Tozer Majesty 04

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When the Scripture states that man was made in the image of God, we dare not add to that statement an idea from our own head and make it mean ”in the exact image.” To do so is to make man a replica of God, and that is to lose the unicity of God and end with no God at all.  It is to break down the wall, infinitely high, that separates That-which-is-God from that-which-is-not-God. 

To think of creature and Creator as alike in essential being is to rob God of most of His attributes and reduce Him to the status of a creature.  It is, for instance, to rob Him of His infinitude: there cannot be two unlimited substances in the universe.  It is to take away His sovereignty: there cannot be two absolutely free beings in the universe, for sooner or later two completely free wills must collide.  These attributes, to mention no more, require that there be but one to whom they belong.

When we try to imagine what God is like we must of necessity use that-which-is-not-God as the raw material for our minds to work on; hence whatever we visualize God to be, He is not, for we have constructed our image out of that which He has made and what He has made is not God.  If we insist upon trying to imagine Him, we end with an idol, made not with hands but with thoughts; and an idol of the mind is as offensive to God as an idol of the hand.

”The intellect knoweth that it is ignorant of Thee,” said Nicholas of Cusa, ”because it knoweth Thou canst not be known, unless the unknowable could be known, and the invisible beheld, and the inaccessible attained.”

”If anyone should set forth any concept by which Thou canst be conceived,” says Nicholas again, ”I know that that concept is not a concept of Thee, for every concept is ended in the wall of Paradise…. So too, if any were to tell of the understanding of Thee, wishing to supply a means whereby Thou mightest be understood, this man is yet far from Thee…. forasmuch as Thou art absolute above all the concepts which any man can frame.”

Left to ourselves we tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms.  We want to get Him where we can use Him, or at least know where He is when we need Him.  We want a God we can in some measure control.  We need the feeling of security that comes from knowing what God is like, and what He is like is of course a composite of all the religious pictures we have seen, all the best people we have known or heard about, and all the sublime ideas we have entertained.

From: The Knowledge of the Holy

Tozer on Worship 05

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Worship is an inward attitude, not a physical attitude but an inward attitude, and it is a state of mind and it is a sustained act. This is subject to degrees of perfection and intensity.
You cannot always worship with the same degree of wonder and love that you do at other times, but it must always be there – an attitude and a state of mind and a sustained act subject to varying degrees of intensity and perfection.

(“The Chief End of Man,” Sermon # 5, Toronto, 1962)

The Spiritual Person

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Almost every Christian wants to be spiritual, but few know what the experience means. A lot of unfounded comfort could be swept away and much true consolation received if we could get straightened out.

 

It is difficult for us to shake off the notion that a person is as spiritual as he or she feels. Our basic spirituality seldom accords our feelings. There are many carnal persons whose religious emotions are sensitive to every impression and who manage to keep themselves on a fairly high plane of inward enjoyment but who have no marks of godliness upon them. They have a low boiling point and can get heated up over almost anything religious at a moment’s notice. Their tears are close to the surface and their voices carry a world of emotional content. Such have a reputation for being spiritual, and they themselves may easily believe they are. But they are not necessarily so.

 

Spiritual people are indifferent to their feelings—they live by faith in God with little care about their own emotions. They think God’s thoughts and see things as God sees them. They rejoice in Christ and have no confidence in themselves. They are more concerned with obedience than with happiness. This is less romantic, perhaps, but it will stand the test of fire.

 

A.W. Tozer

From:

This World: Playground or Battleground?

A prophet’s passion # 02

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I will stand on my guard post and station myself on the rampart; and I will keep watch to see what he will speak to me, and how I will reply when I am reproved.

Then the Lord answered me and said “Record the vision and inscribe it on tablets that the one who reads it may run.” Habakkuk 2:1-2.

