My blog yesterday entitled God's Hand in the Sanctification Process was about the premise that God has to intervene in our sanctification process to mold and purify us because we can't deal with internal issues such as pride on our own. It's like we can't say to ourselves, I've already confessed pride and the issue is already gone. God still has to work to make it complete.
The premise was mainly inspired by A.W. Tozer's spiritual wisdom in "The Pursuit of God," first published in the U.S.A. in 1948. A.W. Tozer was, in my own words, a hard-core follower of Jesus Christ. One of the strengths he had is he really sought to be filled with God's presence and practiced it daily. I guess that's why the title of his spiritual literature, a classic one, is such a giveaway of what he himself experienced in daily life. He just pursued God everyday.
One of the reasons why I gravitated to his wisdom was also because of my personal experiences with God in the area of pride (self-will).
I will quote him when he said
Lastly, I leave you with this worship song "Breakthrough" from Don Moen. The song speaks about breaking through of all of us - our pain, trials, doubts, fears, shame and guilt - and breaking through past them asking to see God face to face. It is a really nice song.
The premise was mainly inspired by A.W. Tozer's spiritual wisdom in "The Pursuit of God," first published in the U.S.A. in 1948. A.W. Tozer was, in my own words, a hard-core follower of Jesus Christ. One of the strengths he had is he really sought to be filled with God's presence and practiced it daily. I guess that's why the title of his spiritual literature, a classic one, is such a giveaway of what he himself experienced in daily life. He just pursued God everyday.
One of the reasons why I gravitated to his wisdom was also because of my personal experiences with God in the area of pride (self-will).
I will quote him when he said
"(There is) the presence of a veil in our hearts, a veil not taken away as the first veil (the veil that separated us from God), but which remains there still shutting out the light and hiding the face of God from us. It is the veil of our freshly fallen nature living on unjudged within us, uncrucified and unrepudiated. It is the close woven veil of the self-life which we have never truly acknowledged, of which we have been secretly ashamed, and which for these reasons we have never brought to the judgment of the cross. We have but to look into our own hearts, and we shall see it there, sewn and patched and repaired it may be, but there nevertheless, an enemy to our lives and an effective block to our spiritual progress.
This veil is not a beautiful thing and it is not a thing we commonly care to talk. It is woven of the fine threads of the self-life. They are not something we do, they are something we are, and therein lies both their subtlety and their power. They dwell too deep within us and are too much part of our natures to come to our attention till the light of God is focused upon them.
Self is the opaque veil that hides the face of God from us. It can be removed only in spiritual experience, never by mere instruction. There must be a work of God in (destroying it) before we are free. We must invite the cross to do its deadly work within us. (But) to touch (the self) is to touch us where we feel pain. To tear it away is to injure us, to hurt us and make us bleed.
It is never fun to die. Yet that is what the cross did to Jesus and it is what the cross would do to every man to set him free. Beware of tinkering with the inner life, hoping ourselves to (remove) the veil. God must do everything for us. Our part is to yield and trust. We must confess, forsake, repudiate the self-life, and then reckon it crucified. But we must be careful to distinguish lazy "acceptance" from the real work of God. We must insist upon the work being done.
The cross is rough and it is deadly, but it is effective. It does not keep its victim hanging there forever. There comes a moment when its work is finished and the suffering victim dies. After that is resurrection glory and power, and the pain is forgotten for joy that the veil is taken away and we have entered in actual spiritual experience the presence of the living God."
- A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God (Philippines: OMF Literature, 2009), 45-49The way of the cross is indeed the cycle of a U. There is a process of identifying with Jesus' death and burial and then finally identifying with His resurrection and glory. Baptism signifies this identification, being one with him in death to ourselves and then being one with him in glory and the new nature. That is the reason why we ask to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. It is the symbol of a new life and burying the old.
Lastly, I leave you with this worship song "Breakthrough" from Don Moen. The song speaks about breaking through of all of us - our pain, trials, doubts, fears, shame and guilt - and breaking through past them asking to see God face to face. It is a really nice song.
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