Proof of Living to God's Glory

throne

This morning I want to quote directly from AW Tozer in his book entitled "The Pursuit of God". In his chapter on restoring the creator/creature relationship, he says the following that I ask each of us to ponder today.

As you all know I am a competitive person, and I want to be challenged to be better each day, and I am sure that comes out in my posts and sermons for better or worse. So know that it is in love that I challenge us all to greater depths and heights in our relationship with Christ.

1 Cor. 10:31 commands that we "do all things to things to the glory of the Lord." John 3:30 says "He must increase, and I must decrease." And it is from that which I repeat Tozer's words this morning. Tozer writes:

"The pursuit of God will embrace the labor of bringing our total personality into conformity to His. And this is not judicially, but actually. I do not here refer to the act of justification by faith in Christ. I speak of a voluntary act of exalting God to His proper station over us and a willing surrender of our whole being to the place of worshipful submission which the Creator-Creature circumstance makes proper.

The moment we make up our minds that we are going on with this determination to exalt God over all, we step out of the world's parade. We shall find ourselves out of adjustment to the ways of the world, and increasingly so as we make progress in the holy way. We shall acquire a new viewpoint; a new and different psychology will be formed within us; a new power will begin to surprise us by its upsurgings and outgoings.

Our break from the world will be the direct outcome of our changed relationship to God. For the world of fallen men does not honor God. Millions call themselves by His Name, it is true, and pay some token of respect to Him, but a simple test will show how little He is really honored among them. Let the average man be put to the proof on the question of who is above, and his true position will be exposed. Let him be forced into making a choice between God and personal ambition, God and self, God and human love, and God will take second place every time. Those other things will be exalted above. However the man may protest, THE PROOF IS IN THE CHOICES HE MAKES DAY AFTER DAY THROUGHOUT HIS LIFE"

The desire to see God exalted in everything is the language of victorious spiritual experience. It is a little key to unlock the door of great treasures of grace. It is central in the life of God in the soul. Let the seeking man reach a place where life and lips join to say continually "Be thou exalted" and a thousand minor problems will be solved at once. His Christian life ceases to be the complicated thing it had been before and becomes the very essence of simplicity. By the exercise of his will he has set his course, and on that course he will stay as if guided by an automatic pilot. If blown off course for a moment by some adverse wind he will surely return again as by a secret bent of the soul. For He has met his life problem at its center, and everything else must follow."

Tozer says what we must all acknowledge, the fact that someone is always on the throne of our lives. We all must serve and are slaves to someone, either self (sin) or God. What the sinner is deceived of is the reality that while thinking he is independent, he is actually a weak slave of his flesh and sin that rules his body. He is not on the throne, sin is.

But in contrast, the one who surrenders to Christ exchanges a cruel slave master for a gentle and kind and loving Master whose "yoke is easy and whose burden is light" (see Matthew 11:28-30).

God alone has the rightful claim to the throne of our lives. When we dethrone Him, everything about our lives becomes chaotic and a mess. Look around at the world and see this. Nothing will restore order until our hearts decide to exalt God above all else in everything we do.

I pray that is you. I pray corporately that is us at TCO. By God's grace may it be so and may those around us be drawn to Him accordingly. May our anthem be "Be thou exalted" in everything we do.

 

God alone has the rightful claim to the throne of our lives. When we dethrone Him, everything about our lives becomes chaotic and a mess. Look around at the world and see this. Nothing will restore order until our hearts decide to exalt God above all else in everything we do.