Lenten thoughts and poem for the heart: 

As a young teen girl, I vividly remember a pamphlet I kept for years that was received as I went for training to pray with others at the altar at summer camp.  It was there that a picture of a heart with a chair in the middle expressed the reign of God or of self. 

Reading some of Tozer’s work this week, the simplicity yet great challenge of remaining in that state graced my thoughts and led me back to the ivory colored pamphlet that I was so careful to keep precise for years.  May these thoughts allow you to ponder and reflect, to pray and seek if He alone is ruling unchallenged on the throne of the heart.

 The Kingdom – Possessing Nothing and Receiving All

Freedom.

Grace.

Peace.

Such aromatic sweetness, such extravagant expense.

By grasping and possessing nothing, shall one possess All.

By surrendering, shall continually flowing life be found.

Free from things that instigate to challenge,

     The reign of the human heart.

Grace to allow Him to remain abiding and seated      

     Unchallenged in a place truly fashioned for Him

     On that golden throne…

     Illuminating all by His Presence alone.

Peace through possessing absolutely nothing .

Losing grip while finding oneself being grasped… 

Yet possessing nothing and receiving  All.

“The way to deeper knowledge of God is through the lonely valleys of soul poverty and abnegation of all things.  The blessed ones who possess the Kingdom are those who have repudiated every external thing and have rooted from their hearts all sense of possessing.”  A.W. Tozer