Thursday, May 23, 2013

True Seeing: Knowing You're Blind

For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.
John 9:39
In what sense does Jesus make those who don't see to see?  He brings us to see that we are blind and that there is no light apart from Him (John 9:41).  In a sense, we never stop being blind in this life.  Never.  The moment we think we can see, we become blind.
And I will lead the blind in a way that they do not know, in paths that they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground.  These are the things I do, and I do not forsake them.
Isaiah 42:16
I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
John 8:12

Monday, May 06, 2013

A Fibrous Root of Fallen Life

There is within the human heart a tough, fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess.  It covets things with a deep and fierce passion.  The pronouns my and mine look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant.  They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do.  They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease.  The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die.  Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended.  God's gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.

--A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God (as quoted in Embracing Obscurity: Becoming Nothing in Light of God's Everything)
And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”
Luke 12:15