Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea about God, just as her most significant message is what she says about Him or leaves unsaid, for her silence is often more eloquent than her speech. She can never escape the self-disclosure of her witness concerning God.
– A.W.Tozer; Knowledge of the Holy; Kindle Version; Page 3
Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God.
For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.
– A.W.Tozer; Knowledge of the Holy; Kindle Version; Page 2
With our loss of the sense of majesty has come the further loss of religious awe and consciousness of the divine Presence. We have lost our spirit of worship and our ability to withdraw inwardly to meet God in adoring silence. Modern Christianity is simply not producing the kind of Christian who can appreciate or experience the life in the Spirit. The words, “Be still, and know that I am God,” mean next to nothing to the self-confident, bustling worshipper in this middle period of the twentieth century.
– A.W.Tozer; Knowledge of the Holy; Kindle Version; Page 1
Enter the doctrine of sin. Our voluntary rebellion against a good and holy God has offended his perfect justice and provoked his just wrath against us. We are, as an old creed puts it, “by nature utterly void of that holiness required by the law of God, positively inclined to evil; and therefore under just condemnation to eternal truth, without defense or excuse.”
– Dever, Mark & Jamie Dunlop; The Compelling Community: Where God’s Power Makes a Church Attractive; Crossway; Wheaton, IL; Copyright 2015; Kindle Edition; Page 44
The low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians is the cause of a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us. A whole new philosopher of the Christian life has resulted from this one basic error in our religious thinking.
– A.W.Tozer; Knowledge of the Holy; Kindle Version; Location 11
When we get saved, we become united with Christ and indwelt by the Spirit, so that’s it’s impossible to untangle Christ’s empowering presence, the Spirit’s transformative work, and our own regenerated response to God.
– Sprinkle, Preston; Charis: God’s Scandalous Grace for Us; David C. Cook Publishing; Colorado Springs, CO; Kindle version; copyright 2014; page 176
Any attempt to sustain God’s love for you though self-effort – making God love you – will end in failure and ultimately offend the One who joyfully declared, “It is finished.”
– Sprinkle, Preston; Charis: God’s Scandalous Grace for Us; David C. Cook Publishing; Colorado Springs, CO; Kindle version; copyright 2014; page 170
This point needs to soak into your bones, because we have a natural desire to cover our shame with guilt instead of grace. Guilt drags along behind us like a ball and chain, even though God has shattered the chain with a cross.
– Sprinkle, Preston; Charis: God’s Scandalous Grace for Us; David C. Cook Publishing; Colorado Springs, CO; Kindle version; copyright 2014; page 168
Hebrews tells us that it was “for the joy that was set before him” that Jesus “endured the cross (12:2). The joy of being reconciled and reunited with His image-bearing-masterpieces-turned-enemies, who deserve wrath, not forgiveness, justice, not grace. Joy – for you – is what kept Jesus going. Through every slash of the whip, every pound of the nail, every agonizing breath, every shameful insult hurled from the mouths of His beloved enemies – it was for Jesus’s stubborn delight set before Him that He endured the cross. The ingenuity of the Persians, the barbaric fine-tuning of the Romans, the wood, spikes, hammers, splinters and crown of thorns picked from a garden are all woven into the tapestry of grace as the only fitting way to capture God’s love for His image bearers.
– Sprinkle, Preston; Charis: God’s Scandalous Grace for Us; David C. Cook Publishing; Colorado Springs, CO; Kindle version; copyright 2014; page 167-168
The transcendent and intimate God of Genesis 1 and 2 and the same God who walks alone and handpicks Perez to carry the promise; the same God who cares for Rahab, provides for Ruth, and values all the undervalued women who help the sea part in two; yes, the God who camps in a tent for hundreds of years, who uses a tongue-tied murderer and a music-writing murderer and a Philistine-loving murderer to build a kingdom. He’s the same God who rescues Ezekiel’s abandoned child and purchases Hosea’s whore – the same God who hangs on a tree with a spike driven right through each of His tatooed hands.
– Sprinkle, Preston; Charis: God’s Scandalous Grace for Us; David C. Cook Publishing; Colorado Springs, CO; Kindle version; copyright 2014; page 164-165
