This is the theme of Max Lucado’s newest book, Outlive Your Life: You Were Made to Make a Difference.

Outlive Your Life uses the events of Acts 1-12 as a paradigm for discussing what God expects from believers today. Each chapter begins with a Scripture and ends with a Scripture and a suggested prayer. Chapters feature matters like the ordinary nature of God’s servants, the need to get out of our shells, to put the greater (spiritual) good ahead of lesser (physical) ones, to work with fellow Christians, to be hospitable, to assist others in need, to stand up in the face of persecution, to do good, to be a source of strength for the dispossessed, to remain humble before God, to remove prejudices in life, to resist arrogance, to pray continually, and, based on Matthew 25, remember that when you help people in distress you help Jesus. The book ends with a discussion and action guide designed to promote further discussion and action.

Lucado is a very vivid author. He seamlessly takes you from the first century to the twenty-first century with his illustrations and examples (although I wished that he would keep the first century as the first century and the twenty-first as the twenty-first and not blend the images as he does occasionally!). He writes in a familiar and understandable way.

On the whole, the book is theologically sound and has a message that must be proclaimed.

It is a necessary call in the midst of a time and place more devoted to materialism and consumerism than authentic New Testament Christianity and its emphasis on clearing prejudice, assisting the downtrodden and dispossessed, and reliance on God and not self. May many come to a better understanding of these truths!

Chapter 7 – The Gaze of the Soul

Faith is the gaze of the soul upon a saving God.

Faith is not a once-done act, but a continuous gaze of the heart at the Triune God.

Believing, then, is directing the heart’s attention to Jesus.  It is lifting the mind to “Behold the Lamb of God” (John 1:29), and never ceasing that beholding for the rest of our lives.

Like the eye which sees everything in front of it and never sees itself, faith is occupied with the Object upon which it rests and pays no attention to itself at all.  While we are looking at God we do not see ourselves – blessed riddance.

Faith is a redirecting of our sight, a getting out of the focus of our own vision and getting God into focus.  Sin has twisted our vision inward and made it self-regarding.

Faith looks out instead of in and the whole life falls into life.

When the eyes of the soul looking out meet the eyes of God looking in, heaven has begun right here on this earth.

Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other?  They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which one must individually bow.  So one hundred worshipers meeting together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become “unity” conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship.  Social religion is perfected when private religion is purified.  The body becomes stronger as its members become healthier.  The whole church of God gains when the members that compose it begin to seek a better and a higher life.

Chapter 8 – Restoring the Creator-Culture Relation

As the sailor locates his position on the sea by “shooting” the sun, so we may get our moral bearings by looking at God.  We must begin with God.  We are right when, and only when, we stand in a right position relative to God, and we are wrong so far and so long as we stand in an other position.

The pursuit of God will embrace the labor of bringing our total personality into conformity to His.

See how God winked at weakness and overlooked failures as He poured upon His servants grace and blessing untold.  Let it be Abraham, Jacob, David, Daniel, Elijah or whom you will; honor followed honor as harvest the seed.  The man of God set his heart to exalt God above all; God accepted his intention as fact and acted accordingly.  Not perfection, but holy intention made the difference.

In our desire after God let us keep always in mind that God also has desire, and His desire is toward the sons of men, and more particularly toward those sons of men who will make the once-for-all decision to exalt Him over all.  Such as these are precious to God above all treasures of earth or sea.  In them God finds a theater where He can display His exceeding kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.  With them God can walk unhindered; toward them He can act like the God He is.

I have one fear: that I may convince the mind before God can win the heart.  For this God-above-all position is one not easy to take.  The mind may approve it while not having the consent of the will to put it into effect.

Chapter 9 – Meekness and Rest

The burden borne by mankind is a heavy and a crushing thing.  The word Jesus used means “a load carried or toil borne to the point of exhaustion.”  Rest is simply release from that burden.  It is not something we do; it is what comes to us when we cease to do.

