In light of today's Supreme Court ruling in favor of Same-Sex marriage nationwide, I have already heard so many kinds of responses. Whereas I am saddened by a decision that I believe is contrary to Biblical truth, I know my GOD does not change! What HE shuts, no man can open and what HE opens, no man can shut....remember that verse from Revelations 3:7?... HIS WORD is always final regardless of what the masses claim is truth. If anything for me, this emphasizes my existence in a very real mission field and challenges me to find my purpose in Christ. I pray there will be enough workers to make a difference! I pray that God will use me to show His true love to all men.
I received an email regarding the decision shortly after it had been announced and I just asked God for wisdom....what is the church's response? How do we process this indication of another radical step away from Biblical truth in our nation? I have read A.W. Tozer's works several times and I love them for their depth. I have to be incredibly engaged to process them, but the amount of focus required is worth it. So, today, God brought A.W. Tozer to my mind when I was pondering what has transpired today for our nation. I'm giving you a whole chapter to consider...Chapter 8 of The Pursuit of God. Before I share that chapter, let me say this....I had the opportunity to study one of Focus on the Families studies series a few years ago, The Truth Project, and it forever changed the way I view sin and sinners (I include myself in this as well...I am not unfamiliar with this type of slavery). It will always be of utmost priority for me to remember that our battles are not against flesh and blood....they are against evil. Those who do not see life through the context of the Word of God are not enemies, but rather slaves to whatever they have embraced as their "good news"....the only thing that is powerful enough to break those kind of chains and provides complete salvation is the pure love of Christ. Here is what I read today and am taking to heart as I pray:
RESTORING THE CREATOR/CREATURE RELATION
Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens; let thy glory be above all the earth.-Psa. 57:5
It is a truism to say that order in nature depends upon right
relationships; to achieve harmony each thing must be in its proper
position relative to each other thing. In human life it is not
otherwise.
I have hinted before in these chapters that the cause of all our
human miseries is a radical moral dislocation, an upset in our relation
to God and to each other. For whatever else the Fall may have been, it
was most certainly a sharp change in man's relation to his Creator. He
adopted toward God an altered attitude, and by so doing destroyed the
proper Creatorcreature relation in which, unknown to him, his true
happiness lay. Essentially salvation is the restoration of a right
relation between man and his Creator, a bringing back to normal of the
Creator-creature relation.
A satisfactory spiritual life will begin with a complete change in
relation between God and the sinner; not a judicial change merely, but a
conscious and experienced change affecting the sinner's whole nature.
The atonement in Jesus' blood makes such a change judicially possible
and the working of the Holy Spirit makes it emotionally satisfying. The
story of the prodigal son perfectly illustrates this latter phase. He
had brought a world of trouble upon himself by forsaking the position
which he had properly held as son of his father. At bottom his
restoration was nothing more than a reestablishing of the father-son
relation which had existed from his birth and had been altered
temporarily by his act of sinful rebellion. This story overlooks the
legal aspects of redemption, but it makes beautifully clear the
experiential aspects of salvation.
In determining relationships we must begin somewhere. There must be
somewhere a fixed center against which everything else is measured,
where the law of relativity does not enter and we can say "IS" and make
no allowances. Such a center is God. When God would make His Name known
to mankind He could find no better word than "I AM." When He speaks in
the first person He says, "I AM"; when we speak of Him we say, "He is";
when we speak to Him we say, "Thou art." Everyone and everything else
measures from that fixed point. "I am that I am," says God, "I change
not."
As the sailor locates his position on the sea by "shooting" the sun,
so we may get our moral bearings by looking at God. We must begin with
God. We are right when and only when we stand in a right position
relative to God, and we are wrong so far and so long as we stand in any
other position.
Much of our difficulty as seeking Christians stems from our
unwillingness to take God as He is and adjust our lives accordingly. We
insist upon trying to modify Him and to bring Him nearer to our own
image. The flesh whimpers against the rigor of God's inexorable sentence
and begs like Agag for a little mercy, a little indulgence of its
carnal ways. It is no use. We can get a right start only by accepting
God as He is and learning to love Him for what He is. As we go on to
know Him better we shall find it a source of unspeakable joy that God is
just what He is. Some of the most rapturous moments we know will be
those we spend in reverent admiration of the Godhead. In those holy
moments the very thought of change in Him will be too painful to endure.
So let us begin with God. Back of all, above all, before all is God;
first in sequential order, above in rank and station, exalted in dignity
and honor. As the self-existent One He gave being to all things, and
all things exist out of Him and for Him. "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to
receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things,
and for thy pleasure they are and were created."
Every soul belongs to God and exists by His pleasure. God being Who
and What He is, and we being who and what we are, the only thinkable
relation between us is one of full lordship on His part and complete
submission on ours. We owe Him every honor that it is in our power to
give Him. Our everlasting grief lies in giving Him anything less.
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 Creatorcreature circumstance makes
proper.
The moment we make up our minds that we are going on with this
determination to exalt God over gall we step out of the world's parade.
We shall find ourselves out of adjustment to the ways of the world, and
increasingly so as we make progress in the holy way. We shall acquire a
new viewpoint; a new and different psychology will be formed within us; a
new power will begin to surprise us by its upsurgings and its
outgoings.
Our break with the world will be the direct outcome of our changed
relation to God. For the world of fallen men does not honor God.
