IN THE FOOTSTEPS of A.W. Tozer

TWENTY-SIX
“We were made to breathe the air of righteousness and everlastingness.  In man’s revolt against God, he brought upon himself this suffocating cloud that keeps him from being what God wants him to be and possessing what God desires him to possess.”

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“It is the work of God to change all the flavor of our being.  It is the work of God to let His water of life flow through the pores of our spirit until He has washed away all the silt and mud and clay and dirt, until all the ugly, brackish waters where we were waterlogged so long in the kingdom of sin are cleansed and purged and purified; it elevates us and ennobles us until we are nearer to heaven than we are to earth.”
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“God needs no defense.  Those teachers who are forever trying to make God over in their own image might better be employed in seeking to make themselves over in the image of God.”
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“Only God is great.  Men have sought to place greatness elsewhere, in things, in events, in men; but the human soul is too great to attribute greatness to itself, and certainly too great to believe that things or events can possess true greatness.  The greatness that men seem to have is as the greatness of moonlight, which is but the glory of the sun reflected.  Man‘s glory is borrowed.  He shines in the light that never was on land or sea.  He reflects God’s greatness but has none of his own.”
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“Man is the mirror image in which God looks to see Himself.  Man is the reflection of the glory of God, which was the purpose and intention of God originally.  Man’s supreme function through all eternity is to reflect God’s highest glory, and that God might look into the mirror called man and see His own glory shining there.  Through man, God could reflect His glory to all creation.”
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“We come to Christ so that we might be individually redeemed and made in the image of Christ –– vibrant, personal Christians who love God with our heart and worship Him in the beauty of Holiness.”
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“God made us in His image; and while we are not altogether clear about what that image of God is, we do know that the human soul relates to and responds to God.  In the temptation in the Garden, man fell apart and lost the artistry, the beauty, the holiness of God.  But he did not lose the potential to become godlike again if he got into the hands of the Divine Artist.

This is the purpose in redemption; taking on the material of fallen man and by the mystery of regeneration and sanctification, restoring it again so that he is like God and like Christ.  This is why we preach redemption.  That is what redemption is; it is not saving us from hell, although it does save us from hell; but more importantly, it is making is so that we can be like God again.”
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“The moment the Spirit has quickened us to life in regeneration our whole being senses its kinship to God and leaps up in joyous recognition.  That is the heavenly birth without which we cannot see the Kingdom of God.”
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“If we co-operate with Him in loving obedience God will manifest Himself to us, and that manifestation will be the difference between a nominal Christian life and a life radiant with the light of His face.”
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“The pursuit of God will embrace the labor of bringing our total personality into conformity to His.  And this not judicially, but actually.  I do not here refer to the act of justification by faith in Christ.  I speak of a voluntary exalting of 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.”
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“God’s highest purpose in the redemption of sinful humanity was based in His hope that we would allow Him to reproduce the likeness of Jesus Christ in our once-sinful lives!”

I created man for Myself.  I created man to be filled with My Light.  I created man to know Me as I know man.  I created man to purely reflect Me.  My Bride will be the pure, whole reflection of My Being.


