Freedom Is Found in Returning Home

23Aug10 Freedom Is Found in Returning Home

- This is part of a series that has been adapted from my study of A. W. Tozer’s spiritual classic, The Pursuit of God. -

Ironically, if it is true freedom you seek, you must voluntarily return home. As Tozer so eloquently puts it, “God was our original habitat and our hearts cannot but feel at home when they enter again that ancient and beautiful abode.” For any freedom sought apart from God will surely condemn you to a life of bondage. If you take the world’s system and invert it, you have a pretty good snapshot of what life in the Spirit is all about. For as Jesus said in John 12:26: “If any man serve me, him will my Father honor.” The one who stoops to serve is the one God lifts up in honor.

Or consider the words of God to Eli in 1 Samuel 2:30: “Them that honor me, I will honor.” God is reminding Eli, the high priest of Israel, of the basic covenant between God and man – you honor me; I’ll honor you. But he was also warning Eli that the obverse is true: you dishonor me; I’ll dishonor you. This warning was given because Eli had failed to discipline his two sons who were also priests. Their behavior did not honor God. They stole from the temple offerings. They defiled the temple sacrifices. Yet Eli refused to discipline them and so the young Samuel is sent to announce the consequences of that failure.

Judgment comes in the form of what Tozer calls the “Law of Reciprocal Honor.” This universal law has been secretly working all along. And God’s wrath falls swiftly. Eli’s two sons and the other disobedient priests die in battle. Hophni’s wife dies in childbirth. Israel flees from her enemies. The Philistines capture the ark of God. And Eli falls backward and breaks his neck. All of this tragedy is from one man’s failure to honor God.