# The Crucified Life



## tell sackett (Feb 16, 2018)

By A.W. Tozer


Ouch!..Ow!..Ouch!


And that's just through the first four chapters.


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## tell sackett (Feb 16, 2018)

I forgot, two thumbs up.


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## 1gr8bldr (Feb 16, 2018)

I have read many of his books. Old stuff, before Christian books became popular


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## Israel (Feb 27, 2018)

"The work of Christ has been stressed until it has Eclipsed the PERSON of Christ....

It is precisely the "yearning" and the "fainting" for the return of Christ that has distinguished the personal hope from the theological one. Mere acquaintance with correct doctrine is a poor substitute for Christ, and familiarity with New Testament eschatology will never take the place of a love-inflamed desire to look on his face. 
 If the tender yearning is gone from the advent hope today, there must be a reason for it; and I think I know what it is, or what they are, for there are a number of them. One is simply that popular fundamentalist theology has emphasized the utility of the cross rather than the beauty of the one who died on it. The saved man's relation to Christ has been made contractual instead of personal. The "work" of Christ has been stressed until it has eclipsed the person of Christ. Substitution has been allowed to supersede identification. What he did for me seems to be more important than what He is to me. Redemption is seen as an across-the-counter transaction which we "accept", and the whole thing lacks emotional content. We must love someone very much to stay awake and long for his coming, and that may explain the absence of power in the advent hope even among those who still believe in it. 

Another reason for the absence of real yearning for Christ's return is that Christians are so comfortable in this world that they have little desire to leave it. For those leaders who set the pace of religion and determine its content and quality, Christianity has become of late remarkably lucrative. The streets of gold do not have too great an appeal for those who find it so easy to pile up gold and silver in the service of the Lord here on earth. We all want to reserve the hope of heaven as a kind of insurance against the day of death, but as long as we are healthy and comfortable, why change a familiar good for something about which we know very little? So reasons the carnal mind, and so subtly that we are scarcely aware of it.

AW Tozer


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## tell sackett (Mar 3, 2018)

Israel said:


> "The work of Christ has been stressed until it has Eclipsed the PERSON of Christ....
> 
> It is precisely the "yearning" and the "fainting" for the return of Christ that has distinguished the personal hope from the theological one. Mere acquaintance with correct doctrine is a poor substitute for Christ, and familiarity with New Testament eschatology will never take the place of a love-inflamed desire to look on his face.
> If the tender yearning is gone from the advent hope today, there must be a reason for it; and I think I know what it is, or what they are, for there are a number of them. One is simply that popular fundamentalist theology has emphasized the utility of the cross rather than the beauty of the one who died on it. The saved man's relation to Christ has been made contractual instead of personal. The "work" of Christ has been stressed until it has eclipsed the person of Christ. Substitution has been allowed to supersede identification. What he did for me seems to be more important than what He is to me. Redemption is seen as an across-the-counter transaction which we "accept", and the whole thing lacks emotional content. We must love someone very much to stay awake and long for his coming, and that may explain the absence of power in the advent hope even among those who still believe in it.
> ...



This. Brutal, yet beautiful.


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## Israel (Mar 4, 2018)

I remember a brother saying "The problem is not with pleasure, but the fact that I love it so much"


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## tell sackett (Mar 6, 2018)

Israel said:


> I remember a brother saying "The problem is not with pleasure, but the fact that I love it so much"



Isn't that the truth! I know it is in my life. A divided heart cannot enter into the presence of the Most Holy.

From Tozer: It is the hungry heart that will finally penetrate the veil and encounter God, _but this will be in the lonely recesses of the heart, far from things in the natural world._ ...to penetrate into the very presence of God is a very lonely journey.

I have far to go in my journey.


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## Israel (Mar 9, 2018)

tell sackett said:


> Isn't that the truth! I know it is in my life. A divided heart cannot enter into the presence of the Most Holy.
> 
> From Tozer: It is the hungry heart that will finally penetrate the veil and encounter God, _but this will be in the lonely recesses of the heart, far from things in the natural world._ ...to penetrate into the very presence of God is a very lonely journey.
> 
> I have far to go in my journey.



