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Discussion Forum : Articles and Sermons : The Genuine Christian is a Lonely Soul By A. W. Tozer

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InTheLight
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Joined: 2003/7/31
Posts: 2850
Phoenix, Arizona USA

 The Genuine Christian is a Lonely Soul By A. W. Tozer

Here's a little something I found in my inbox today, it was an encouragement to me, thought I would pass it along here...

[b]The Genuine Christian is a Lonely Soul[/b]

The Christian, the genuine Christian, realizes that he is indeed a lonely soul in the middle of a world which affords him no fellowship. I contend that if the Christian breaks down on occasion and lets himself go in tears, he ought not to feel that he is weak. It is a normal loneliness in the midst of a world that has disowned him. He has to be a lonely man!

Those to whom Peter wrote were strangers in many ways and first of all because they were Jews. They were Jews scattered among the Romans and they never could accept and bow to the Roman ways. They learned the Greek tongue in the world of their day, but they never could learn the Roman ways. They were Jews, a people apart, even as they are today.
Besides that, they had become Christian believers so they were no longer merely Jews. Their sense of alienation from the world around them had increased and doubled. They were not only Jews—unlike the Gentiles around them—but they were Christians, unlike the Jews as well as unlike the Gentiles!

This is the reason that it is easily possible for a Christian believer to be the loneliest person in the world under a set of certain circumstances. This sense of not belonging is a part of our Christian heritage. That sense of belonging in another world and not belonging to this one steals into the Christian bosom and marks him off as being different from the people around him. Many of our hymns have been born out of that very loneliness, that sense of another and higher citizenship!

Citizenship is in heaven
That is exactly the thing that keeps a Christian separated—knowing that his citizenship is not on earth at all but in heaven above, and that he looks for the Savior to come. Who is there that can look more earnestly for the coming of the Lord Jesus than the one who feels that he is a lonely person in the middle of a lonely world?
Peter loved the Lord Jesus Christ and his letters to suffering believers clearly reveal that great and sweeping changes had come into his life. He had become stable, he had become solid, he had become the steady and dependable servant of Christ. Now he was able to see that suffering for Christ is one of the privileges of Christian life and he prepared his brothers and sisters for the future with his counsel: “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering’85. but rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ” (1 Peter 4:12–13).

Fellow believers, it is the same kind of world in which we live in this 20th century. We do well to let the Apostle Peter speak to us!
No matter who you are, no matter what your education, you can read Peter’s First Epistle and understand it reasonably well and you can say to yourself, “The Holy Spirit is saying this to me!”
There isn’t anything dated in the Book of God. When I go to my Bible, I find dates but no dating. I mean that I find the sense and the feeling that everything here belongs to me. There is nothing here that is obviously for another age, another time, another people.

Many other volumes and many other books of history contain the passionate outpourings of the minds of men on local situations but we soon find ourselves bored with them. Unless we are actually doing research we do not care that much about something dated, something belonging only to another age.
But when the Holy Spirit wrote the epistles, through Peter and Paul and the rest, He wrote them and addressed them to certain people and then made them so universally applicable that every Christian who reads them today in any part of the world, in any language or dialect, forgets that they were written to someone else and says, ”This was addressed to me. The Holy Spirit had me in mind. This is not antiquated and dated. This is the living Truth for me—now! It is just as though God had just heard of my trouble and is speaking to me to help me and encourage me in the time of my distress!”

Brethren, this is why the Bible stays young always. This is why the Word of the Lord God is as fresh as every new sunrise, as sweet and graciously fresh as the dew on the grass the morning after the clear night—because it is God’s Word to man!
This is the wonder of divine inspiration and the wonder of the Book of God!

-from [i] I call it Heresy[/i] by A. W. Tozer


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Ron Halverson

 2006/2/19 15:19Profile
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Joined: 2003/6/11
Posts: 9192
Santa Clara, CA

 The Genuine Christian is a Lonely Soul By A. W. Tozer

Ron,

Had received the same and found it equally so. Here is another;

[b]The Refiner's Fire[/b]

Ten thousand enemies cannot stop a Christian, cannot even slow him down, if he meets them in a attitude of complete trust in God. They will become to him like the atmosphere that resists the airplane, but which because the plane's designer knew how to take advantage of that resistance, actually lifts the plane aloft and holds it there for a journey of 2,000 miles. What would have been an enemy to the plane becomes a helpful servant to aid it on its way.

The main thing is this: we should never blame anyone or anything for our defeats. No matter how evil their intentions may be, they are altogether unable to harm us until we begin to blame them and use them as excuses for our own unbelief. Then they become potent to do us injury; nevertheless, we are to blame and not they.

If this should seem like a bit of theorizing, remember that always the greatest Christians have come out of hard times and tough situations. Tribulations actually worked for their spiritual perfection in that they taught them to trust not in themselves but in the Lord who raised the dead. They learned that the enemy could not block their progress unless they surrendered to the urgings of the flesh and began to complain. And slowly, they learned to stop complaining and start praising. It is that simple--and it works!

[url=https://www.sermonindex.net/modules/articles/index.php?view=category&cid=2]A.W. Tozer[/url]


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Mike Balog

 2006/2/20 23:41Profile
roadsign
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Joined: 2005/5/2
Posts: 3777


 Re: Lonely, yet we continue to offer ouselves in love

Quote:
we should never blame anyone or anything for our defeats. No matter how evil their intentions may be, they are altogether unable to harm us until we begin to blame them and use them as excuses for our own unbelief. Then they become potent to do us injury; nevertheless, we are to blame and not they.



This is a critical word. It is tempting to hide ourselves inside a psychological shell in order to avoid the pain of rejection and harm from others. This is not the kind of loneliness we are called to.
Christ, Paul, and others taught and modelled that even in the midst of our loneliness, we must continue to reach out in love and graciousness, not holding people's sins against them.

This is a difficult calling that can only be accomplished when we are decreased and Christ is increased within us. And so, when others reject us, it is not us they are rejecting, but Christ himself.
Diane


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Diane

 2006/2/21 8:08Profile





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