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 judg-
         ments 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.