"One-Eighty.............."

“I might say here that sometimes you are going farther when you are not going anywhere; you are moving faster when you are not moving at all; you are learning more when you think you have stopped learning”…..A.W. Tozer, “Life in the Spirit”

It’s Saturday morning here and there’s an hour or so yet before my presence is required at an annual meeting at the Youth Detention Center. This past Wednesday evening the rescue mission had me missing our Bible class, so I’m not sure if the above quote was discussed or not. The author is one of my favorite and his words here say much; but, a few more chapters into the book, he gets into a subject where they might have been better utilized. Taking those verses of Scripture in Acts dealing with the Day of Pentecost, along with John 7:38-39, he makes the statement that “Whenever Jesus is glorified, the Holy Spirit comes!” To his credit, he also notes that “Contrary to what most people unintentionally assume, the important thing here was not that the Spirit had come; the important thing was that Jesus had been exalted”; but, to me, the danger is in leaving the reader to believe if he just brings forth an abundance of praise with enough faith behind it, an encounter with the Holy Ghost will take place. There are a lot of people in our own denominational ranks, anyhow, who now preach it that way. I’m of the opinion, however, that Tozer’s declaration is better phrased in reverse: “Whenever the Holy Spirit comes, Jesus is glorified” (at least through and in us). The connection is not external, but internal, not a reach into the heavens, but a surrender into the depths of whom He is within us. Indeed, the author declares elsewhere, “The Christian Church is trying to carry on in its own power: that kind of Christianity makes God sick”; and, while his final adjective might well be a little strong, he says what he failed to make clear earlier: Jesus died and arose to re-establish within man that point where we might find the reality of all He is. His cross and His throne mark the spot and we approach it with reverence, not the clamor and bravado of the seven sons of Sciva…….