On His Terms

"But as many as received Him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name" (John 1:12)

I believe that if someone should come along who could make himself heard to thousands instead of to a few hundred, someone with as much oil as intellect and as much power as penetration, we could yet save evangelical Christianity from the dead-end street where it finds itself. I warn you do not for one second let the crowds, the bustle of religious activity, the surge of religious thinking fool you into supposing that there is a vast amount of spirituality. It is not so.

That is why the meaning of the word "received" is so important here. "As many as received him" - actively and aggressively took Him. This means a determined exercise of the will. It means to not deny any condition that the Lord lays down. That is something quite different from what we are hearing. They did not come to the Lord and try to make terms, but they came to the Lord and actively took Him on His terms.

A sanctified life is a life conformed to the Scriptures in every particular. It commences with our hearts; it next reaches to our ears, and then it is accomplished in our feet.

~A. W. Tozer