whose lives and testimonies are widely known. Let them be Bible characters or well known Christians of post- Biblical times. You will be struck instantly with the fact that the saints were not alike. Sometimes the unlikenesses were so great as to be positively glaring. How different for example was Moses from Isaiah; how different was Elijah from David; how unlike each other were John and Paul, St. Francis and Luther, Finney and Thomas a Kempis. The differences are as wide as human life itself: differences of race, nationality, education, temperament, habit and personal qualities. Yet they all walked, each in his day, upon a high road of spiritual living far above the common way. Their differences must have been incidental and in the eyes of God of no significance. In some vital quality they must have been alike. What was it? I venture to suggest that the one vital quality which they had in common was spiritual receptivity. Something in them was open to heaven, something which urged them Godward. Without attempting anything like a profound analysis I shall say simply that they had spiritual awareness and that they went on to cultivate it until it became the biggest thing in their lives. They differed from the average person in that when they felt the inward longing they did something about it. They acquired the lifelong habit of spiritual response. They were not disobedient to the heavenly vision. As David put it neatly, . The sovereignty of God is here, and is felt even by those who have not placed particular stress upon it theologically. The pious Michael Angelo confessed this in a sonnet: My unassisted heart is barren clay,That o f its native self can nothing feed: Of good and pious works Thou art the seed,That quickens only where Thou sayest it may: Unless Thou show to us Thine own true way. No man can find it: Father! Thou must lead. These words will repay study as the deep and serious testimony of a great Christian. Important as it is that we recognize God working in us, I would yet warn against a too- great preoccupation with the thought. It is a sure road to sterile passivity. God will not hold us responsible to understand the mysteries of election, predestination and the divine sovereignty. The best and safest way to deal with these truths is to raise our eyes to God and in deepest reverence say, . Prying into them may make theologians, but it will never make saints. Receptivity is not a single thing; it is a compound rather, a blending of several elements within the soul. It is an affinity for, a bent toward, a sympathetic response to, a desire to have. From this it may be gathered that it can be present in degrees, that we may have little or more or less, depending upon the individual. It may be increased by exercise or destroyed by neglect. It is not a sovereign and irresistible force which comes upon us as a seizure from above. It is a gift of God, indeed, but one which must be recognized and cultivated as any other gift if it is to realize the purpose for which it was given. Failure to see this is the cause of a very serious breakdown in modern evangelicalism. The idea of cultivation and exercise, so dear to the saints of old, has now no place in our total religious picture. It is too slow, too common. We now demand glamour and fast flowing dramatic action. A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals. We have been trying to apply machineage methods to our relations with God. We read our : ' chapter, have our short devotions and rush away, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy by attending another gospel meeting or listening to another thrilling story told by a religious adventurer lately returned from afar. The tragic results of this spirit are all about us. Shallow lives, hollow religious philosophies, the preponderance of the element of fun in gospel meetings, the glorification of men, trust in religious externalities, quasi- religious fellowships, salesmanship methods, the mistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit: these and such as these are the symptoms of an evil disease, a deep and serious malady of the soul. The Christophers, Inc. Three Minutes a Day. June 3. 0Good Porches, Good Neighbors“This world would be a better place if everyone had a front porch,” said William Martin of Northport, New York, several years ago. The trend today is to build houses with a backyard and patio instead of the front porch that was popular years ago. True, a patio at the back of the house affords more privacy—maybe too much privacy. Martin thought something important was lost, so he added a porch, and now calls it “one of the best moves we ever made.”The old- fashioned front porch was more than just a place to sit and relax, to enjoy the outdoors protected from sun and rain. It was a place that encouraged friendliness with neighbors. People walking by would smile and wave, often stopping to talk. People need one another. Even the simple warmth of a friendly greeting can help lift our spirits. Better is a neighbor who is nearby than kindred who are far away. In the qualifying round, a woman took 1. Her tee shot went right into the river and the ball floated downstream. She and her husband jumped into a rowboat and set out after the ball. They followed it a mile and a half before she was able to beach it. Then she had to play through the woods all the way back to the golf course. This golfer’s score may have been poor, but her determination was truly remarkable. When we do poorly at something we undertake, it’s important not to become discouraged and give up. We can learn from our failure and do better next time. Hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patient endurance. As the earth cracked, he noticed that the sunflowers grew roots that wandered this way and that until they found a crack in the soil. Barber wanted to devote more time to God and prayer, but as a farmer he was either always busy or bone tired. Until he learned to look for the cracks in his day. In his case, while doing his farming duties, he began to meditate on the Biblical parables that have to do with working the land. As a result, he said, he developed a connection with the Biblical farmers and with the God that made the harvest bountiful. Like Brian Barber, you can incorporate more prayer into your own life, if you let your imagination guide you. During those days He went out to the mountain to pray; and He spent the night in prayer to God. June 2. 7Subway Clerk Saves the Day. Richard Singleton was on duty as a subway clerk, working in the token booth in the station at 2. Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan, when he observed two men arguing on the platform. It was when the fight escalated, and one of the two men menaced the other with a knife, that Singleton took action. The subway clerk had saved a man from serious injury or even death, and found himself being hailed as a hero. New York is a very diverse, multicultural city and state, and we come together in bad times and good.”Lawbreakers shrank back for fear of him; all the evildoers were confounded; and deliverance prospered at his hand. As reported by Parade magazine, he was raised in a “very religious” Christian family, and still describes himself as a “religious person.” Jackman said, “In . I feel what everyone’s searching for, the feeling that unites us all. And when that happens, there is nothing like it on the planet. It’s the moment people experience when they fall in love, which is equally frightening and exciting. That’s what it feels like.”Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you. If you answered “farming,” you’d be with the majority, but you just might be wrong, too. According to Kay Keller—who, with her husband, Ron, formed the host couple for last year’s celebration in Faribault, Minnesota—only about 1. St. Michael’s, Kenyon, are full- time farmers. Ron, 5. 6, is the fifth generation of Kellers to run his family farm. He and Kay have seven children, who help with its 1. Michael’s rural character consists of a close- knit community,” said Ron, “where people are willing to help each other and celebrate together.” Judah and all its towns shall live there together, and the farmers and those who wander with their flocks. The newsletter Apple Seeds reprinted a story about him (originally in Leadership magazine) about crossing paths with American industrialist Henry Ford.“. Ford responded, . It’s the person who brings out the best in you. Always associate with the best people—that’s where you will find such a person.’”Years later, Peale affirmed the truth of that advice, saying, “A best friend is one who tells you, . Yes, you have something valuable to offer to the world. Yes, your life can make a difference.’”Peale also noted the importance of the opposite question: “Whose best friend are you?. When you answer . Then, Smith would ask him if he could propose to Larger onstage. A security guard, however, hindered his plans, so Smith reached out to Paisley on Twitter, explaining the situation. Paisley responded personally and invited Smith to a Nevada concert to make the proposal happen. Smith told Larger that they won free tickets to the show, so they made the five- hour trip. During the concert, Paisley invited the couple onstage, where Smith dropped to one knee and popped the question. Larger was so overwhelmed and surprised that she forgot to answer until Paisley reminded her. She said, “Yes.”Above all, maintain constant love for one another. June 2. 2The Next Awful Week. One of Rebecca Frech’s favorite summers with her children took place the year she first moved to her Texas community. As she wrote on her “Backwards in High Heels” blog, “New in town, and without social obligations, our days meandered their way through books, naps, and hanging out poolside. The cable was not yet on, and the internet had not yet captured their imaginations or sucked away their energy.”As summer 2. TV for the summer and changing all the internet passwords. Her kids were not excited by the idea. So Frech prayed and believes God sent help: “In torrents of rain and flashes of lightning, our cable and internet went down.. There is no way a repair man can get to us before the middle of next week. We’re dark for seven days.”Secretly gleeful at the “horrified” faces of her children, Frech headed to the library. Her kids gave her a list of books they wanted to read, calling them their “life raft for the next awful week.” For Frech, it didn’t sound so awful after all. His way is in whirlwind and storm. Although the small leak seemed insignificant, it soon eroded into a gaping hole and threatened the collapse of the 1. Many of the great problems of our age have their origins in defects which, like the little hole in the dam, are discounted as being of minor importance. But small acts of dishonesty, corruption, and subversion can be the beginnings of a deadly breakdown. In today’s fast- moving world, your continual vigilance is urgently needed. While avoiding extremes, be ever on the alert to detect the slightest flaws or faults which can spread, with a galloping speed, once they gain the upper hand. What you, as one person, do—or fail to do—counts more than you think to promote God’s truth. Whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. June 2. 0Dream, Believe, Do, Repeat. Singer- songwriter Audrey Assad learned a valuable lesson from her Syrian refugee father growing up: “Dream, believe, do, repeat.” That was the approach he practiced when he moved to the United States in 1. In an interview with Aleteia’s Zoe Romanowsky for World Refugee Day, Audrey recalled, “My father, Roy Assad, was a sponsored child through a church program in Syria, and the man who had been sending money every month in my dad’s name was one of their only contacts here . He eventually employed my dad and gave him his start in the insurance business, in which my father still works over 4. I’ve watched him dig his hands into every city in which he’s lived.. He isn’t satisfied with simply residing somewhere—he’s driven to make it a better place for everyone.” Go from your country.. I will show you. I will make of you a great nation. Through donations, that goal was accomplished, so now they’re working on building a new emergency room and triage center. Dr. Hunt’s effect on Northern Ugandans, specifically in the Diocese of Lira, goes beyond providing supplies and medicines, though. The presence of MANU team members during their mission trips makes a lasting impression as well. During a “Christopher Closeup” interview, Dr. Hunt said, “You feel like you’re giving back and the people are responding to it—even to small things . They have a better outlook on things because we give them encouragement.”He concludes, “You have to reach out to every person—the lowest person or the highest person in the world. We all are human beings, and you have to treat people equally.”Bear one another’s burdens, and.. Christ. But the song also takes a more positive spin when Clarkson notes that her own husband is a devoted dad to their children. In an interview with the Associated Press, Clarkson revealed how her daughter’s birth affected her perspective on the importance of fatherhood: “When you hold this little human you’ve created, now I think I understand the depth of the loss I had not having a father figure growing up.”Clarkson added that while she doesn’t have a relationship with her father, “I’m in a very forgiving place about it and everybody’s human. But I get choked up because I realize how lucky I am. I feel lucky that I’m not that girl.”Fathers make known to children your faithfulness. In response, she wrote a song called “Hallowed Ground,” which she put on her album “Til the Song is Sung.” It includes the lyrics, “There is holiness in every crack and scar / And what we’ve rent upon this earth You mean to heal / So until my bones return into the dust / Let me be a light no dark could ever steal.”The lyrics serve as a call to action for herself and anyone listening.
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