Hosanna in the Highest

"O God, be thou exalted over my possessions. Nothing of earth's treasures shall seem dear unto me if only Thou art glorified in my life. Be Thou exalted over my friendships. I am determined that Thou shalt be above all, though I must stand deserted and alone in the midst of the earth. Be Thou exalted above my comforts. Though it mean the loss of bodily comforts and the carrying of heavy crosses I shall keep my vow made this day before Thee. Be Thou exalted over my reputation. Make me ambitious to please Thee even if as a result I must sink into obscurity and my name be forgotten as a dream. Rise, O Lord, into Thy proper place of honor, above my ambitions, above my likes and dislikes, above my family, my health and even my life itself. Let me decrease that Thou mayest increase, let me sink that Thou mayest rise above. Ride forth upon me as Thou didst ride into Jerusalem mounted upon the humble little beast, a colt, the foal of an ass, and let me hear the children cry to Thee, `Hosanna in the highest.'" --A.W. Tozer prayer from The Pursuit of God

Fighting Sin

Jared Wilson has an awesome post on his blog today, which includes an excerpt from his upcoming book. It centers on fighting your sin. I pray we would all do this. Below are some of the statements from his blog, but I encourage you to click here to read the whole thing.

"With the power of God's love and the message of the cross, stiffen your back, hold your head up high, and take a machete to the sin that entangles."

"Make bloodthirsty war with the sin in you. Watch for it, search it out, assassinate it with the word of God."

It is time for war!

Definition of a Trader

Longing For The Word

Philip Nation posted this video at Ed Stetzer's website a couple of days ago. May we never take lightly the blessing of God's word to us and may our hearts desire it as these people do.

Please watch this video. You can read Philip Nation's post about it here.

My Eye Sees You

“I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. ‘Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you will make it known to me.’ I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” Job 42:2-6

This passage comes after Job had been questioned by God for the three previous chapters. We all need to get to this point. Where we are broken and we realize that we can’t understand everything about God and his wisdom and power and plan. I believe it was in Skye Jethani’s The Divine Commodity where he talked about the fact that we have tried to perfect knowing God and that we have lost the mystery of God. We have forgotten that there are things about him that we can never grasp and it is foolish to pretend that we do.

The beautiful thing about this passage is that it is when Job makes this confession and repentance that God restores all that Job had lost and more. Job had finally learned what God wanted him to get out of the trials. Job had gone from merely knowing God from what he had heard about him to actually seeing the true nature of God and the mystery that surrounds Him.

I pray we will all come to the day where we can say to the Father: “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you;”

Pursuit of God

I am currently reading The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer. I highly recommend reading it. This is a short book that is so deep. I am only 1/3 of the way through and I can already tell this will be a book that I read again. Here are a couple of statements that I really liked from the first few chapters.

“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 [of God] in spiritual experience, to become suddenly aware that we are in God and that God is in us. This would lift us out of our pitiful narrowness and cause our hearts to be enlarged.”

“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…”

And the last thoughts I will share come from the Chapter titled The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing. This is an amazing chapter that centers on the story of God testing Abraham with Isaac.

“Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God’s gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.”

“And if we are set upon the pursuit of God He will sooner or later bring us to this test…So we will be brought one by one to the testing place, and we may never know when we are there. At that testing place there will be no dozen possible choices for us; just one and an alternative, but our whole future will be conditioned by the choice we make.”

Wartime Simplicity

I finished reading the new John Piper book titled Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God. In an appendix in the back he shares a sermon of his that was on the Supremacy of Christ in Christian learning. In that sermon he discusses some of the things their church and seminary believe and teach. I wanted to share one of the statements that was on consumerism and materialism.

Desiring to be rich is suicidal, and commending that desire as part of the Christian life is therefore worse than murderous because not just this life but the next is at stake. Followers of Jesus should feel a magnetic pull on their lives toward wartime simplicity so that they may be lavish in giving and alleviate as much suffering as they can--especially eternal suffering. --John Piper

"Wartime simplicity." In the great wars of history citizens have been called on to make every sacrifice they can to help the cause and kingdom. Shouldn't this be how we live now? Sacrificing whatever is necessary for the sake of others and for the Kingdom of God.

God use us and all we have to bring you glory.