Believe What God Says He Will Do for Us

    By A. W.Tozer

    Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins
    may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall
    come from the presence of the Lord.  -  - Acts 3:19
 

        True faith requires that we believe everything that
    God has said about Himself, but also that we believe
    everything He has said about us!

        Until we believe that we are as bad as God says we are,
    we can never believe that He will do for us what He says
    He will do.  Right here is where popular religion breaks
    down.  It never quite accepts the severity of God or the
    depravity of man.  It stresses the goodness of God and
    man's misfortune.  It makes sin a pardonable frailty and
    God is not too much concerned about it --- He merely
    wants us to trust in His goodness.

        To believe thus is to ground faith upon falsehood and
    build our eternal hope upon sand.  God has spoken.  We
    are all under solemn obligation to hear the affirmations
    of the Holy Ghost.

        To manipulate the Scriptures so as to make them
    excuse us, compliment us and console us is to do despite
    to the written Word and to reject the Living Word.  To
    believe savingly in Jesus Christ is to believe all He has
    said about Himself and all that the prophets and apostles
    have said about Him.

        A dreamy, sentimental faith which ignores the judgments
    of God against us and listens to the affirmations of the soul
    is as deadly as cyanide.  A faith which passively accepts all
    of the pleasant texts of the Bible while it overlooks or rejects
    the stern warnings and commandments of those same
    Scriptures is not the faith of which Christ and His apostles
    spoke!
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    Yours in Christ,
    Paul N. F.