January 3, 2013

Belief and Obedience

So obvious, but so easy to neglect.

The message of the Cross contains two elements: (1) Promises and declarations to be believed, and (2) commandments to be obeyed. Obviously faith is necessary to the first and obedience to the second. The only thing we can do with a promise or a statement of fact is to believe it; it is physically impossible to obey it, for it is not addressed to the will, but to the understanding. It is equally impossible to believe a command; it is not addressed to our understanding, but to our will. True, we may have faith in its justice; we may have confidence that it is a good and right command, but that is not enough. Until we have either obeyed or refused to obey we have not done anything about it yet. To strain to exercise faith toward that which is addressed to our obedience is to get ourselves tangled in a maze of impossibilities."  -A. W. Tozer, Paths To Power, Chapter 3.
 
6005X: Paths To Power Paths To Power

By A.W. Tozer / Wingspread Publishers



January 2, 2013

Balancing Ministry (or Work) and Family

We know that God won't call us to keep one command in a way that would cause us to break another. So if, over the long haul, our family suffers neglect because of our ministry, it is because we are doing things in ministry that we should not be doing because we wrongly assessed that we can handle more than we are able to handle. -Paul Tripp