Chapter 10 – The Sacrament of Living

The “layman” need never think of his humbler task as being inferior to that of his minister.  Let every man abide in the calling wherein he is called and his work will be as sacred as the work of the ministry.  It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why does it.  The motive is everything.  Let a man sanctify the Lord God in his heart and he can thereafter do no common act.  All he does is good and acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.  For such a man, living itself will be a priestly ministration.  As he performs his never-so-simple task, he will hear the voice of the seraphim saying, “Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isaiah 6:3).

CLICK HERE FOR PREVIOUS PARTS:

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART THREE

Chapter 4 – Apprehending God

Where faith is defective the result will be inward insensibility and numbness toward spiritual things.

The worshipping heart does not create its Object.  It finds Him here when it wakes from its mortal slumber in the morning of its regeneration.

Imagination projects unreal images out of the mind and seeks to attach reality to them.  Faith creates nothing; it simply reckons upon that which is already there.

Our uncorrected thinking, influenced by the blindness of our natural hearts and the intrusive ubiquity of visible things, tends to draw a contrast between the spiritual and the real – but actually no such contrast exists.  The antithesis life elsewhere – between the real and the imaginary, between the spiritual and the material, between the temporal and the eternal; but between the spiritual and the real, never.  The spiritual is real.

The soul has eyes with which to see and ears with which to hear.  Feeble they may be from long disuse, but by the life-giving touch of Christ they are now alive and capable of sharpest sight and most sensitive hearing.

Chapter 5 – The Universal Presence

God’s being and God’s seeing are the same, that the seeing Presence had been with Him even before He was born, watching the mystery of unfolding life.

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 is to show us the Father and the Son.  If we cooperate 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.

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.

We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God.  He is nearer than our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts.

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.

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, “O Lord, Thou knowest.”  Those things belong to the deep and mysterious profound of God’s omniscience.  Prying into them may make theologians, but it will never make saints.

What God in His sovereignty may yet do on a world-scale I do not claim to know.  But what He will do for the plain man or woman who seeks His face I believe I do know and can tell others.  Let any man turn to God in earnest, let him begin to exercise himself unto godliness, let him seek to develop his powers of spiritual receptivity by trust and obedience and humility, and the results will exceed anything he may have hoped in his leaner and weaker days.

The universal Presence is a fact.  God is here.  The whole universe is alive with His life.  And He is no strange or foreign God, but the familiar Father of our Lord Jesus Christ whose love has for these thousands of years enfolded the sinful race of men.  And always He is trying to get our attention, to reveal Himself to us, to communicate with us.  We have within us the ability to know Him if we will but respond to His overtures.  (And this we call pursuing God!)  We will know Him in increasing degree as our receptivity becomes more perfect by faith and love and practice.

Chapter 6 – The Speaking Voice

God is speaking.  Not God spoke, but God is speaking.  He is, by His nature, continuously articulate.  He fills the world with His speaking voice.

The life is in the speaking words.  God’s word in the Bible can have power only because it corresponds to God’s word in the universe.  It is the present Voice which makes the written Word all-powerful.  Otherwise, it would like locked in slumber within the covers of a book.

“And God said….and it was so”  (Genesis 1:9).  These twin phrases, as cause and effect, occur throughout the Genesis story of creation.  The said accounts for the so.  The so is said put into the continuous present.

In the living, breathing cosmos there is a mysterious Something, too wonderful, too awful for any mind to understand.  The believing man does not claim to understand.  He falls to his knees and whispers, “God.”  The man of earth kneels also, but not to worship.  He kneels to examine, to search, to find the cause and the how of things.  Just now we happen to be living in a secular age.  Our thought habits are those of the scientist, not those of the worshiper.  We are more likely to explain than to adore.  “It thundered,” we exclaim, and go our earthly way.  But still the Voice sounds and searches.  The order and life of the world depends upon that Voice, but men are mostly too busy or too stubborn to give attention.