 

Holiness will allow itself to be apprehended and known as it pleases the One who Himself is holy to be known. Majesty and greatness, missing gems in the attire of the Church, will manifest as common revelation to men of pure heart, even to national bodies when days approaches which the Lord has set aside for his glory to shine forth. Righteousness will be served at tables, rich tables in Zion, to each and every man who carries a hunger and a thirst for such. There is something there to see. The gates of Heaven are open to show forth the splendour and beauty of the Holy One.

 

There is something there to see and to lay hold of, something which is different from ours, something which arouses passion, something which changes a man’s heart and brings in prophetic quality. There is something there, something costly. It is hidden, at the same time revealed in glory. It cannot be captured or grabbed as spoils, yet it is there within reach for the meek and lowly. It cannot be described, no words will ever be enough, but the prophetic mind cannot but try to tell about the things seen, write a text and re-write it and write again There is something there to see, to reach out for, something of incomprehensible value.

 

There is something there to see, diligence and integrity are natural results of true seeing. Watchfulness and waiting are components accompanying true hearing. God is eternally present and He is not silent, but He will not give things glorious to a frivolous man. The prophetic mind is set for quality and integrity. The prophetic mind will never set for less than heavenly standards – as in Heaven so on earth. Does it look like Heaven? Does it stir passion as Heaven generates passion and ardour? Does it induce fervour according the crystal clear motives of Heaven? Can one find intensity and integrity of the kind which reflects Heavenly standards?

 

Passion reveals a prophets heart. The fervour of the prophetic mind reveals the prophet’s heaven. The integrity and intensity of a prophet reveals the prophet’s God. Heaven confronts what is earthly and unholy and it is done through a man apprehended and sent. Man is God’s method, a man apprehended, imbued and sent. This man, the prophetic person, is the herald of the New City. This heavenly person is drastically jealous for the Word of God. Veracity is his passion. Fidelity motivates his thinking and activity. His striving for correspondence, as in Heaven so on earth, is the only possible way for him to live and move. He has seen. He has heard. This kind of hearing, this kind of seeing makes him a man of passion as well as a man of confrontation. He becomes a statement, a declaration of otherness among the many who choose not to see.

 

The prophetic mind is a mind apprehended and shown things pertaining to Heaven, its absoluteness, its fundamental oneness and integrity, its veracity, its holiness, its glory – and therefore this prophetic mind is burning as an altar contains fire.

 

The prophetic mind is a mind apprehended for the sake of seeing, a seeing which produces a knowledge of the Holy and a knowing of Him who alone provides Life which is holy.

The prophetic personality has been brought to a state of trembling, a profound respect for the Word of God as the only solid and impeccable testimony among men set up as markers unto glory.

The prophetic man has encountered the fundamentally other which carries no stain of the earthly, the worldly. This drives him away from common settings of man, and produces a heavenly offensiveness for him to carry as a confrontational tool to be used by the Holy Spirit to bring conviction.

 

The prophetic mind and heart has made a transition from that which can and shall be shaken to a realm in which everything is eternally stable and reliable. This mind can be trusted, it reflects Him who for ever sits on the throne to rule justly and with righteousness in Zion.

The prophetic mind undergoes constant formation to be able to carry the fullness of Christ. The prophetic heart is continually dressed and redressed in the beauty of holiness for the sake of the glory of God.

 

There is something there to see which is fundamentally other, attractive beyond limits of comprehension, worthy passion and fervour which sets any other aspiration to the side – counting it as loss, capturing man’s heart and mind with a burning desire which cannot be quenched.

 

There is something there to see. . .

There is something there waiting to be said and stated, expressed and declared. . .

Prophetic passion finds its way to lay hold of such things for the sake of the glory of God.

 

Lars Widerberg

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The Spirit of Prophecy: An Examination of the Prophetic Call
Art Katz

 
7 – The Seriousness of the Word Spoken

There is a weight of responsibility on God’s people to correctly identify whom God has set before them, and there is a choosing. In making that decision and choice, something is struck that will profoundly affect that believing life for the rest of its days. Just the presence of the man, let alone the radical content of his word, puts a premium of requirement upon the hearer. What do you do with this man and this word? Something has come in a moment of time that requires something from you, and if you will not recognize it and give it, then you are not just going to go on, you are going to fall back. Something unexpected and incisive has come and your response to that will affect your whole continuance and future in God.

