| rbhammton1 ( @ 2005-08-18 12:06:00 |
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Oh, What a Joy It Is
"Only to sit and think of God
Oh what a joy it is!
To think the thought, to breathe Name;
Earth has no other bliss.
Father of Jesus, love's reward!
What rapture it will be,
Prostrate before thy throne to lie,
And gaze and gaze on thee"
"Wherever we turn in the church of God, there is Jesus. He is the beginning, middle, and end of everything to us...there is nothing good, nothing holy, nothing beautiful, nothing joyous which He is not to His servants. No one need to be poor, because, if he chooses, he can have Jesus for his own property and possession. No one need be downcast, for Jesus is the joy of heaven, and it is His joy to enter into sorrowful hearts. We can exaggerate about many things; but we can never exaggerate our obligation to Jesus or the compassionate abundance of the love of Jesus to us. All our lives long we might talk of Jesus, and yet we should never come to an end of the sweet things that might be said of Him. Eternity will not be long enough to learn all He is, or to praise Him for all He has done, but then, that matters not; for we shall be always with Him, and we desire nothing more."
Frederick Faber
"The way to deeper knowledge of God is through the lonely valleys of soul poverty and abnegation of all things. The blessed ones who possess the kingdom are they who have repudiated every external thing and have rooted from their hearts all sense of possessing. These are the 'poor in spirit." They have reached an inward state paralleling the outward circumstances of the common beggar in the streets of Jerusalem. That is what the word poor as Christ used it actually means. These blessed poor are no longer slaves to the tyranny of things. They have broken the yoke of the oppressor; and this they have done not by fighting but by surrendering. Though free from all sense of possessing, they yet posses all things. "Theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
Let me exhort you to take this seriously. It is not to be understood as mere Bible teaching to be stored away in the mind along with an inert mass of other doctrines. It is a marker on the road to greener pastures, a path chiseled against the steep sides of the mount of God. We dare not try to bypass it if we would follow on this holy pursuit. We must ascend a step at a time. If we refuse one step, we bring our progress to an end."
A.W. Tozer
"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a first step."