This is a silly thing...but I believe you will understand.

Not really very long ago I was sorely convicted of _inordinate affection._ And I knew it was sin by that very conviction. So the only thing I saw to do was confess it as such, not knowing (of course) where that would lead.
"I love Fridays way more than I love Mondays" (I still "go to work") 

But I think you know how these things seem to play out...once a thing is beginning to be opened before the Lord, the spirit of truth will not let us settle for 1/2 truths.
No, it was not that I just loved Fridays _more_, I really hated Mondays. But again...that really isn't the "root"...is it?

It would take pages of me being so tedious even angels would weep in all the half steps I took toward the "whole truth" beyond which I could not see to reach...and didn't need to. (At least at this present time)

And, let me add, there was help along the way. In the midst of this, someone had made a post to a page:

"That for which we are not grateful to God, we are blaming God for". 

Yes! That was it...I blamed God...that "I had to go to work". But...wait... again more...if honesty has any hope in it, I really, simply..._hated Him_ for it! What a seeming horrible confession, no? From one claiming Christ as salvation, no?
What kind of messed up man_ is this_?  

A man so messed up that _only the God_ who does not take offense at the _truth of him_, can save. 

Besides all this is the plain, now so very plain greater truth...He already knows.

I am learning some axioms.
One cannot love what one does not respect.
One cannot respect one he can con.
And a con will always feel superior to the one he can con. So, how then can I ever be "equal to myself" if from the very get go, I am the one always first falling for my own lies?

Salvation is no con job...it is, in all ways, the necessity. No man can even begin to see who he is, apart from Jesus Christ. And in that seeing find just how deep in himself...necessity goes. I am a black hole of need. Anything less than all of light simply will not prevail here. And there's only one place, one person to go to...who _is that_.


A friend used to say " I love grace because I love where I have to go to to find it". 

I am just beginning to understand.


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## j_seph (Mar 9, 2018)

Israel said:


> This is a silly thing...but I believe you will understand.
> 
> Not really very long ago I was sorely convicted of _inordinate affection._ And I knew it was sin by that very conviction. So the only thing I saw to do was confess it as such, not knowing (of course) where that would lead.
> "I love Fridays way more than I love Mondays" (I still "go to work")
> ...



That's deep


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## Israel (Mar 10, 2018)

yes! What a different "mode" of being God enjoys! (Than any previously I've known)
I am persuaded His being everything...is neither chore, nor bore, nor bother to Him. It's not "hard" for God to be.

But what a _ seemingly_ odd way to learn this persuasion...by finding in what I consider the smallest thing, the merest thing, the very tiniest of things...I am overwhelmed!

The things it even appears others do without thought, without any _seeming_ consciousness of a frailty, with a boldness I had always sought in envy to emulate are so beyond me now as I can barely do little but laugh. In "all of that", I am manifestly hopeless.

So where is this hope coming from? How can it be? How can one so very plainly hopeless as to all "those things", still perceive a hope? It's a miracle I tell you...a bona fide miracle!

There is a boldness that comes from a thing I never wanted to really know....desperate need. I had always held a vaporous hope it would spring magnificently from my own sufficiency...O, what a fool! There's a place where perfect need meets perfect sufficiency, appointed (if you will, or can), and there such boldness springs from such desperation as to be wholly fit expression of what cannot be denied "I need help!"  

And it has only been here that it is given gladly...without strings and of such generosity as I would say my thank you is more greeted by an almost "think nothing of it" than..."you better remember where you got this". It's again odd how that works to cause me to think even more of it...for I have never seen such glorious graciousness in the giving. It causes me to desire that way. How very different than all I have previously known.


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## tell sackett (Mar 13, 2018)

Israel said:


> This is a silly thing...but I believe you will understand.
> 
> Not really very long ago I was sorely convicted of _inordinate affection._ And I knew it was sin by that very conviction. So the only thing I saw to do was confess it as such, not knowing (of course) where that would lead.
> "I love Fridays way more than I love Mondays" (I still "go to work")
> ...



And still....still....I am loved.


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## Israel (Mar 13, 2018)

tell sackett said:


> And still....still....I am loved.



amen!


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