his going forth is prepared as the morning."
“In this hour of all-but-universal darkness one cheering
gleam appears: within the fold of conservative Christianity there are to be
found increasing numbers of persons whose religious lives are marked by a
growing hunger after God Himself. They are eager for spiritual realities and
will not be put off with words, nor will they be content with correct
"interpretations" of truth. They are athirst for God, and they will
not be satisfied till they have drunk deep at the Fountain of Living Water.
This is the only real harbinger of revival which I have been
able to detect anywhere on the religious horizon. It may be the cloud the size
of a man's hand for which a few saints here and there have been looking. It can
result in a resurrection of life for many souls and a recapture of that radiant
wonder which should accompany faith in Christ, that ” “wonder which has all but
fled the Church of God in our day.
But this hunger must be recognized by our religious leaders.
Current evangelicalism has (to change the figure) laid the altar and divided
the sacrifice into parts, but now seems satisfied to count the stones and
rearrange the pieces with never a care that there is not a sign of fire upon
the top of lofty Carmel. But God be thanked that there are a few who care. They
are those who, while they love the altar and delight in the sacrifice, are yet
unable to reconcile themselves to the continued absence of fire. They desire
God above all. They are athirst to taste for themselves the "piercing
sweetness" of the love of Christ about Whom all the holy prophets did
write and the psalmists did sing.
There is today no lack of Bible teachers to set forth
correctly the principles of the doctrines of Christ, but too many of these seem
satisfied to teach the fundamentals of the faith year after year, strangely
unaware that there is in their ministry no manifest Presence, nor anything
unusual in their personal lives. “Presence, nor anything unusual in their
personal lives. They minister constantly to believers who feel within their
breasts a longing which their teaching simply does not satisfy.”
“I trust I speak in charity, but the lack in our pulpits is
real. Milton's terrible sentence applies to our day as accurately as it did to
his: "The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed." It is a solemn
thing, and no small scandal in the Kingdom, to see God's children starving
while actually seated at the Father's table. The truth of Wesley's words is
established before our eyes: "Orthodoxy, or right opinion, is, at best, a
very slender part of religion. Though right tempers cannot subsist without
right opinions, yet right opinions may subsist without right tempers. There may
be a right opinion of God without either love or one right temper toward Him.
Satan is a proof of this."
Thanks to our splendid Bible societies and to other
effective agencies for the dissemination of the Word, there are today many
millions of people who ” “hold "right opinions," probably more than
ever before in the history of the Church. Yet I wonder if there was ever a time
when true spiritual worship was at a lower ebb. To great sections of the Church
the art of worship has been lost entirely, and in its place has come that
strange and foreign thing called the "program." This word has been
borrowed from the stage and applied with sad wisdom to the type of public
service which now passes for worship among us.
Sound Bible exposition is an imperative must in the Church
of the Living God. Without it no church can be a New Testament church in any
strict meaning of that term. But exposition may be carried on in such way as to
leave the hearers devoid of any true spiritual nourishment whatever. For it is
not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until the
hearers find God in personal experience they are not the better for having
heard the truth. “The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men
to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him,
that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness
of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts.
This book is a modest attempt to aid God's hungry children
so to find Him. Nothing here is new except in the sense that it is a discovery,
which my own heart has made of spiritual realities most delightful and
wonderful to me. Others before me have gone much farther into these holy
mysteries than I have done, but if my fire is not large it is yet real, and
there may be those who can light their candle at its flame."
A. W. Tozer
Chicago, Ill.
June 16, 1948”
Excerpt From: A. W. Tozer. “The Pursuit of God.” iBooks.
https://itun.es/us/_gPDE.l
No comments:
Post a Comment