Religion has accepted the monstrous heresy that noise, size, activity, and bluster make a man dear to God.  But we may take heart.  To a people caught in the tempest of the last great conflict God says, “Be still, and known that I am God” (Psalm 46:10), and still He says it, as if He means to tell us that our strength and safety lie not in noise but in silence.

The Bible will never be a living Book to us until we are convinced that God is articulate in His universe.

The facts are that God is not silent, has never been silent.  It is the nature of God to speak.  The second Person of the Holy Trinity is called the Word.  The Bible is the inevitable outcome of God’s continuous speech.  It is the infallible declaration of His mind for us put into our familiar human words.

I think a new world will arise out of the religious mists when we approach our Bible with the idea that it is not only a book which was once spoken, but a book which is now speaking.  The prophets habitually said, “Thus saith the LORD.”  They meant their hearers to understand that God’s speaking is in the continuous present.  We may use the past tense properly to indicate that at a certain time a certain word of God was spoken, but a word of God once spoken continues to be spoken, as a child once born continues to be alive, or a world once created continues to exist.

CLICK HERE FOR THE PREVIOUS PARTS:

PART ONE

PART TWO

Chapter 3 – Removing the Veil

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a first step.”  – Lao-tze

Ransomed men need no longer pause in fear to enter the Holy of Holies.  God wills that we should push on into His presence and live our whole life there.  This is to be known to us in conscious experience.  It is more than a doctrine to be held; it is a life to be enjoyed every moment of every day.

He has discovered Himself to some extent in nature, but more perfectly in the Incarnation.  Now He waits to show Himself in ravishing fullness to the humble of soul and the pure in heart.

The world is perishing for lack of the knowledge of God and the Church is famishing for want of His presence.  The instant cure of most of our religious ills would be to enter the Presence in spiritual experience, to become suddenly aware that we are in God and God is in us.  This would lift us out of our pitiful narrowness and cause our hearts to be enlarged.  This would burn away the impurities from our lives as the bugs and fungi were burned away by the fire that dwelt in the bush.

What a broad world to roam in, what a sea to swim in is this God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  He is eternal.  He antedates time and is wholly independent of it.  Time began in Him and will end in Him.  To it He pays no tribute and from it He suffers no change.

He is immutable.  He has never changed and can never change in any smallest measure.  To change He would need to go from better to worse or from worse to better.  He cannot do either, for being perfect He cannot become more perfect, and if He were to become less perfect He would be less than God.

He is omniscient.  He knows in one free and effortless act all matter, all spirit, all relationships, all events.  He has no past and He has no future.  He is, and none of the limiting and qualifying terms used of creatures can apply to Him.

Love and mercy and righteousness are His, and holiness so ineffable that no comparisons or figures will avail to express it.

The highest love of God is not intellectual, it is spiritual.  God is spirit and only the spirit of a man can know Him really.

God is so vastly wonderful, so utterly and completely delightful that He can, without anything other than Himself, meet and overflow the deepest demands of our total nature, mysterious and deep as that nature is.

They were prophets, not scribes, for the scribe tells us what he has read, and the prophet tells what he has seen.  The distinction is not an imaginary one.  Between the scribe who has read and the prophet who has seen there is a difference as wide as the sea.  We are overrun today with orthodox scribes, but the prophets, where are they?  The hard voice of the scribe sounds over evangelicalism, but the Church waits for the tender voice of the saint who has penetrated the veil and has gazed with inward eye upon the wonder that is God.

With the veil removed by the rending of Jesus’ flesh, with nothing on God’s side to prevent us from entering, why do we tarry without?  Why do we consent to abide all our days just outside the Holy of Holies and never enter at all to look upon God?

What hinders us?  What but the presence of a veil in our hearts.  A veil not taken away as the first veil was, but which remains there still shutting out the light and hiding the face of God from us.  It is the veil of our fleshly, 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.  It is not too mysterious, this opaque veil, nor is it hard to identify.  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.

So I am bold to name the threads our of which the inner veil is woven.

