As Holy As You Want to Be (and other short sermonsQuotes)

As Holy As You Want to Be

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,for they shall be filled" (Matthew 5:6)

It may be said without qualification that every man is as holy and as full of the Holy Spirit as he wants to be. He may not be as full as he wishes he were, but he is most certainly as full as he wants to be.

Our Lord placed this beyond dispute when He said, "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled." Hunger and thirst are physical sensations which, in their acute stages, may become real pain. It has been the experience of countless seekers after God that when their desires became a pain they were suddenly and wonderfully filled. The problem is not to persuade God to fill us, but to want God sufficiently to permit Him to do so. The average Christian is so cold and so contented with His wretched condition that there is no vacuum of desire into which the blessed Spirit can rush in satisfying fullness. 

"Lord, quiet my heart today and fill me with this holy longing. I don't want to be contented with my present condition; I long for that vacuum of desire into which the Holy Spirit can rush. Amen"

~A. W. Tozer~
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Applying the Test of Biblical Accuracy

The tests for spiritual genuineness are two: First, the leader must be a good man and full of the Holy Spirit. Christianity is nothing if not moral ... But the test of moral goodness is not enough. Every man must submit his work to the scriptural test. It is not enough that he be able to quote from the Bible at great length or that he claim for himself great and startling experiences with God. Go back to the law and to the testimony. If he speak not according to the Word it is because there is no light in him. We who are invited to follow him have every right, as well as a solemn obligation, to test his work according to the Word of God. We must demand that every claimant for our confidence present a clean bill of health from the Holy Scriptures; that he do more than weave in a text occasionally, or hold up the Bible dramatically before the eyes of his hearers. His doctrines must be those of the Scriptures. The Bible must dominate his preaching. He must preach according to the Word of God. The price of following a false guide on the desert may be death. The price of heeding wrong advice in business may be bankruptcy. The price of trusting to a quack doctor may be permanent loss of health. The price of putting confidence in a pseudo-prophet may be moral and spiritual tragedy. Let us take heed that no man deceive us.

~A. W. Tozer~
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Alone With God

"And Jesus went up on the mountain, and there He sat with His disciples" (John 6:3)

Just prior to this miraculous multiplying of the bread and fish, Jesus "went up on a mountainside and sat down with his disciples" (6:3). That fact is noteworthy. It seems plain that Jesus withdrew purposely from the great press of people who had been pursuing Him.

There are some things that you and I will never learn when others are present. I believe in church and I love the fellowship of the assembly. There is much we can learn when we come together on Sundays and sit among the saints. But there are certain things that you and I will never learn in the presence of other people.

Unquestionably, part of our failure today is religious activity that is not preceded by aloneness, by inactivity. I mean getting alone with God and waiting in silence and quietness until we are charged with God's Spirit. Then, when we act, our activity really amounts to something because we have been prepared by God for it.

Now, in the case of our Lord, the people came to Him, John reports, and He was ready for them. He had been quiet and silent. He had sat alone with His disciples and meditated. Looking upward, He waited until the whole hiatus of divine life moved down from the throne of God into His own soul. He was a violin tuned. He was a battery recharged. He was poised and prepared for the people when they came. "Lord, I'll spend a lot of time in the company of people today, but just now I come in quietness and silence to wait for you to fill me. Amen"

~A. W. Tozer~
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"The reason why many are still troubled, still seeking , still making little forward progress is because they haven't yet come to the end of themselves. We're still trying to give orders,and interfering with God's work within us."

"I can safely say, on the authority of all that is revealed in the "Word of God, that any man or woman on this earth who is bored and turned off by worship is not ready for heaven."

"I am among those who believe that our Western civilization is on its way to perishing. It has many commendable qualities, most of which it has borrowed from the Christian ethic, but it lacks the element of moral wisdom that would give it permanence. Future historians will record that we of the the twentieth century had intelligence enough to create a great civilization but not the moral wisdom to preserve it."

~A. W. Tozer~