TWENTY-SEVEN
“If we are willing to go this route of victory with Jesus Christ, we cannot continue to be mediocre Christians, stopped halfway to the peak.  Until we give up our own interests, there will never be enough stirring within our beings to find His highest will.”
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“There is a strange beauty in the ways of God with men.  He sends salvation to the world in the person of a Man and sends that Man to walk the busy ways saying, ‘If any man will come after me.‘  No drama, no fanfare, no tramp of marching feet or tumult of shouting.  A kindly Stranger walks through the earth, and so quiet is His voice that it is sometimes lost in the hurly-burly; but it is the last voice of God, and until we become quiet to hear it we have no authentic message.”
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“Though sin is in the world . . . a frightful visitation to be reckoned with, yet so perfect is the atonement that the time will come when all evil shall be eradicated and everything restored again to its pristine beauty in Christ.  Then ‘all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.‘  The wise Christian will be content to wait for that day.  In the meantime, he will serve his generation in the will of God.  If he should be overlooked in the religious popularity contests he will give it but small attention.  He knows whom he is trying to please and he is willing to let the world think what it will of him.  He will not be around much longer anyway, and where he is going men will be known not by their ‘Hooper rating, but by the holiness of their character.”
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“You and I are, in a sense, to be mothers in Israel, those through whom the Lord can suffer and grieve and love and pity again to bring children to birth.”
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“The man who is going in a wrong direction will never be set right by the affable religionist who falls into step beside him and goes the same way.  Someone must place himself across the path and insist that the straying man turn around and go in the right direction.”
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“Possibly nothing short of a world catastrophe that will destroy every false trust and turn our eyes once more upon the Man Christ Jesus will bring back the glorious hope to a generation that has lost it.”
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“The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian Church today is to purity and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him –– and of her.  In all her prayers and labors this should have first place.  We do the greatest service to the next generation of Christians by passing on to them undimmed and undiminished that noble concept of God which we received from our Hebrew and Christian fathers of generation past.  This will prove of greater value to them than anything that art or science can devise.”
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“We are left for a season among men; let us faithfully represent Him here.”
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“If you major on knowing God and cultivate a sense of His presence in your daily life, and do what Brother Lawrence advises, ‘Practice the presence of God’ daily and seek to know the Holy Spirit in Scriptures, you will go a long way in serving your generation for God.  No man has any right to die until he has served his generation.”

I call My Bride to serve Me in the same manner which I came and served mankind.  I was the Lamb to the slaughter and My Bride, My Own will step up to the heights in purity, receive from Me all that this world needs and humbly serve the people Life through Me.  It is entirely simple, but also life-threatening in every manner.  My Bride will be Me here on earth, standing in My Presence and counting all as lost to win My Own and bring them safely home.

TWENTY-EIGHT
“The man that believes will obey; failure to obey is convincing proof that there is not true faith present.  To attempt the impossible God must give faith or there will be none, and He gives faith to the obedient heart only.  Where real repentance is, there is obedience; for repentance is not only sorrow for past failures and sins, it is determination to begin now to do the will of God as He reveals it to us.”
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“I believe that God wants us to long for Him with the longing that will become lovesickness, that will become a wound to our spirits, to keep us always moving toward Him, always finding and always seeking, always having and always desiring.  So the earth becomes less and less valuable and heaven gets closer as we move into God and up into Christ.”
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“Consecration is not hard for the person that has met God.  This person insists on giving himself entirely to God.”
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“God the Father sent the Holy Spirit out among the people of the world to win a bride for Christ, one that was worthy of Him.  The bride’s significance was to rest in the groom.  She has not worth of her own, but her worth lies in her relationship to the groom. Jesus Christ is the groom and is worthy of our love, adoration, and joyful worship.”
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“Oh God, in great humility we bow before Thee and take upon ourselves Thy name and Thy nature.  Everything in our past is lost in glorious oblivion, and all our future is wrapped up in Thee.  We accept Thee as our Groom Shepherd and are eternally grateful that the gracious Spirit of God sought us out and brought us unto Thee.  We long for nothing else but Thee.  Amen.”
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“May God grant us a desire for God that supersedes all other desires.”
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“‘Be thou exalted’ is the language of victorious spiritual experience.  It is a little key to unlock the door to 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.”
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“What He does intend is that each of us should count himself dead indeed with Christ and then accept willingly whatever of self-denial, repentance, humility and humble sacrifice that may be found in the path of obedient daily living.”
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“So we as God’s loving disciples must separate ourselves from everything that hinders our devotion to God.”
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“It is vastly important that we desire and know and cherish the presence of the living God.”
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“‘If any man will come after me,’ He says, and some will rise and go after Him , but others give no heed to His Voice.  So the gulf opens between man and man, between those who will and those who will not.  Silently, terribly the work goes on, as each one decides whether he will hear or ignore the Voice of invitation.  Unknown to the world, perhaps unknown even to the individual, the work of separation takes place.  Each hearer of the Voice must decide for himself, and he must decide on the basis of the evidence the message affords.  There will be no thunder sound, no heavenly sign or light from heaven.  The Man is His own proof.  The marks in His Hands and feet are the insignia of His rank and office.  He will not put Himself again on trial; He will not argue, but the morning of the judgment will confirm what men in the twilight have decided.