It is woven of the fine threads of the self-life, the hyphenated sins of the human spirit.  They are not something we do, they are something we are, and therein lies both their subtlety and their power.

To be specific, the self-sins are self-righteousness, self-pity, self-confidence, self-sufficiency, self-admiration, and a host of others like them.

The grosser manifestations of these sins – egotism, exhibitionism, self-promotion – are strangely tolerated in Christian leaders, even in circles of impeccable orthodoxy.

Self can live unrebuked at the very altar.  It can watch the bleeding Victim die and not be in the least affected by what it sees.  It can fight for the faith of the reformers and preach eloquently the creed of salvation by grace and gain strength by its efforts.  To tell the truth, it seems actually to feed upon orthodoxy and is more at home in a Bible conference than in a tavern.  Our very state of longing after God may afford it an excellent condition under which to thrive and grow.

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.

We must invite the cross to do its deadly work within us.  We must bring our self-sins to the cross for judgment.

Let us beware of tinkering with our inner life, hoping ourselves to rend 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.

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, author of The Pursuit of God

Over the next few days, I will post my notes from my recent time of studying The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer.  I hope you will enjoy these quotes.

Preface

Current evangelicalism has (to change the figure) laid the altar and divided the sacrifice into parts, but now seems satisfied to count the stones and rearrange the pieces with never a care that there is not a sign of fire upon the top of lofty Carmel.

It is a solemn thing, and no small scandal in the kingdom, to see God’s children starving while actually seated at the Father’s table.

For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience that 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.

If my fire is not large it is yet real, and there may be those who can light their candle at its flame.

Chapter 1 – Following Hard after God

The modern scientist has lost God amid the wonders if His world; we Christians are in real danger of losing God amid the wonders of His Word.

Being made in His image we have within us the capacity to know Him.  In our sins we lack only the power.

To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too easily satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart.

David’s life was a torrent of spiritual desire, and his psalms ring with the cry of the seeker and the glad shout of the finder.

How tragic that we in this dark day have had our seeking done for use by our teachers.  Everything is made to center upon the initial act of “accepting” Christ (a term, incidentally, which is not found in the Bible) and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls.  We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him, we need no more seek Him.

Every age has its own characteristics.  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 long of the heart.  The shallowness of our inner experiences, the hollowness of our worship and that 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.

The evil habit of seeking God-and effectively prevents us from finding God in full revelation.  In the and lies our great woe.  If we omit the and we shall soon find God, and in Him we shall find that for which we have all our lives been secretly longing.

We can well afford to make God our All, to concentrate, to sacrifice the many for the One.

The man who has God for his treasure has all things in One.  Many ordinary treasures may be denied him, or if he is allowed to have them, the enjoyment of them will be so tempered that they will never be necessary to his happiness.  Or if he must see them go, one after one, he will scarcely feel a sense of loss, for having the Source of all things he has in One all satisfaction, all pleasure, all delight.  Whatever he may lose he has actually lost nothing, for he now has it all in One, and he has it purely, legitimately and forever.

Chapter 2 – The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing

God’s gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.

He had everything, but he possessed nothing.

Whoever defends himself will have himself for his defense, and he will have no other.  But let him come defenseless before the Lord and he will have for his defender no less than God Himself.

