God's Right:

         To Ask Obedience of His Creature

 

              By A. W. Tozer

 

           Blessed are they that do His commandments,

            that they may have right to the tree of life,

            and may enter in through the gates into the city.

                                                              -  -  Revelation 22:14

 

                  The command to love God with our whole being has

              seemed to many persons to be impossible of fulfillment,

              and it may be properly argued that we cannot love by

              fiat.

                  Love is too gentle, too frail a creature to spring up at

              the command of another.  It would be like commanding

              the barren tree to bring forth fruit or the winter forest

              to be green.

                  What then can it mean?

                 The answer is found in the nature of God and of man.

              God being who He is must have obedience from His

              creatures.  Man being who he is must render that

              obedience, and he owes God complete obedience

              whether or not he feels for Him the faintest trace of love

              in his heart.

                It is a question of the sovereign right of God to require

              His creatures to obey Him.

 

                  Man's first and basic sin was disobedience.  When he

              disobeyed God he violated the claims of divine love with

              the result that love for God died within him.

                  Now, what can he do to restore that love to his heart

              again?

                  The heart that mourns its coldness toward God needs

              only to repent its sins, and a new, warm and satisfying

              love will flood into it.  For the act of repentance will bring

              a corresponding act of God in self-revelation and

              intimate communion.

                  Once the seeking heart finds God in personal

              experience there will be no further problem about

              loving Him.

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               Yours in Christ,

               Paul N. F.