And those who would follow Him must accept His conditions. ‘Let him,’ He says, and there is no appeal from His words.  He will use no coercion, but neither will He compromise.  Men cannot make the terms; they merely agree to them.  Thousands turn from Him because they will not meet His conditions.  He watches them as they go, for He loves them, but He will make no concessions.  Admit one soul into the kingdom by compromise and that kingdom is no longer secure.  Christ will be Lord, or He will be Judge.  Every man must decide whether he will take Him as Lord now or face Him as Judge then.

What are the terms of discipleship?  Only one with a perfect knowledge of mankind could have dared to make them.  Only the Lord of men could have risked the effect of such rigorous demands: ‘Let him deny himself.‘  We hear these words and shake our heads in astonishment.  Can we have heard aright?  Can the Lord lay down such severe rules at the door of the kingdom?  He can and He does.  If He is to save the man, He must save him from himself.  It is the ‘himself’ which has enslaved and corrupted the man.  Deliverance comes only by denial of that self.  No man in his own strength can shed the chains with which self has bound him, but in the next breath the Lord reveals the source of the power which is to set the soul free: ‘Let him . . . take up his cross.‘  The cross has gathered in the course of the years much of beauty and symbolism, but the cross of which Jesus spoke had nothing of beauty in it. It was an instrument of death.  Slaying men was its only function. Men did not wear that cross; but that cross wore men. It stood naked until a man was pinned on it, a living man fastened like some grotesque stickpin on its breast to writhe and groan till death stilled and silenced him.  That is the cross.  Nothing less.  And when it is robbed of its tears and blood and pain it is the cross no longer. ‘Let him . . . take up his cross,’ said Jesus, and in death he will know deliverance from himself.

A strange thing under the sun is crossless Christianity.  The cross of Christendom is a no-cross, an ecclesiastical symbol.  The cross of Christ is a place of death.  Let each one be careful which cross he carries.

‘And follow me.‘  Now the glory begins to break in upon the soul that has just returned from Calvary. ‘Follow me’ is an invitation and a challenge and a promise.  The cross has been the end of a life and the beginning of a life. The life that ended there was a life of sin and slavery; the life that began there is a life of holiness and spiritual freedom.  ‘And follow me,‘ He says, and faith runs on tiptoe to keep pace with the advancing light.  Until we know the program of our risen Lord for all the years to come we can never know everything He meant when He invited us to follow Him.  Each heart can have its own dream of fair worlds and new revelations, of the odyssey of the ransomed soul in the ages to come, but whoever follows Jesus will find at last that He has made the reality to outrun the dream.”

Come and follow Me.  I will make you fishers of men.  I will transform you in My Image.  Disciples only will there be in My Kingdom.  Disciples of the Cross.  Disciples of the Resurrection.  My pure breed.  Blood of My Blood.  Heart of My Heart.  ONE

“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 Thy overshadowing Presence and to hear Thy 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 ascending to Thee and every act of my life may be an act of worship.  Therefore I pray in the words of Thy 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 wilt grant me through the merits of Jesus Christ Thy Son.”

* All quotes taken from:
“The Pursuit of God”
“The Radical Cross”
“The Purpose of Man - Designed to Worship”
“The Knowledge of the Holy”
“And He Dwelt Among Us”
“Man - The Dwelling Place of God”
by A.W. Tozer

IN THE FOOTSTEPS of William Whiting Borden

INDEX