I've been reading quite a bit of A.W. Tozer lately... here is a quote from him that is a bit lengthy, but quite relevant to our modern day and age.
“To many Christians Christ is little more than an idea, or at best an ideal; He is not a fact. Millions of professed believers talk as if He were real and act as if He were not. And always, our actual position is to be discovered by the way we act, not by the way we talk.
“To many Christians Christ is little more than an idea, or at best an ideal; He is not a fact. Millions of professed believers talk as if He were real and act as if He were not. And always, our actual position is to be discovered by the way we act, not by the way we talk.
We can prove our faith by our committal to it and in no other way. Any belief that does not command the one who holds it is not a real belief; it is a pseudo belief only. And it might shock some of us profoundly if we were brought suddenly face-to-face with our beliefs and forced to test them in the fires of practical living.
Many of us Christians have become extremely skillful in arranging our lives so as to admit the truth of Christianity without being embarrassed by it implications. We arrange things so that we can get on well enough without divine aid, while at the same time ostensibly seeking it. We boast in the Lord but watch carefully that we never get caught depending on Him. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).
Pseudo faith always arranges a way out to serve in case God fails it. Real faith knows only one way and gladly allows itself to be stripped of any second way or makeshift substitutes. For true faith, it is either God or total collapse. And not since Adam first stood up on the earth has God failed a single man or woman who trusted Him.
The man of pseudo faith will fight for his verbal creed but refuse flatly to allow himself to get into a predicament where his future must depend upon that creed being true. He always provides himself with secondary ways of escape so he will have a way out if the roof caves in….
… For each of us the time is surely coming when we shall have nothing but God. Health and wealth and friends and hiding places will all be swept away and we shall have only God. To the man of pseudo faith that is a terrifying thought, but to real faith it is one of the most comforting thoughts the heart can entertain.”
...We languish for men who feel themselves expendable in the warfare of the soul because they have already died to the allurements of this world." ~A. W. Tozer
Do we live our lives in a such a way that if God doesn't show up we are finished? I know the answer in my life is all too often no. We are so good at making things happen, so good at manipulating situations, working hard, and getting results, that we very rarely find ourselves in a position that if God doesn't show up, we are done for. And yet around the world God is showing up in amazing ways and showing Himself powerfully to those living on "the edge," the place that if He didn't show up, nothing would happen, or worse, terrible things would happen. It is interesting to note that the verses immediately preceding Jeremiah 17:9 (which Tozer quotes above) are these:
"Curse is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord. He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land. Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is in the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit." (Jeremiah 17:5-8)
We love to speak about great faith, we love to say we have great faith. And yet all too often we trust ourselves. Our hope is in man and our ability to make ourselves better. Yet flesh will inevitably fail us. Yes, we are able to do amazing things. Yes, if I put my mind too it, I will probably succeed. But the truth is that there is so much more of God to experience. There is so much more of Himself that He wants to give us, but we are so in love with the world. We are so love with what the world has to offer and our ability to gain it, that we often miss out on promise of the ultimate blessing: knowing, experiencing, and savoring the beauty of Jesus Christ.
We are comfortable, and in that comfort and our pursuit of that comfort, we have become complacent. Complacent and deceived into thinking that what this world has to offer is all that there is. And then we dress up what the world has to offer in spiritual words and spiritual phrases, thinking that we are in some way close to God because of it. We are a living, breathing fulfillment of 2 Timothy 3:5, having an appearance of godliness but denying its power. Lord have mercy on all of us and grant us a heart of repentance that turns to Him and Him alone, for the day is coming when the world will fail us, and fail us miserably, and it is coming faster than many of us realize.
...We languish for men who feel themselves expendable in the warfare of the soul because they have already died to the allurements of this world." ~A. W. Tozer
Do we live our lives in a such a way that if God doesn't show up we are finished? I know the answer in my life is all too often no. We are so good at making things happen, so good at manipulating situations, working hard, and getting results, that we very rarely find ourselves in a position that if God doesn't show up, we are done for. And yet around the world God is showing up in amazing ways and showing Himself powerfully to those living on "the edge," the place that if He didn't show up, nothing would happen, or worse, terrible things would happen. It is interesting to note that the verses immediately preceding Jeremiah 17:9 (which Tozer quotes above) are these:
"Curse is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord. He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land. Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is in the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit." (Jeremiah 17:5-8)
We love to speak about great faith, we love to say we have great faith. And yet all too often we trust ourselves. Our hope is in man and our ability to make ourselves better. Yet flesh will inevitably fail us. Yes, we are able to do amazing things. Yes, if I put my mind too it, I will probably succeed. But the truth is that there is so much more of God to experience. There is so much more of Himself that He wants to give us, but we are so in love with the world. We are so love with what the world has to offer and our ability to gain it, that we often miss out on promise of the ultimate blessing: knowing, experiencing, and savoring the beauty of Jesus Christ.
We are comfortable, and in that comfort and our pursuit of that comfort, we have become complacent. Complacent and deceived into thinking that what this world has to offer is all that there is. And then we dress up what the world has to offer in spiritual words and spiritual phrases, thinking that we are in some way close to God because of it. We are a living, breathing fulfillment of 2 Timothy 3:5, having an appearance of godliness but denying its power. Lord have mercy on all of us and grant us a heart of repentance that turns to Him and Him alone, for the day is coming when the world will fail us, and fail us miserably, and it is coming faster than many of us realize.
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