1. We don’t have to fast for forgiveness. Every wrong we have done and will do was forgiven at the Cross.
2. Fasting enables us to tune out the world’s distraction and tune in to God.
3. When we pray and fast, we don’t do so to change God or His will; by praying and fasting, we are the ones changed.
4. The level of our agreement with God will determine the degree of closeness in our walk with Him.
5. It is from a state of grace, not legalism, that we will find real and lasting transformation.
6. When we’re facing struggles, we must rely on God’s power alive within us through the Holy Spirit.
7. Many times, we can lose our passion in prayer or stop praying for certain things altogether because we lose heart or give up. But God invites us to keep them before Him and trust Him for an answer in His time.
8. You cannot earn God’s pleasure, but you can experience it to a greater degree as you follow Jesus Christ.
9. Fasting is the deep cleaning that helps us take our mind off the things of this world and instead have a refreshed focus on the things of the Spirit.
10. The most earnest prayers come from us when we recognize our need for God.
11. Prayer is not just about the answer; it’s also about glorifying God in the process of waiting for the answer.
12. Fasting is a means of disconnecting from the distractions of daily life and consciously choosing to bring God into greater focus.
13. The purest motivation for our prayers is that God will be glorified and that His will would reign supreme in our lives, just as it does in heaven.
14. While prayer is our declaration of our dependence on God, our spoken words can be the manifestation of what’s happening in our hearts.
15. When it comes to the transforming power of God working in someone’s life, God often uses people to bring about divine life change.
16. Approaching God with a heart of humility will always position you to find relief in Jesus.
17. Our timeless God owns the future. He knows exactly what is going to happen, and He promises to be with us every step of the journey.
18. Jesus was so powerful in public because He was so prayerful in private.
19. God’s new wine always changes us by expanding our faith, enlarging our purpose, and bringing renewed vision.
20. Fasting and prayer are essential to receiving a clear vision of God’s specific path for our lives.
21. Fasting is like a tune-up, so I can keep my passion for God and enjoyment of Him at a high level.

If you have been fasting, what have you learned?

Nearly everyone has heard the story of the Good Samaritan found in Luke 10:30-37.  After studying this passage this morning, I came across these points to ponder:

31 “By chance a priest came along. But when he saw the man lying there, he crossed to the other side of the road and passed him by.  32 A Levite walked over and looked at him lying there, but he also passed by on the other side.

• The Priest and the Levite showed that to really help and restore people, it takes more than just observing them in their situation.  It’s more than just looking from the safety of our churches or our televisions into the lives of other people and assessing their situation from the point of our luxury.

33 “Then a despised Samaritan came along, and when he saw the man, he felt compassion for him.

• We learn that we must reach beyond our own neighborhoods.  This entire story is birthed out of a questions that the disciples ask, “Who is my neighbor?”  Our neighbors are more than the people who look like us, who drive what we drive, or who vote how we vote.  We can’t just go past Harlem on the way to Manhattan, Compton on the way to Rodeo Drive, or even North Tulsa on the way to Utica Square.  We have to meet them where they are.

34 Going over to him, the Samaritan soothed his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged them. Then he put the man on his own donkey and took him to an inn, where he took care of him.

• You will notice in verse 34 that the Good Samaritan, who came riding into town on his donkey, found a man who had been abused, lying on the ground.  This is a portrayal that you cannot help people if you think of yourself higher and above them.  So he came down off his donkey, so that the man who was on the ground could get up.  Until we love enough to trade places with the poor and the disadvantaged, then healing will not be complete.

• In verse 34 we observe that resources, not rhetoric, changed this man’s life.  The Good Samaritan never said a word to the man.  He just helped him.  It isn’t so important what we say, it’s what we do.  We can’t just talk about helping, we must go out and do the helping.

35 The next day he handed the innkeeper two silver coins, telling him, ‘Take care of this man. If his bill runs higher than this, I’ll pay you the next time I’m here.’

• And lastly, relationships are the key to helping.  The Good Samaritan takes the man to a local inn and puts him up and tells the innkeeper, “Here are two silver coins.  If it costs more, I’ll pay for it when I return.”  If the Good Samaritan had not known the innkeeper, then the victim would have suffered from the dysfunction of their relationship.  We must find a way to know each other.

These are just five points, but they are like five fingers that make up a hand that needs to stretch out and touch the hurting, the poor, and the underserved in our communities.

When drought and famine came to Bethlehem, Elimelech moved to Moab with his wife, Naomi, and their two sons, who married Moabite women.  Elimelech died in Moab, then the young men, Kilion and Mahlon, also died, leaving Naomi destitute.  Hearing that the famine in Bethlehem had ended, Naomi decided to return home.  Ruth, one of Naomi’s Moabite daughters-in-law, declared her loyalty to Naomi, so the two of them set out together and arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the spring barley harvest.  To obtain food for the coming year, Ruth went out to work, beginning in Boaz’s field.  When he learned who she was, Boaz instructed his workers to be generous to Ruth.

