Lord, I would trust Thee completely; I would be altogether Thine; I would exalt Thee above all. I desire that I may feel no sense of possessing anything outside of Thee. I want constantly to be aware of They overshadowing Presence and to hear They speaking Voice. I long to live in restful sincerity of heart. I want to live so fully in the Spirit that all my thought may be as sweet incense asending to Thee and every act of my life may be an act of worship. Therefore I pray in the words of They great servant of old, "I beseech Thee so for to cleanse the intent of mine heart with the unspeakable gift of Thy grace, that I may perfectly love Thee and worthily praise Thee." And all this I confidently believe Thou will grant me through the merits of Jesus Christ Thy Son. Amen.
1. Following Hard after God
I. Before man can seek God, God must first have sought the man. We pursue God because he first put an urge within us. It is God who draws us. We love because God first loved us. Our desire to pursue Him originates with God, while we are already in His hand. God is always previous.
II. "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, Oh God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God; when shall I come and appear before God?"
III. God communicates through the avenues of our minds, our wills, and our emotions. It is personal. We have the capacity to know Him. The Spirit of regeneration draws us to pursue the Kingdom of God. To begin to seek, search and pursue the deep riches of knowing Him. To not only seek, but to find. To have found God and still to pursue Him.
a. Paul's aim and goal above all else was to know Him. That knowing God was worth sacrificing everything else, to count all things but loss for the sake of the knowing Christ Jesus my Lord; for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but refuse, that I may win Christ.
IV. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. God waits to be wanted. The simplicity which is in Christ is rarely found among us. God discovers Himself to "babes" and hides Himself in thick darkness from the wise and the prudent. We must simplify our approach to Him. We must strip down to the essentials.
V. The man who has God for his treasure has all things in One. He is the source of all things. All satisfaction, all pleasure, all delight.
2.The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing
I. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. God created "things" for us to enjoy, but through the corruption of sin, men began to fill themselves with external things, and God's gifts, rather than God the gift giver. Before sin, in the deepest chambers of man, was God within. God Himself is the prize. But these "things" began to take over the human heart. Who is first on the throne? God? Ourselves? Our idols? Anything we put before God is an idol.
a. What does our heart crave? Long for connection and intimacy? Validation? Acceptance? To be seen, valued? In what matter or means do we try to fill the void? Why do we crave these things? How do we attempt to fill ourselves? Where or who do we look to meet these needs?
b. Observation of a cat, who goes throughout his days without needing or owning anything, yet being perfectly content. How much more does God care and provide for us?
II. We desire to possess things. These gifts have taken the place of God. "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it." Man's chief end became seeking to gain or profit for the self. God allowed man to be given into their wicked ways of lust, greed of external and sin.
III. The poor in Spirit deny their hearts from possessing every external thing or circumstance. They are no longer slaves to the tyranny of things. They have broken the oppressor. They are free from all sense of possessing, yet they possess all things. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
IV. Example of Abraham & Isaac. Isaac really meant everything to Abraham. Everything he wanted. Even good things can become an idol if we place it higher or before God. Abraham showed his faith and trust in God by obeying Him. Imagine and ponder what Abraham must of went through.To take his only son to be a burnt offering. This foreshadows Christology between God the Father and Jesus the Son. To sacrifice and give all, even God Himself. For Jesus to lay down his life to rescue, redeem and save his people.
a. What are good things in our life that we have, pursue, chase, desire? Do we place these things higher than our love and devotion to God? Good things are meant for our enjoyment, but they should never become idols we place before God. We claim that God is first, but is he really first in our life? Our time, money, thought life etc? What or who do we ultimately worship? What do we need to remove from the temple of our heart, that God might reign unchallenged there?
V. The sense of possession was gone from Abraham's heart. "My" and "mine" were really all His. Things had been casted out, gone from his heart. His inner heart was free from them. Although Abraham was rich, he owned nothing. His real treasures were inward and eternal.
a. We often cling to our treasures, especially when they are loved relatives and friends. We are to commit them to Him. All our gifts and talents should also be turned over to Him. These things are what God loaned us, and they are not of our own.
VI. If we would indeed know God in growing intimacy we must go this way of renunciation. And if we are set upon the pursuit of God He will sooner or later bring us to this test.
a. Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that Thou mayest enter and dwell there without a rival. Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for Thyself will be the light of it, and there shall be no night there.
3. Removing the Veil
I. "Our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee." God made us for Himself.
II. Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
III. The work of God in redemption is to bring us back again into right and eternal relationship. This includes disposing of sin, reconciliation, and return to conscious communication with God and to live in His presence.
IV. When the veil that separated the Holy of Holies fell, it opened the way for every worshipper in the world to come straight into the divine presence.
a. Christians no longer need to pause in fear to enter the Holy of Holies. God wills that we should push on into His Presence and live our whole life there. A conscious experience. More than a doctrine, it is a life to be enjoyed every moment in present realization, every day.
V. He waits to show Himself in fulness to the humble of soul and to the pure in heart.
VI. The instant cure of most of our religious ills would be to enter the Presence in spiritual experience, to become suddenly aware that we are in God and that God is in us.
VII. God is immutable, has never changed and can never change. He cannot become more or less perfect.
a. Love, mercy and righteousness are His.
