Willing To Love

A.W. Tozer 90x115by A.W. Tozer

May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. First Thessalonians 3:12

Civilized man has brought about this tragic fall by associating love with sex exclusively and then popularizing the error by every means at his command. Millions of young people today are wholly unable to think of love except in terms of the disgraceful promiscuity of Hollywood. Newspapers now report the numerous marriages of the movie crowd by number: "It was the third marriage for her; his fourth." And if it were not so tragic for everyone concerned, it would be hugely comical to read of a movie star being interviewed by the press and solemnly assuring the public that she is not at the moment "in love." Such a use of the word is completely degraded and smacks more of the beasts than of men made in the image of God.

For the millions, love is an emotional attraction, nothing more, as unstable and as unpredictable as sheet lightning. The Bible teaches, on the contrary, that true love is a benevolent principle and is under the control of the will. If love were merely an emotion, how could God command us to love Him, or to love our neighbor? No one can "fall in love" at the command of another, if falling in love means getting seized suddenly with a fit of love as one might be hit with a charge of electricity or caught with a severe spasm of coughing.

by A.W. Tozer

February 4th, 2013

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Growth Is The Proof of Life

J.C. Ryle 90x115by J.C. Ryle

There is a generation of Christians in this age who grieve me to the heart. They make my blood run cold. I cannot understand them. For anything that man’s eye can see, they make no progress. They never seem to get on. Years roll on, and they are just the same – the same besetting sins, the same infirmities of disposition, the same weakness in trial, the same chilliness of heart, the same apathy, the same faint resemblance to Christ; but no new knowledge, no increased interest in the kingdom, no freshness, no new strength, no new fruits, as if they grew. Are they not forgetting that growth is the proof of life – that even the tree grows, and the snail and the sloth move? Are they not forgetting how awfully far a man may go, and yet not be a true Christian? He may be like a wax figure, the very image of a believer, and yet not have within him the breath of God – he may have a name to live, and be dead after all.

by J.C. Ryle