Hearing of Boaz’s kindness, Naomi sent Ruth to the threshing floor one night to meet him for a private conversation.  Ruth asked Boaz to act as her family redeemer by marrying her.  Boaz knew that a closer relative had the first right to act as family redeemer, but Boaz promised to do so if that man refused.  He went to the town gate and arranged the matter so that the first man would decline.  So, Boaz married Ruth, who bore a son named Obed.

Having a grandson guaranteed Naomi’s security in old age and brought back what she thought she had lost forever.  Eventually, Obed became the grandfather of David, Israel’s great king.

Wow, what a story!

God usually works in the ordinary events of everyday life.  Miracles do happen, but God regularly accomplishes His purposes and blesses His people through routine occurrences.  If we learn faithfulness in the everyday, we are equipped to be faithful when crises come.

Naomi felt abandoned by God; but God had not abandoned Naomi, and by the end of the story Naomi knew that God had restored more to her than she could have dreamed.  God is truly trustworthy in our darkest hours.

Faith in God involves willingness to take risks.  The unnamed family redeemer who wanted to preserve his good name through his own heirs lost an opportunity to be generously faithful.  Boaz, on the other hand, took the risk of faithfulness and generosity, and he was richly rewarded.

The everyday and the ordinary can have breathtaking eternal results.  Ruth’s and Boaz’s daily faithfulness in the unremarkable rhythms of farming, marriage, childbirth, and parenthood resulted in eternal blessings that still multiply through King David and his descendant Jesus Christ.

Let God weave miracles into the mundane, everyday life.

We live life forward, but once we get to where we are going and look back, we see God’s hand in every step.

Open, transparent confession time…

One thing that I was convicted of this week was that every morning I would wake up and turn on my iPad and check out the weather, news, and Facebook.  I felt that God was saying, “You care more about what your friends are doing today, than what I want to do in and through you today.”  Ouch!  That hurts.  Now, I’m not saying Facebook or the news is a sin, but for me I had to prioritize my commitment to God.

I want the same open communication that Adam had when Genesis 3:8 states, “When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the LORD God walking about in the garden.”  Can you imagine having the God of the Universe, who just spoke things into existence, now literally walking around in the garden?  Now this wasn’t a good situation for Adam and Eve, since God was looking for them because they sinned, but my point is that I want to be able to “walk with God in the garden.”  I want to know that He is there constantly guiding me.  Walking beside me.

I think that’s why one of my favorite hymns, and my Grandpa Raymond Blissit’s favorites is “In the Garden.”

I come to the garden alone
While the dew is still on the roses
And the voice I hear falling on my ear
The Son of God discloses.

And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

He speaks, and the sound of His voice,
Is so sweet the birds hush their singing,
And the melody that He gave to me
Within my heart is ringing.

Did you see that phrase in the middle of the chorus?  ”And He tells me I am His own.”  Think about that.  You are God’s own.  The one He always wanted.

I love what Paul wrote in his letter to the Galatians.

 …their reputation as great leaders made no difference to me, for God has no favorites.

No favorites.  God doesn’t love Andy Stanley more than me.  He doesn’t favor Steven Furtick more than me.  He doesn’t give Craig Groeschel more than He gives me.  The problem isn’t God.  The problem lies with the guy who looks at me in the mirror while I’m shaving.

I have to make God above everything else in my life.

Everything.

This is an excerpt from A.W. Tozer’s book, The Pursuit of God:

Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same tuning fork are automatically tuned to each other?  They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which one must individually bow.  So one-hundred worshipers meeting together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become “unity” conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship.  Social religion is perfected when private religion is purified.  The body becomes stronger as its members become healthier.  The whole church of God gains when the members that compose it begin to seek a better and a higher life.