Tozer in the Morning – SHARING GOD’S NATURE
Our heavenly Father disciplines us for our own good, “that we may share in His holiness.” God’s motives are always loving! I have known people who seemed to be terrified by God’s loving desire that we should reflect His own holiness and goodness. As God’s faithful children, we should be attracted to holiness, for holiness Godlikeness-likeness to God! God encourages every Christian believer to follow after holiness. We know who we are and we know who God is. He does not ask us to be God and He does not ask us to produce the holiness that only He Himself knows. Only God is holy absolutely: all other beings can be holy only in relative degrees. Actually, it is amazing and wonderful that God should promise us the privilege of sharing in His nature. He remembers we were made of dust. So He tells us what is in His being as He thinks of us: “It is My desire that you grow in grace and in the knowledge of Me. I want you to be more like Jesus, My eternal Son, every day you live!”
Tozer in the Evening – Accepting Personal Responsibility
It matters little how twisted a man’s life may be, there is hope for him if he will but establish a right attitude toward God and refuse to admit any other element into his spiritual thinking. God and I; here is the beginning and the end of personal religion. Faith refuses to acknowledge that there is or ever can be a third party to this holy relation.
Attitude is all-important. Let the soul take a quiet attitude of faith and love toward God, and from there on the responsibility is God’s. He will make good on His commitments. There is not on earth a lonely spot where a Christian cannot live and be spiritually victorious if God sends him there. He carries his own climate with him or has it supplied supernaturally when he arrives. Since he is not dependent for his spiritual health upon local moral standards or current religious beliefs, he lives through a thousand earthly changes, unaffected by any of them. He has a private supply from above and is in reality a little world within a world and very much of a wonder to the rest of creation.
Because this is true, we can easily see why we should never blame our spiritual failures on others. The habit of seeking weak consolation by blaming our poor showing on unfavorable circumstances is a damaging evil and should not for one moment be tolerated. To live a lifetime believing that our inner weakness was the result of an external situation and then find at the last that we ourselves were to blame–that is too painful to be contemplated.