Coming Closer

"It may be said without qualification that every man is as holy and as full of the Spirit as he wants to be. He may not be as full as he wishes he were, but he is most certainly as full as he wants to be."

A.W. Tozer said that and many people might think they disagree. But not me. I've found it to be true.

Certain people will dogmatically tell you that few people were meant to have close relationships with God, but as for the masses (i.e. the rest of us poor shmucks), we're just supposed to muddle along in unfulfilled longing and acceptance of being at-arm's-length unchosen ones. (I even read that in a blog yesterday, though not in those words. But awfully close, though.)

Hogwash! All of it. I mean, ok. Maybe there will never be another Abraham or Moses or David and yet there will never be another me--or you--either. And today, as Tozer said, I am as close to God as I have determined in my heart to be. My walk with Him is not the same as anyone else's, but it's as amazing and fulfilling only to the point that I've opened my heart and laid down my earthly life so that God could give me something better. Namely, Himself.

And I guess what I'm really saying to you is this: Never, ever let anyone's sad, disappointing experience with God become your standard for belief. 

Never let another person's excuses discourage you from believing that, with God, there is always something more. Because there always is more. He is endless, after all.

And never let another person's lack of hunger for more of God dictate your own level of hunger. It is hungry hearts which are filled. It is the dry, parched throat which needs water most.

And should you have lost that hunger to know God better, or perhaps never known it at all, just ask God for it. Keep on asking until it becomes yours. Because even the hunger to know God comes from Him--it takes God to know God. 

He's blessed, not offended, to be asked for the longing for a closer friendship with Him. From beginning to end, it's all of Him.


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"To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love, scorned by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart. " ... A. W. Tozer

"...Most certainly and thoroughly I now perceive and understand that God shows no partiality and is no respecter of persons..." ... Acts 10:34


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