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.