MANY NEVER CROSS OVER INTO GOD’S PROMISED LAND
“And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts” (GALATIANS 5:24).
It is very important for earnest Christian believers to understand that long prayer vigils, along with strong crying and tears, are not in themselves meritorious acts. We must be settled in our knowledge that every blessing flows out of the goodness of God as from a fountain. Even those rewards for good works about which some Bible teachers talk so fulsomely, and which they always set in sharp contrast to the benefits received by grace alone, are at bottom as certainly of grace as is the forgiveness of sin itself.

The holiest apostle can claim no more than that he is an unprofitable servant. The very angels exist out of the pure goodness of God. No creature can “earn” anything in the usual meaning of the word.

All things are by and of the sovereign goodness of God!

Yet for all God’s goodwill toward us He is unable to grant us our heart’s desires until all our desires have been reduced to one. When we have dealt with our carnal ambitions, when we have trodden upon the lion and adder of the flesh, have trampled the dragon of self-love under our feet and have truly reckoned ourselves to have died unto sin, then and only then can God raise us to newness of life and fill us with His blessed Holy Spirit! For everyone that actually crosses over into the Promised Land there are many who stand for a while and look longingly across the river and then turn sadly back to the comparative safety of the sandy wastes of the old life!

A. W. Tozer