Latest / The Pursuit of God Daily / Removing the Veil, part 8 of 10: The veil within
Transcript
- 0:00Host: Good morning. This is The Pursuit of God Daily for Tuesday, November third. We are in chapter three, Removing the Veil, part eight of ten, where Tozer turns from the veil Christ tore in the temple to a veil that still hangs inside our own hearts.
- 0:15Reader: Hebrews twelve, verses one and two. Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
- 0:43Reader: From A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God, chapter three, Removing the Veil. With the veil removed by the rending of Jesus’ flesh, with nothing on God’s side to prevent us from entering, why do we tarry without? Why do we consent to abide all our days just outside the Holy of Holies and never enter at all to look upon God? We hear the Bridegroom say, “Let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice and thy countenance is comely.” We sense that the call is for us, but still we fail to draw near, and the years pass and we grow old and tired in the outer courts of the tabernacle. What doth hinder us?
- 1:25Reader: The answer usually given, simply that we are “cold,” will not explain all the facts. There is something more serious than coldness of heart, something that may be back of that coldness and be the cause of its existence. What is it? What but the presence of a veil in our hearts? a veil not taken away as the first veil was, but which remains there still shutting out the light and hiding the face of God from us. It is the veil of our fleshly fallen nature living on, unjudged within us, uncrucified and unrepudiated.
- 1:59Reader: It is the close-woven veil of the self-life which we have never truly acknowledged, of which we have been secretly ashamed, and which for these reasons we have never brought to the judgment of the cross. It is not too mysterious, this opaque veil, nor is it hard to identify. We have but to look in our own hearts and we shall see it there, sewn and patched and repaired it may be, but there nevertheless, an enemy to our lives and an effective block to our spiritual progress.
- 2:29Reader: This veil is not a beautiful thing and it is not a thing about which we commonly care to talk, but I am addressing the thirsting souls who are determined to follow God, and I know they will not turn back because the way leads temporarily through the blackened hills. The urge of God within them will assure their continuing the pursuit. They will face the facts however unpleasant and endure the cross for the joy set before them. So I am bold to name the threads out of which this inner veil is woven.
- 3:02Host: Tozer asks a hard question this morning: if nothing on God's side keeps us out, what keeps us in the outer courts? He will not let us settle for the easy answer that we are simply cold. Tozer is saying that coldness is often a symptom, and the cause is something we would rather not look at, the self-life, still living, never brought to the cross.
- 4:59Host: Father, You have opened the way into Your presence through the body of Your Son. Show me what in me still hangs between us. Give me courage to bring it to the cross and not to patch it over. Turn my heart to You, Lord, and let me behold Your glory. In Jesus' name, amen.
- 5:15Host: Run with patience, looking unto Jesus, Hebrews twelve, verse two. Go with God.