tozer: the blessedness of possessing nothing

'Blessed are the poor in spirit: for their's is the kingdom of heaven.' (Matthew 5.3)

In the deep heart of the man was a shrine where none but God was worthy to come.

But sin has introduced complications and has made those very gifts of God a potential source of ruin to the soul.

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.

God's gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by this monstrous substitution.

The way to deeper knowledge of God is through the lonely valleys of soul poverty and abnegation of all things.

The blessed ones who possess the kingdom are they who have repudiated every external thing and have rooted from their hearts all sense of possessing.

These blessed poor are no longer slaves to the tyranny of things. They have broken the yoke of the oppressor; and this they have done not by fighting but by surrendering.

Our Lord came not to destroy but to save. Everything is safe which we commit to Him, and nothing is really safe which is not so committed.

Our gifts and talents should also be turned over to Him. They should be recognised for what they are, God's loan to us, and should never be considered in any sense our own.

But let him come defenseless before the Lord and he will have for his defender no less than God Himself. Let the inquiring Christian trample under foot every slippery trick of his deceitful heart and insist upon frank and open relations with the Lord.

Let him insist that God accept his all, that He take things out of his heart and Himself reign there in power.

The ancient curse will not go out painlessly; the old miser within us will not lie down and die in obedience to our command. He must be torn out of our heart like a plant from the soil; he must be extracted in agony and blood like a tooth from the jaw. He must be expelled from the soul with violence, as Christ expelled the money changers from the temple. And we shall need to steel ourselves against his piteous begging, and recognise it as springing out of self-pity, one of the most reprehensible sins of the human heart.

Father, I want to know Thee, but my cowardly heart fears to give up its toys.

Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that Thou mayest enter and dwell there without a rival.

Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for Thyself wilt be the light of it, and there shall be no night there.

In Jesus' name.
Amen.