Whom have I in heaven but You?

And besides You, I desire nothing

on earth.

My flesh and my heart may fail,

But God is the strength of my heart

and my portion forever. Psalm 73:26

NASB

...O God, YOU are my God;

I shall seek YOU

earnestly;

My soul thirsts for

YOU,

My flesh yearns for

YOU, ……….. Psalm 63:1 NASB

When You said,

"Seek My face,"

my heart said to You,

Your face, O LORD, I shall

seek." Psalm 27:8 NASB

Seek the LORD and His

strength;

seek His presence

continually! I Chr 16:11 ESV

For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself,

and unless and until the hearers find God

in personal experience, they are

not the better for having heard the

truth.

The Bible is not an end in itself, but a

means to bring men to an intimate and

satisfying knowledge of God,

that they may enter into Him,

that they may delight

in His Presence,

may taste and know the inner sweetness

of the very God Himself in the core and center of their

hearts. ~ A.W. Tozer

You just mumble a ‘sinner’s prayer’ or have

some fellow lay his hands on you, and there you are, a card-carrying

Christian.

“He who comes to God must believe that He is,

and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently

seek Him” (Heb 11:6).

But the sad fact is that today, by and

large, men and women do not seek

God.

It is too much like hard work.

They are satisfied with a superficial

knowledge of Him;

and because they know

Him superficially,

they worship Him

superficially

and they pray to Him superficially

and they teach about

Him superficially,

and young people, who have a fine

nose for fraud, see right through them and conclude, quite

rightly,

that their religion is a

sham,

and that is why the Church in the West is where it is today

a joke and an

irrelevance to the world,

given over by God because they will not seek His face.” ~ Martin Marprelate

The benchmark of success in church services has become more about attendance than the movement of the Holy Spirit.

The “entertainment” model of church..... has filled our churches with self-focused consumers rather than self-sacrificing servants attuned to the Holy Spirit….

Without The Holy Spirit, people operate in their own strength and only accomplish human-size results.

The world is not moved by love or actions that are of human-size results.

And the church is not empowered to

live differently from any other gathering of people without the Holy Spirit.

But when believers live in the power of the Holy Spirit, the

evidence in their lives is

supernatural.

The church cannot help but be different, and

the world cannot help but notice…… ~ Francis

Chan

We have measured ourselves by ourselves

until the incentive to seek higher plateaus in the

things of the Spirit is all but gone…..

We have imitated the world,

sought popular favor,

manufactured delights to

substitute for the joy of the Lord

and produced a cheap and synthetic power to substitute for the power of the

Holy Ghost.

Right now we are in an age of

religious complexity.

The simplicity which is in Christ

is rarely found among us.

In its stead are programs, methods, organizations and a

world of nervous activities which occupy

time and attention

but can never satisfy the

longing of the heart.

The shallowness of our inner experience,

the hollowness of our worship,

and the servile imitation of the world which marks our

promotional methods

all testify that we, in this day, know God only

imperfectly,

and the peace of God scarcely at all. ~ A.W. Tozer

…..“The truth is that the Spirit of the living God is guaranteed to ask you to go somewhere or

do something you wouldn’t normally want or choose to do.

The Spirit will lead you into the way of the cross,

as He led Jesus to the cross,

and that is definitely not a

safe

or pretty

or comfortable place to be.

The Holy Spirit of God will mold you into the person you were made

to be…” ~ Francis Chan

Acute desire must be present or there

will be no manifestation of

Christ to His people.

He waits to be wanted.

If we would find God amid all the

religious externals

we must first determine to find

Him,

and then proceed in the way of

simplicity.

…God discovers Himself to “babes” and hides Himself in thick

darkness from the wise and the prudent.

We must simplify our approach to

Him.

We must strip down to

essentials

We must put away all effort to

impress,

and come with the guileless

candor of childhood.

O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty

for more.

I am painfully conscious of my need of further

grace.

I am ashamed of my lack of desire.

O God, the Triune God, I want to

want Thee;

I long to be filled with longing;

I thirst to be made more thirsty still.

Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee,

that so I may know Thee indeed.

79

Begin in mercy a new work of love

within me.

Say to my soul, “Rise up, my

love, my fair one, and come away.”

Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long. In Jesus’ name,

Amen ~ A.W. Tozer

They entered into the covenant

to seek the LORD God of their

fathers

with all their heart and soul; II Chr 15:12 NASB