In the light of that, the prophet has a great responsibility to be the authentic thing that compels God’s people to choose with an earnestness that was never theirs before. How much more seriously do we need to consider our own walk, and for that reason, how dare we give ourselves over to casual, carnal lifestyles ourselves? There is a seriousness of God now coming to their fellowship that is making a requirement like nothing that it has ever known. All of a sudden they are having a guest speaker, and the moment he opens his mouth something is struck and something is required that was never required or even hinted at before and will be full of portent for all of their future.

The prophet’s function is so absolutely the matter of life and death, more so than can be said of other callings. If it is a false word, then it could be death. If it does not bring a warning, then it could also be death—literal, physical death. If it does not indicate the issues that are eternal, then it could be robbing the hearer. It is not an exaggeration to say that the rejection of the prophets was the death of Israel.
How can one say more for something that is life or death for a people, and yet God invests that in flesh and blood, in mere man, who is subject to every frailty and weakness of his humanity! It is an enormous weight of responsibility that he can say, “Thus says the Lord”, or even if he does not intone that inscription, it is implied, and the weight of that has to borne on the faintness and weakness of his mere humanity.

When God calls Ezekiel, “Son of man,” He is not just mouthing a few words. It is as if the prophet needs to be reminded of his humanity. God chooses a frail piece of humanity for so ponderous a task because it is a statement against the mystery of the principalities and the powers of the air. The prophet himself in his own person, in the election of God, is itself a statement against the wisdom of the powers of darkness.
One would think that God would reserve such elect speaking for Himself. He alone is qualified and has the authority, and yet to invest it in flesh, the very mystery of incarnation, runs smack dab into the heart of the wisdom of the powers of the air. They would never have done a thing like that, but would have chosen something appropriate to the task, for example, something weighty, monumental, dignified and that carries all the credentials. God’s prophets, therefore, are extremely conscious of their frail humanity, not only at the inception of their call, but also in all the whole longevity of their use.

Fire in the Bones 04

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3. Out of God’s justice, prophetic speech characteristically speaks about human suffering. It takes human suffering as a definitional datum of the human, historical process. Thus, already in the exodus narrative, when Israel cries out, God sees, God hears, God knows, God remembers, and God intervenes (Exod. 2:23-25; 3:7-14).12 It is the utterance of hurt that moves God to newness. The powers of modernity want not to notice human suffering; they want to define suffering as a legitimate and necessary cost of well-being or as an inexplicable given of human history. Prophetic speech demystifies pain and sees clearly that much pain is principally caused by the manipulation of economic and political access whereby the strong regularly destroy the weak. Such suffering is not a legitimate, bearable cost; and it is not inexplicable. Instead, social pain is a product of social relationships that can be transformed. Prophetic speech focused in hurt speaks against any tidy administration of social relations that crushes human reality in the interest of order, progress, profit, or “the common good.”

From:
Like Fire in the Bones
Walter Brueggemann

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Don’t Seek Entertainment

 

There is a cross for you and me and there is a cross for every one of us. And that cross is subjective and internal and experiential. That cross is that which we voluntarily take up—that’s hard and bitter and distasteful—that we do for Christ’s sake and suffer the consequences and despise the shame.

 

But the evangelicals of which we are a part say, “Let the cross kill Jesus but we will live on and be happy and have fun.” But the cross on the hill has got to become the cross in the heart. When the cross on the hill has been transformed by the miraculous grace of the Holy Ghost into the cross in the heart, then we begin to know something of what it means and it will become to us the cross of power. (Sermon #40 on Hebrews, Toronto)

 

We have the breezy, self-confident Christians with little affinity for Christ and His cross. We have the joy-bell boys that can bounce out there and look as much like a game show host as possible. Yet, they are doing it for Jesus’ sake?! The hypocrites! They’re not doing it for Jesus’ sake at all; they are doing it in their own carnal flesh and are using the church as a theater because they haven’t yet reached the place where the legitimate theater would take them.

