Paul N. F. (3 Dec 2012)
"BLESSED ARE THE THAT DO HIS COMMANDMENTS"



               BLESSED ARE THE THAT DO HIS COMMANDMENTS

             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.