Are you weary of externalism, and do you long after God? I long after God. This is not old age talking, and this is not the results of anything I have been reading, except the Bible. This has been growing in me through the years. The only gratifying thing I have apart from my communion with God is the knowledge that I am not alone in my journey. God has His people everywhere who are in revolt against pretense, textualism, externalism and tradition. They want to seek God for Himself, as He is in the Scriptures, as revealed by the Holy Spirit. God has His people, but there are not many of them. Are you one? ( Tozer)

The question is, are you weary of trying to change from the outside in? It is simply not possible to change from the outside in. All spiritual change comes from the inside out. It has to begin in the deepest parts of who we are. To be changed from the inside out requires an encounter with the Living God. Only this can change you. You cannot turn over a new leaf, try harder, read the Bible more, follow the traditions of your church, you have to encounter Him. This encounter takes place in the realms of the heart and soul, not in the head. It is the most dangerous thing in the world to encounter God. Why is it dangerous? Because your life will never be the same.

Your desire will be for Him and no matter what other interests you have, they will give place to Him. He consumes the soul. He fills us in ways that nothing else that exists can. Are you ready for that kind of mad passion? A passion with such intensity that it relegates all other things to second place and beyond. This kind of passion is dangerous to normal natural living. When that which is supernatural invades that which is natural then it overflows the soul. The soul is huge and not able to filled with anything that exists. Yet God is vast beyond our ability to understand. It was once said that if everything that exists, this universe and all universes beyond with all of its trillions of planets could be placed in a five gallon bucket, and we compared a five gallon bucket to the Indian ocean the Indian ocean would be God.

This of course is a limited analogy because God is more vast than that. Yet here is a thing…….That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. (Eph 3:17-19)

You see that brothers and sisters, we might be filled with all the fullness of God!!! The fullness of God. Somehow in our spirits we might comprehend the breadth and the length and the depth and the height of the fullness of God who is vast beyond our ability to comprehend in our heads. But the Spirit of God communicates the fullness of God to the spirit of man and that man is captivated and forever ruined for the things of this life and his drive is to continually seek out this God and know Him in His manifest presence. You will be like the deer who pants for the waterbooks but you can never be like this deer unless you encounter the reality of God in the depths of your spirit. This is where the fire is set, this is the fire that spreads to the bones and possesses all of who we are.

It is from this place that we are changed. This fire that He ignites through His Holy Spirit, this baptism of fire makes us lovers of God. It makes us avid readers of His personal diary, His word. It makes us lovers of men and women for we love what He loves for He has melded our hearts with His in the fire that He ignited at the center of who we are and that fire radiates out in every direction and changes everything and it changes those around us. It may drive people from us or it may draw people to us but it is not passive for it is the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself burning in the center of who we are. He has lit up His saints so that they would be a light that shines in the darkness. And the greater the darkness the greater the light shines.

As Tozer says, God has His people and it is true that there are not many of them. The reason that many are called but few are chosen is that there is a price that comes with such an encounter. Is there something in you that is willing to forsake all? Very few saints ever have to pay that kind of price but in the depths of who they are God knows they are willing. Just like Abraham on his way up the hill with his son and the means of sacrifice. Willing to sacrifice all of his ambitions, all of his dreams, all of his future just for the sound of the voice of God speaking directly into his life. Encountering God and continually seeking after Him is grand adventure and motivator of the saints. Stand fast saints, this hard journey that you are on, this narrow path leads eventually to the glories of heaven and along the way God gives us glimpses of that glory and fills us to beyond capacity. He fills us to overflowing and sustains us on our journey.