 

(Sermon, “Complete Surrender,” Chicago)

Tozer on Worship 04

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God is infinitely more concerned that He have worshipers then that He have workers. We have degenerated into the place where we put God on charity and make Him to be a foreman who can’t find help.

 He stands at the wayside asking, “How many helpers will come to My rescue and come and do My work?”

If we could only remember that God doesn’t need anybody here – God does not need anybody in this city.

 

From

The Chief End of Man, Sermon #4, Toronto, 1962

Burden in the Valley

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The Burden of the Valley of Vision

 

Reading: Isaiah 22:1

 

The word “burden” here just does mean a load or weight, as much as a man can carry. Thus the Prophets felt what the Lord had shown them to be something that weighed heavily upon them and often overwhelmed them.

 

The prophetic function is brought into operation at a time when things are not well with the people and work of God, when declension has set in; when things have lost their distinctive Divine character; when there is a falling short or an accretion of features which were never intended by God.

 

The Prophet in principle is one who represents, in himself and his vision, God’s reaction to either a dangerous tendency or a positive deviation. He stands on God’s full ground and the trend breaks on him.

 

That which constitutes this prophetic function is spiritual perception, discernment, and insight. The Prophet sees, and he sees what others are not seeing. It is vision, and this vision is not just of an enterprise, a “work,” a venture; it is a state, a condition. It is not for the work as such that he is concerned, but for the spiritual state that dishonors and grieves the Lord.

 

This faculty of spiritual discernment makes the Prophet a very lonely man, and brings upon him all the charges of being singular, extreme, idealistic, unbalanced, spiritually proud, and even schismatic. He makes many enemies for himself.

 

Sometimes he is not vindicated until after he has left the earthly scene of his testimony. Nevertheless, the Prophet is the instrument of keeping the Lord’s full thought alive, and of maintaining vision without which the people are doomed to disintegration.

 

While it has so often been an individual with whom the Lord has deposited His fuller thought and made His prophetic vessel, it has also very frequently been a company of His people in which He has been more utterly represented. Such companies are seen scattered down the ages. They were the Lord’s reactionary vessels. Such, surely, are the “Overcomers” of every “end-time.”

 

The mass of Christians may be too taken up with the externals and accepted ways of Christianity; too spiritually satisfied with the lesser; too bound by tradition and fettered by the established order. The Lord cannot do His full thing with them because He does not put His new wine into old wineskins; the skins would burst and the life be wasted, not conserved to definite purpose.

 

He finds Himself limited by an order which, while it may have been right at a certain time and for a certain period to carry His testimony up to a certain point, yet now remains as the fixed bound, and for want of an essential adjustableness His fuller purposes are impossible of realization. So it was with Judaism, so it has become with Christianity, and so it is with many an instrumentality which has been greatly used by Him.

 

There is no finality with us here, and it is dangerous to the Lord’s interest to conclude that, because the Lord led and gave a pattern at a certain time, that was full and final and must remain. Every bit of new revelation will call for adjustment, but revelation waits for such a sense of need as to at least make for willingness to adjust.

 

The Lord needs that which really does represent His fullest possible thought, and not those who are just doing a good work. But it costs; and this is the “burden of the valley of vision.”

 

T. Austin-Sparks

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2. This holy God refuses to absolutize the present, any present. This holy God drives always toward a new unsettling, unsettled future, which is not yet visible, when God’s purpose will be accomplished and God’s regime fully established. This threatening, promising future, which lives on the lips of prophets, warns against taking the present with excessive seriousness, even if it is a present that we happen to value inordinately.

 

From:

Like Fire in the Bones

Walter Brueggemann