Millions call themselves by His Name, it is true, and pay some token
respect to Him, but a simple test will show how little He is really
honored among them. Let the average man be put to the proof on the
question of who is above, and his true position will be exposed. Let him
be forced into making a choice between God and money, between God and
men, between God and personal ambition, God and self, God and human
love, and God will take second place every time. Those other things will
be exalted above. However the man may protest, the proof is in the
choices he makes day after day throughout his life.
"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. The hidden motions
of the Spirit are working in his favor, and "the stars in their courses"
fight for him. He has met his life problem at its center, and
everything else must follow along. Let no one imagine that he will lose
anything of human dignity by this voluntary sell-out of his all to his
God. He does not by this degrade himself as a man; rather he finds his
right place of high honor as one made in the image of his Creator. His
deep disgrace lay in his moral derangement, his unnatural usurpation of
the place of God. His honor will be proved by restoring again that
stolen throne. In exalting God over all he finds his own highest honor
upheld.
Anyone who might feel reluctant to surrender his will to the will of
another should remember Jesus' words, "Whosoever committeth sin is the
servant of sin." We must of necessity be servant to someone, either to
God or to sin. The sinner prides himself on his independence, completely
overlooking the fact that he is the weak slave of the sins that rule
his members. The man who surrenders to Christ exchanges a cruel slave
driver for a kind and gentle Master whose yoke is easy and whose burden
is light.
Made as we were in the image of God we scarcely find it strange to
take again our God as our All. God was our original habitat and our
hearts cannot but feel at home when they enter again that ancient and
beautiful abode.
I hope it is clear that there is a logic behind God's claim to
pre-eminence. That place is His by every right in earth or heaven. While
we take to ourselves the place that is His the whole course of our
lives is out of joint. Nothing will or can restore order till our hearts
make the great decision: God shall be exalted above.
"Them that honour me I will honour," said God once to a priest of
Israel, and that ancient law of the Kingdom stands today unchanged by
the passing of time or the changes of dispensation. The whole Bible and
every page of history proclaim the perpetuation of that law. "If any man
serve me, him will my Father honour," said our Lord Jesus, tying in the
old with the new and revealing the essential unity of His ways with
men.
Sometimes the best way to see a thing is to look at its opposite. Eli
and his sons are placed in the priesthood with the stipulation that
they honor God in their lives and ministrations. This they fail to do,
and God sends Samuel to announce the consequences. Unknown to Eli this
law of reciprocal honor has been all the while secretly working, and now
the time has come for judgment to fall. Hophni and Phineas, the
degenerate priests, fall in battle, the wife of Hophni dies in
childbirth, Israel flees before her enemies, the ark of God is captured
by the Philistines and the old man Eli falls backward and dies of a
broken neck. Thus stark utter tragedy followed upon Eli's failure to
honor God.
Now set over against this almost any Bible character who honestly
tried to glorify God in his earthly walk. See how God winked at
weaknesses and overlooked failures as He poured upon His servants grace
and blessing untold. Let it be Abraham, Jacob, David, Daniel, Elijah or
whom you will; honor followed honor as harvest the seed. The man of God
set his heart to exalt God above all; God accepted his intention as fact
and acted accordingly. Not perfection, but holy intention made the
difference.
In our Lord Jesus Christ this law was seen in simple perfection. In
His lowly manhood He humbled Himself and gladly gave all glory to His
Father in heaven. He sought not His own honor, but the honor of God who
sent Him. "If I honour myself," He said on one occasion, "my honour is
nothing; it is my Father that honoureth me." So far had the proud
Pharisees departed from this law that they could not understand one who
honored God at his own expense. "I honour my Father," said Jesus to
them, "and ye do dishonour me."
Another saying of Jesus, and a most disturbing one, was put in the
form of a question, "How can ye believe, which receive honour one of
another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God alone?" If I
understand this correctly Christ taught here the alarming doctrine that
the desire for honor among men made belief impossible. Is this sin at
the root of religious unbelief? Could it be that those "intellectual
difficulties" which men blame for their inability to believe are but
smoke screens to conceal the real cause that lies behind them? Was it
this greedy desire for honor from man that made men into Pharisees and
Pharisees into Deicides? Is this the secret back of religious
self-righteousness and empty worship? I believe it may be. The whole
course of the life is upset by failure to put God where He belongs. We
exalt ourselves instead of God and the curse follows.
In our desire after God let us keep always in mind that God also hath
desire, and His desire is toward the sons of men, and more particularly
toward those sons of men who will make the once-for-all decision to
exalt Him over all. Such as these are precious to God above all
treasures of earth or sea. In them God finds a theater where He can
display His exceeding kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. With them God
can walk unhindered, toward them He can act like the God He is.
In speaking thus I have one fear; it is that I may convince the mind
before God can win the heart. For this God-above-all position is one not
easy to take. The mind may approve it while not having the consent of
the will to put it into effect. While the imagination races ahead to
honor God, the will may lag behind and the man never guess how divided
his heart is. The whole man must make the decision before the heart can
know any real satisfaction. God wants us all, and He will not rest till
He gets us all. No part of the man will do.
Let us pray over this in detail, throwing ourselves at God's feet and
meaning everything we say. No one who prays thus in sincerity need wait
long for tokens of divine acceptance. God will unveil His glory before
His servant's eyes, and He will place all His treasures at the disposal
of such a one, for He knows that His honor is safe in such consecrated
hands.
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."