ViII. We may have a veil in our hearts, that is from our fleshly fallen nature. This can block our spiritual progress.
4. Apprehending God
I. O taste and see. God is more than an ideal, or another name for goodness, truth, law or creative phenomena. God can be known in personal experience.
II. We habitually think of the visable world as real and doubt th reality of any other. We do not deny the existence of the spiritual world, but we doubt that it is real. God is real. The spiritual is real.
a. At the root of the Christian life lies belief in the invisable. The object of the Christian's faith is unseen reality.
b. We must shift our interest from the seen to the unseen. The great unseen reality is God.
c. The soul has eyes with which to see and ears with which to hear.
III. Obedience to the word of Christ will bring an inward revelation of the Godhead.
IV. Open my eyes that I may see. Give me acute spiritual perception, enable me to taste andd know that Thou art good. Make heaven more real to me than any earthly thing.
5. The Universal Presence
I. God is here. There is no place where He is not.
II. Our pursuit of God is successful just because He is forever seeking to manifest Himself to us. God is not coming from a distance to pay a brief and momentous visit to man's soul.
a. The approach of God to the soul or of the soul to God is not to be thought of in spatial terms.
b. There is no idea of physical distance, it is not a matter of miles, but of experience.
III. Nearness relates to relationship. It is for increasing degrees of awareness that we pray, for a more perfect consciousness of the divine presence. We never need shout across the spaces to an absent God.
a. God is nearer than our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts.
b. God has no favorites. All He has ever done for any of His children, He will do for all of His children. The difference lies not with God but with us.
c. One vital quality that people in scripture had in common was spiritual receptivity. Something in them was open to heaven, something that urged them Godward. They had spiritual awareness, and went on to cultivate it until it became the biggest thing in their lives.
d. When they felt the inward longing, they did something about it. They acquired the lifelong habit of spiritual response.
IV. The Universal Presence is a fact. God is here. He is no strange or foreign God, but the familiar Father. He is trying to get our attention, to reveal Himself to us, to communicate with us. We have within us the ability to know Him if we will but respond to his overtures. This response is what Towzer calls pursuing God.
a. We will know Him in increasing degree as our receptivity becomes more perfect by faith and love and practice.
6. The Speaking Voice
I. It is in God's nature for Him to speak, to communicate His thoughts to us. God is forever seeking to speak Himself out to His creation.
a. The Bible supports the idea that God is speaking. Not God spoke, but God is speaking. He is by nature continuously articulate. He fills the world with His speaking voice.
II. It is the present Voice when makes the written Word all-powerful. Otherwise, it would lie locked in slumber within the covers of a book.
a. The Spirit illuminates the scriptures. Warm, intimate and clear. They become life and light and the ability to see and rest in and embrace Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord.
III. It is important that we get still to wait on God. Our strength and safety lie not in the noise, but in silence.
IV. God is not silent, has never been silent. It is in the nature of God to speak and communicate.
7. The Gaze of the Soul
I. Faith is important in the life of the soul.
a.Without faith it is impossible to please God. Without faith, there can be no approach to God, no forgiveness, no deliverance, no salvation, no communion, no spiritual life at all.
II. Faith is a gift of God. Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
a. Faith is seen in action.
b. Faith is the gaze of a soul upon a saving God.
c. Faith is redirecting of our sight, a getting out of our own vision and getting God into focus.
d. Sin has twisted our vision inward and made it self-regarding. Unbelief has put self where God should be.
e. Faith looks out instead of in.
III. When the habit of inwardly gazing Godward becomes fixed within us we shall be ushered onto a new level of spiritual life. The Triune God will be our dwelling place.
8. Restoring the Creator-creature Relation
I. Salvation is the restoration of a right relation between man and God. Prodigal son.
II. As we go to know Him better we shall find Him a source of unspeakable joy. To learn to love Him for who He is. Admiration of the Godhead.
III. "Be thou exalted" and a thousand minor problems will be solved at once.
IV. These people in scripture set their hearts to exalt God above all. God accepted their intention.
a. Not perfection, but holy intention made a difference.
V. Let me decrease that Thou may increase.
9. Meekness and Rest
I. Blessed are the Meek for they shall inherit the earth. Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavily laden, and I will give you rest.
II. Cease to care what men think. Little children do not compare. Only as we get older, sin begins to develop jealousy and envy.
III. The rest He offers is the rest of meekness, the blessed relief which comes when we accept ourselves for what we are and cease to pretend.
10. The Sacrament of Living
I. Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.
II. One of the greatest hindrances to internal peace which the Christian encounters is the common habit of dividing our lives into two areas, the sacred and the secular, instead of a unified life.
III. Paul's exhortation to do all to the glory of God is more than pious idealism. It opens before us the possibility of making every act of our lives contribute to the glory of God.
a. We must practice living to the glory of God actually and determinedly. By talking about it over with God often in our prayers, by recalling it to our minds frequently.
b. Let us practice the fine art of making every work a priestly ministration. Let us believe that God is in all our simple deeds and learn to find Him there.
c. Paul's sewing of tents was not equal to his writing of an Epistle, but both were true acts of worship.
IV. It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it. The motive is everything.
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