Posted Mar 27 2009 - 8:02am by dave
I love to read A.W. Tozer. I was reading in his book, The Pursuit of God this morning, and I wanted to share something he said with you. In this passage, he is talking about great men of faith and how God works in their lives. Also, keep in mind that this book was written around 1948 to 1949.
I venture to suggest that the one vital quality which they had in common was spiritual receptivity. Something in them was a open to heaven, something which urged them Godward. Without attempting anything like a profound analysis, I shall say simply that they had spiritual awareness and that they went on to cultivate it until it became the biggest thing in their lives. They differed from the average person in that when they felt the inward longing they did something about it. They acquired the lifelong habit of spiritual response. They were not disobedient to the heavenly vision. As David put it neatly, "When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek" (Psalm 27:8)...
Failure to see this is the cause of a very serious breakdown in modern evangelicalism. The idea of cultivation and exercise, so dear to the saints of old, has now no place in our total religious picture. It is too slow, too common. We now demand glamour and fast-flowing dramatic action. A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals. We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relations with God. We read our chapter, have our short devotions and rush away, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy by attending another gospel meeting or listening to another thrilling story told by a religious adventurer lately returned from afar.
The tragic results of this spirit are all about us: shallow lives, hollow religious philosophies, the preponderance of the element of fun in gospel meetings, the glorification of men, trust in religious externalities, quasi-religious fellowships, salesmanship methods, the mistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit. These and such as these are the symptoms of an evil disease, a deep and serious malady of the soul...
Wow, I find this amazing. If this was true in 1949, how much more true is it today? I can't believe the late 40's had more of a push-button-automatic-machine society than we do today. So, what are your thoughts on this? Do we tend to put a dollar's worth of effort into our relationship with God expecting to get a thousand dollar's worth?
