Tuesday, February 16, 2016

BOOKS
What books do ya'll like to read? Recently, while attending SMBI, I was required to do some book reports. A.W. Tozer is a deep writer and will make your mind think, but He has alot of good truths. Below is a report I did on one of his books. Hopefully, it will inspire you to go find it and read it too:)

The Crucified Life
by A.W. Tozer
The Crucified Life by A.W. Tozer, is a book about living a deeper Christian life, and about going beyond ourselves and our circumstances to Jesus. It's about learning how to have a relationship with God with nothing in between us and Him. To live with our hands open, and to be surrendered to whatever He wants, and to bring Him glory in all we do. This book challenged me to look to Jesus Christ, and to give Him all of my life, my heart, and my time. No matter what happens, to keep pressing forward to the state of spiritual perfection.
What is a crucified life? To live one's life fully devoted to God in humility, and as a sacrifice pleasing to God. We become dead yet alive at the same time. Dead to our selfish nature, but brilliantly alive in Jesus Christ. Why live a crucified life? The point has everything to do with Jesus. Not with laws and rules. Not in how we look, but to look like Jesus. To have our hearts beat after His, and not get caught up in all the distractions that want to take us away from Jesus. So often we give God our leftover time. What if Jesus had done that to us? We would be doomed to live in darkness. Jesus gave his ALL , and we are called not to anything less than that. What consists in living the crucified life? Turning away from the world, and turning fully to Jesus. Giving up of our trust in ourselves, we need to replace it with full trust in God. We as humans struggle to be in control, but God wants to take that away from us, until we have nothing left. We need to let go, and stop trying to help God. To go beyond the mediocrity and just living halfway, to knowing Jesus deeper with every day.
What keep us from living a crucified life? Pride and stubbornness-we forget we are but mere humans, and that we don't have “rights” as we like to claim we do. Also, our social postions, money, and even fear. Tozer states, “The father of fear is unbelief.” We need to trust God that He does have our best in mind. Once we take down these veils between us and God, it is then that we can look up and see His smiling face. Thankfully, God forgives us of these sins. He does because they are roadblocks between us and Him, and He wants to be able to pour out His spirit on us, so it can reveal to us the things of God. What are the blessings of living a crucified life? Jesus Christ will live within us. He didn't come to save us from the fires of hell, but to make us like Him. He takes our old selves, which have so many issues, and gives us a new self. We can experience spiritual victory. This is not to say that the crucified life is always easy-it's not. But even in the hardships that we experience, beauty can still arise out of the ashes, when we give God our everything. Joy. There is nothing comparable to the joy in being exactly where God wants us to be, and where he joins us in sweet fellowship. We miss the sweetness of God's presence and joy, when we resist what God brings into our lives. We can experience the fullness of God, when we obey Him and are surrendered to His will.
So the question remains, what are we going to do with Christ? Will we know Him personally and remove anything that comes between us so that there can be sweet fellowship? The Crucified Life is a book that challenged me to persevere in my walk with God, and to know God's heart. We are called to do more than just “live”, we are called to live for Christ, and Christ only. Another thing that challenged me was to want God more than anything. Often in life, we want what God GIVES more than we want God, and God wants to give us Himself. As Tozer states, “ Wherever God takes you, go with Him. Whatever He takes you away from, listen to him and follow what He says. Whomever you must ignore, move away from. If you want to be all that God wants you to be, set your face like a flint and go straight to Jesus.”

-Kelsi Barkman