The Christian life demands that we live in the Word of God as a fish lives in the sea. By this I do not mean that we study the Bible merely or that we take a course in Bible doctrine. I mean that we should meditate day and night in the sacred Word, that we should love it and feast upon it, digesting it every hour of the day and night. But we find the Bible difficult because we try to read it like we would read any other book, and it is not the same as any other book.
Concerning prayer, we must retire from the world each day to some private spot, even if it be only a bedroom. (For a while, I slipped away into the furnace room of my house for lack of a better place.) Then stay in the secret place until the surrounding noise begins to fade out of your heart and a sense of God's presence envelops you. Deliberately tune out the unpleasant sounds and come out of your closet determined not to hear them.
Listen for the inward Voice of the Spirit until you learn to recognize it. Stop trying to compete with others. Give yourself to God and then be what and who you are without regard to what others think. Reduce your interests to a few. Don't try to know what will be of no service to you. Avoid the digest type of mind-- shorts bits of unrelated facts, cute stories, and bright sayings. Learn to pray inwardly continually. After a while, you will do this even while you work. Practice candor and childlike honest humility. Pray for a single eye. Read less, but read more of what is important to your inner growth. Never let your mind remain scattered for very long. Call home your roving thoughts and gaze on Christ with the eye of your soul, practicing spiritual concentration.
Then fellowship with God leads straight to obedience and good works. That is the divine order and it can never be reversed.
- A. W. Tozer
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment