The irrepressible urge to share spiritual blessings can explain a great many religious phenomena.
It even goes so far as to create a kind of vicarious transfer of interest from one person to another, so that the blessed soul would if necessary give up its own blessing that another might receive. Only thus can that prayer of Moses be understood, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin-; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written (Exodus 32:31, 32).
His great care for Israel had made him incautious, almost rash, before the Lord in their behalf.
Moses felt that for Israel to be forgiven was reward enough for him. This impulsive uprush of vicarious love can hardly be defended before the bar of pure reason. But God understood and complied with Moses request. The intense urge to have others enjoy the same spiritual privileges as himself once led Paul to make a statement so extreme, so reckless, that reason cannot approve it; only love can understand: I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh (Romans 9:1-3).
In the light of this it is quite easy to understand why all great Christian teachers have insisted that true spiritual experience must be shared. The careless person who remarks that he does not need to go to church to serve God is far from understanding the most elementary spiritual truths. By cutting himself off from the religious community he proves that he has never felt the deep urge to share-and for the very reason that he has nothing to share. He has never felt the constraining love of Christ, so he can go his way in silence. His withdrawal from the believing fellowship tells us more about him than he knows about himself.
Being let go, they went to their own company.
So it was in the Early Church and so it has always been when men meet God in saving encounter. They want to share the blessed benefits.
verse
On their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said to them. When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. . . .
— Acts 4:23-24a
thought
Sharing with other believers serious needs is fuel for prayer to God. Sharing what God has done in answer to prayer lights the fire of joy and praise. These are family celebrations!
prayer
Lord, when I hear of what You have done and are doing in the lives of brothers and sisters I am encouraged to trust You for my heart needs. May I, too, be sharer with Your family.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
The impulse to share, to impart, normally accompanies any true encounter with God and spiritual things.
The woman at the well, after her soul-inspiring meeting with Jesus, left her water pots, hurried into the city and tried to persuade her friends to come out and meet Him. Come, see a man, she said, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?
Her spiritual excitement could not be contained within her own heart. She had to tell someone. Is it not possible that our Lord had this in mind when He spoke about the impossibility of secret discipleship?
Have we misunderstood the true relationship between faith and testimony?
Christ made it clear that there could be no such thing as secret discipleship and Paul said, With the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. This is usually understood to mean that God has laid upon us an arbitrary requirement to open our mouth in confession before salvation can become effective within us.
Maybe that is the correct meaning of these verses. Or could it be that the confession is an evidence of the salvation which has come by faith to the heart, and where there is no impulse to impart, no outrushing of words in joyous testimony, there has been no true inward experience of saving grace?
verse
A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. Give glory to God, they said. We know this man is a sinner. He replied, Whether he is a sinner or not, I dont know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see.
— John 9:24-25
thought
If once we were blind but now we see, the evidence ought to be in our daily life. And if we once were blind but now we can see, ought we not share with other blind people the Good News about the One who opens blinded eyes?
prayer
Lord, I cant open the eyes of the blind but You can! Shine Your light through me to those in darkness. In Jesus name.Sharing the Good News
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
Spiritual experiences must be shared. It is not possible for very long to enjoy them alone. The very attempt to do so will destroy them.
The reason for this is obvious. The nearer our souls draw to God the larger our love will grow, and the greater our love the more unselfish we shall become and the greater our care for the souls of others.
Hence increased spiritual experience, so far as it is genuine, brings with it a strong desire that others may know the same grace that we ourselves enjoy.
This leads quite naturally to an increased effort to lead others to a closer and more satisfying fellowship with God.
The human race is one. God made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and He made the individual members of society for each other. Not the hermit but the man in the midst of society is in the place best to fulfill the purpose for which he was created.
There may be circumstances when for a time it will be necessary for the seeker after God to wrestle alone like Jacob on the bank of the river, but the result of his lonely experience is sure to flow out to family and friend, and on out to society at last. In the nature of things it must be so.
verse
Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
— Ephesians 5:1-2
thought
What encouragement and challenge exudes from that believer who lives in the fullness of Christ even in the face of this worlds chilling winds; who demonstrates peace and joy of heart even in severe pain and suffering. Such believers show us the way.
prayer
Thank You, Lord, for those of Your people who live a life of love in the most adverse circumstances. In doing so, they provide a model to the rest of us of what You can do when we give ourselves wholly to You.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
God is concerned with the whole man and has designed that Christian experience should embrace the entire personality.
The Christian faith deals not with the spiritual only but with the moral and the rational as well.
The rational and moral elements in religion are the proper objects of thought and willingly yield their rich treasures to prayerful meditation. The Christian faith deals with God and man and what can be known about them and their relation one to the other.
It contemplates creation, redemption, righteousness, sacred history, the destiny of mankind and the future of the world.
Such truths, once they have been revealed by divine inspiration, lie where they can be got at by the redeemed intellect and wait to be exploited by the sons of the kingdom. Under the illumination and guidance of the Holy Spirit the prayerful, studious believer can become a Christian philosopher, a sage, a doctor of divine things. More than that, he can become a man of God and a light to his generation.
I repeat, we cannot know God by thinking alone, but we can never know Him very well without a lot of hard thinking.
verse
Then He opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.
— Luke 24:45
thought
As the Spirit illumines our minds we can understand truth and know God. Heart lights go on! We can see! He is the difference between closed minds and open ones.
prayer
Open my mind, Spirit of God, to understand the Scriptures and the One who speaks through them.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
To know God in the scriptural meaning of the term is to enter into experience of Him.
It never means to know about. It is not a knowledge mediated by the intellect, but an unmediated awareness experienced by the soul on a plane too high for the mind to reach.
Where then is the place of the intellect in Christian experience?
And why waste time thinking when we know beforehand that thought cannot bring us to the knowledge that is most of all to be desired, the knowledge of God?
The answer is that the whole biblical revelation is addressed to the intellect and through the intellect reaches the will, the seat of the moral life; if the will responds in repentance and obedience, the Holy Spirit illuminates the penitent heart and reveals Christ, the image of God, to it.
What began as an appeal to reason (Isaiah 1:18) ends in a spiritual experience wholly above reason.
verse
But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mind and making it known
— John 16:13-14
thought
The Holy Spirit makes known to us what is Christ's. He is the Divine Illuminator enlightening the mind and heart of the believer. May that light shine brightly in each of us!
prayer
How I need heart illumination, Lord, to know You and Your Word. Thank You for sending the Spirit, the Divine Illuminator!
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
Elsewhere I have said that we cannot know God by thinking, but that we must do a lot of thinking if we would know Him well.
This sounds self-contradictory, but I am sure that the two statements are in full accord with each other.
The inability of the human mind to know God in a true and final sense is taken for granted throughout the Bible and even taught in plain words in such passages as these: No man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. The world by wisdom knew not God. The things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. God's nature is of another kind from anything with which the mind is acquainted; hence when the mind attempts to find out God it is confronted by obscurity. It is surrounded with mystery and blinded by the light no man can approach unto.
A consideration of this truth led some thinkers of the past to conclude that since it is impossible for man to discover God by means of any faculties he possesses, God must therefore remain not only unknown but unknowable.
What these men overlooked was that when God desires He can and does reveal Himself to men.
The Spirit of God is able to make the spirit of man know and experience the awful mystery of God's essential being.
It should be noted that the Spirit reveals God to the spirit of man, not to his intellect merely.
The intellect can know God's attributes because these constitute that body of truth that can be known about God.
The knowledge of God is for the spirit alone.
Such knowledge comes not by intellection but by intuition .
verse
No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known.
— John 1:18
thought
The Greek term translated "made him known" is related to the word from which we get "exegesis." Christ has "exegeted," clearly made known to us the Father. Christ reflects the Father.
prayer
The more I gaze upon You, Lord, the more I know the Father. You are the Revealer of the Father.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
God is love, and is for that reason the source of all the love there is.
He has set as the first of all commandments that we love Him with all our hearts, but He knows that the desired love can never originate with us.
We love him, because he first loved us, is the scriptural and psychological pattern.
We can love Him as we ought only as He inflames our minds with holy desire.
Yet there is also a love of willing as well as of feeling.
Though we may not be conscious of any great degree of inward sensation, we may set our wills to love God and the feeling will come of itself. Let us bring ourselves under obedience to His revealed Word and our love for Him will grow.
Obedience will strengthen faith and faith will increase knowledge.
And it is a well-known law of the spiritual life that our love for God will spring up and flourish just as our knowledge of Him increases.
To know Him is to love Him, and to know Him better is to love Him more.
verse
We love because he first loved us.
— 1 John 4:19
thought
God is love. The more we know Him the more we will love Him. To know Him is to love Him.
prayer
O Father, may I know You better and love You more. In Jesus' name.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
God desires that all men should become Christlike, for in so doing they present larger and more perfect objects for the reception of His outpoured love.
Conformity to the nature of Christ on the part of a redeemed man restores the image of God in the soul and thus makes it possible for God to lavish on the soul without restraint all the boundless love of which He is the original fountain.
It is hard for a sinful man to believe that God loves Him.
His own accusing conscience tells him it could not be so.
He knows that he is an enemy of God and alienated in his mind through wicked works, and he sees in himself a thousand moral discrepancies that unfit him for the just enjoyment of so pure a love.
Yet the whole Bible proclaims the love of God for sinful men.
We must believe in His love because He declares it and avail ourselves of the sanctifying grace of Christ in order to receive and enjoy that love to the full.
verse
How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And this is what we are! . . .
— 1 John 3:1
thought
God loves us! We stare in the mirror and cry out in amazement, "how can it be that He loves me?" Let's not question it but rather fully open ourselves to that love that we might be changed by the Lover.
prayer
I want to soak in Your love, Father, as much as it is possible. In no way am I worthy. Yet You love me, You love ME! Hallelujah!
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
God being who and what He is must love Himself with pure and perfect love.
The Persons of the Godhead love each other with a love so fiery, so tender, that it is all a burning flame of intense desire ineffable.
God is Himself the only being whom He can love directly; all else that He loves is for His own sake and because He finds some reflection of Himself there .
God loves His mute creation because He sees in it an imperfect representation of His own wisdom and power.
He loves the angels and seraphim because He sees in them some likeness of His holiness.
He loves men because He beholds in them a fallen relic of His own image.
Potentially God loves all men alike, but His active love lights upon some men more than upon others, the degree depending upon how much of Himself He is able to impart to them.
The truly Christlike soul enjoys more of God's love because God sees in it a truer image of Himself than in a soul less purified. God loves His Son with infinite perfection because He is the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person.
verse
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
— 1 John 4:10
thought
God's love is so far beyond any love we have known that it staggers the mind even to contemplate it. Yet we are objects of that love. May we also be conveyors of it.
prayer
Lord, I am an object of Your perfect, holy love. Insofar as is possible for an imperfect human, may I be a conveyor of Your love.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/