FOR FAIR USE AND EDUCATION AND DISCUSSION PURPOSES



If God could get frustrated with how little his "body" (Church) sees Him with "spiritual" eyes, we might know Him to react as was told to us in the shortest verse in the bible.

Jesus wanted to bring to our attention that we could grieve Him to the extent of TEARS FROM GOD by including in John 11:35..."Jesus wept."

I don't know about anyone else, but that verse BREAKS MY HEART! Raising children is joyful, and with this joy comes frustration and much heartache. And children's hearts break (or they used to) whenever they saw their mother CRY...and they could tell that she was DEEPLY WOUNDED in her heart. Anyone who can watch their mother with such deep pain and grief, and not try to console her...HAS NO "HEART" AT ALL!

But, our Lord, Who is God, WEPT FOR US....and thus, He showed His great love for us!

And God is grieved today to see the "Temple" that He created turning to other "gods" by the name of "men" in buildings that he never intended. We sit in buildings on "Sunday" (day designated as worship of the sun, just as the Roman Catholic church has ruled as the day of worship) and we simulate, through rituals and music (entertainment), a "kind of worship" (but isn't really) and call ourselves by His name...."Christians".

Then we listen to some "man" behind a pulpit telling us about God. Does he know God? NOBODY knows what is in that man's heart. He is PAID to tell you about what he thinks the Bible says. You can't KNOW God unless you read and study about Him YOURSELF!

If you knew God, you'd understand spiritual things...because God is a SPIRIT....and His ways are spiritual as well. His Kingdom is within you...it is not of this natural world.

John 4:24..."God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him MUST WORSHIP HIM IN SPIRIT and IN TRUTH."

Many of today's "churches" have corrupted this scripture by interpreting it as "slain in the spirit", "talking in tongues", "praying in the spirit" or having some kind of "spiritual experiences" and other such nonsense. (Acts 2:6 speaks of HEARING other languages in their own native "tongue", and not any gibberish kind of language unknown to man).

Worshiping God IN SPIRIT is understanding WHO HE IS through "spiritual" eyes!

This man, A.W.Tozer was a remarkable Christian man who knew the meaning of worshiping God "in the spirit". In the link is his wonderful, spiritual book, "Pursuit of God". And we ALL should be learning the kinds of things Tozer has spoken of in this book. That would surely please God.


http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/tozer/5f00.0888/5f00.0888.c.htm


The sincere plain man knows that the world is real. He finds it here when he wakes to consciousness, and he knows that he did not think it into being. It was here waiting for him when he came, and he knows that when he prepares to leave this earthly scene it will be here still to bid him good-bye as he departs. By the deep wisdom of life he is wiser than a thousand men who doubt. He stands upon the earth and feels the wind and rain in his face and he knows that they are real. He sees the sun by day and the stars by night. He sees the hot lightning play out of the dark thundercloud. He hears the sounds of nature and the cries of human joy and pain. These he knows are real. He lies down on the cool earth at night and has no fear that it will prove illusory or fail him while he sleeps. In the morning the firm ground will be under him, the blue sky above him and the rocks and trees around him as when he closed his eyes the night before. So he lives and rejoices in a world of reality.

With his five senses he engages this real world. All things necessary to his physical existence he apprehends by the faculties with which he has been equipped by the God who created him and placed him in such a world as this.

Now, by our definition also God is real. He is real in the absolute and final sense that nothing else is. All other reality is contingent upon His. The great Reality is God who is the Author of that lower and dependent reality which makes up the sum of created things, including ourselves. God has objective existence independent of and apart from any notions which we may have concerning Him. The worshipping heart does not create its Object. It finds Him here when it wakes from its moral slumber in the morning of its regeneration.

Another word that must be cleared up is the word reckon. This does not mean to visualize or imagine. Imagination is not faith. The two are not only different from, but stand in sharp opposition to, each other. Imagination projects unreal images out of the mind and seeks to attach reality to them. Faith creates nothing; it simply reckons upon that which is already there.

God and the spiritual world are real. We can reckon upon them with as much assurance as we reckon upon the familiar world around us. Spiritual things are there (or rather we should say here) inviting our attention and challenging our trust.

Our trouble is that we have established bad thought habits. We habitually think of the visible world as real and doubt the reality of any other. We do not deny the existence of the spiritual world but we doubt that it is real in the accepted meaning of the word.

The world of sense intrudes upon our attention day and night for the whole of our lifetime. It is clamorous, insistent and self-demonstrating. It does not appeal to our faith; it is here, assaulting our five senses, demanding to be accepted as real and final. But sin has so clouded the lenses of our hearts that we cannot see that other reality, the City of God, shining around us. The world of sense triumphs. The visible becomes the enemy of the invisible; the temporal, of the eternal. That is the curse inherited by every member of Adam's tragic race.

At the root of the Christian life lies belief in the invisible. The object of the Christian's faith is unseen reality.

Our uncorrected thinking, influenced by the blindness of our natural hearts and the intrusive ubiquity of visible things, tends to draw a contrast between the spiritual and the real; but actually no such contrast exists. The antithesis lies elsewhere: between the real and the imaginary, between the spiritual and the material, between the temporal and the eternal; but between the spiritual and the real, never. The spiritual is real.

If we would rise into that region of light and power plainly beckoning us through the Scriptures of truth we must break the evil habit of ignoring the spiritual. We must shift our interest from the seen to the unseen. For the great unseen Reality is God. "He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." This is basic in the life of faith. From there we can rise to unlimited heights. "Ye believe in God," said our Lord Jesus Christ, "believe also in me." Without the first there can be no second.

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However, today, we find most Christians looking more at the world around us than getting to KNOW GOD! They are more interested in THE "tribulation", the Jews, the "rapture" and other things that "worldly men" intensely study for weeks, months, and years. God is seen throughout the Bible, and so is His plan for all of mankind. But that's not what most Christians want to understand. They are looking to escape the tribulations God will put each of us through that will make us pure and "worthy" of His Kingdom. They can't even conceive of having to "endure" anything.

It's learning about, and knowing these things that please God and what He wants from us....spiritual awakening in our hearts! Those others who think "worldly" thoughts and study "worldly" things and constantly preach only "worldly" things may awaken one day from their "spiritual" slumber and hear:

...."Verily I say unto you, I KNOW YOU NOT."

It is my fervent hope and prayer that none of us hear these terrible words.

Arlene