Wading through life

I think I just stumbled upon the JACKPOT! 25 pages of AW Tozer sermon audio. There are 20 sermons per page, except the last, and each sermon is around 30 minutes. If I did my math right, that’s over 240 hours of Tozer sermons. Part of that is a massive, 34-part message on 1 Peter.

Ridiculous.

If I could read only one author for the rest of my life (aside from the contributors to the Bible), it would have to be AW Tozer. This guy just knows his stuff. I plowed through How to Be Filled with the Holy Spirit this afternoon. And, well, where do I start? Just awesome… all 58 pages of it. It would probably be easiest to just quote the whole thing. 

But for now I won’t. For now, I’ll put down the first chunk that jumped out at me. And it’s something I feel very strongly about… and Tozer obviously did too. 

To give some context, How to Be Filled with the Holy Spirit is a Sunday evening sermon series-turned book. So, Tozer sometimes references events that happened in previous services. In his first message of the series, he sets the stage by telling people a bunch of things they already know, such as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are three-in-one. They are all God. They are all persons. Know Jesus, and you know God and the Holy Spirit… stuff like that. 

As he nears the end of his first message, he makes the point that we “believe” and “know” a lot of stuff, but aren’t taught on it and don’t practice it. Read on: 

How many blessed truths have gotten snowed under. People believe them, but they are just not being taught, that is all. I think of our experience this morning. Here was a man and his wife, a very fine intelligent couple from another city. They named the church to which they belonged, and I instantly said, “That’s a fine church!” “Oh, yes,” they said “but they don’t teach what we came over here for.” They came over because they were ill and wanted to be scripturally anointed for healing. So I got together two missionaries, two preachers, and an elder, and we anointed them and prayed for them. If you were to go to that church where they attend and say to the preacher, “Do you believe that the Lord answers prayer and heals the sick?” he would reply, “Sure, I do!” He believes it, but he doesn’t teach it, and what you don’t believe strongly enough to teach doesn’t do you any good. 

It’s the same with the fullness of the Holy Ghost. Evangelical Christianity believes it, but nobody experiences it. It lies under the snow, forgotten. I am praying that God may be able to melt away the ice from this blessed truth, and let it spring up again alive, that the Church and the people who hear may get some good out of it and not merely say “I believe” while it is buried under the snow of inactivity and nonattention.  

Reminds me a lot of Jack Deere’s Surprised by the Power of the Spirit, which I recently finished, sans the appendices. In it, Deere references numerous discussions he’s had with pastors and church leaders around the country that claim they “believe” God has the power to perform miracles the way He did through the New Testament apostles. But, when it comes down to it, they don’t really believe God does much more than supply a timely check in the mail when finances are tight and guide doctor’s hands during surgery. At least, that’s what their prayers indicate they believe. And if that’s what they believe, that’s the direction they’re going to steer most of their congregations. 

It’s sad that in our quest for relevance, we’ve deemed “Decrypting the DaVinci Code” more vital than ”God still heals today” or “Living a Spirit-filled life.” It seems God has somehow become irrelevant outside of a pop-culture context. We’ve got to show people how they can “include God in their everyday life,” once again, hopefully unknowingly, suggesting that God alone isn’t relevant. 

And now, I’ll quote more Tozer, even though I said I wouldn’t. 

Jesus Christ wanted to take religion out of the external and make it internal… so that a man knows he knows God the same as he knows he is himself and not someone else… Only the Holy Ghost can do that. The Holy Spirit came to carry the evidence of Christianity from the books of apologetics into the human heart… 

Our trouble is that we are trying to confirm the truth of Christianity by an appeal to external evidence. We are saying, “Well, look at this fellow. He can throw a baseball farther than anybody else and he is a Christian, therefore Christianity must be true.” “Here is a great statesman who believes the Bible. Therefore, the Bible must be true.” … We write books to show that some scientist believed in Christianity: therefore, Christianity must be true. We are all the way out on the wrong track, brother! That is not New Testament Christianity at all. That is a pitiful, whimpering, drooling appeal to the flesh. That never was the testimony of the New Testament, never the way God did things—never! You might satisfy the intellects of men by external evidences, and Christ did, I say, point to external evidences when He was here on the earth. But He said, “I am sending you something better. I am taking Christian apologetics out of the realm of logic and putting it into the realm of life. I am proving My deity, and My proof will not be an appeal to a general or a prime minister. The proof lies in an invisible, unseen but powerful energy that visits the human soul when the gospel is preached—the Holy Ghost!” The Spirit of the living God brought an evidence that needed no logic; it went straight to the soul like a flash of silver light, like the direct plunge of a sharp spear into the heart.” … 

There is an immediate witness, an unmediated push of the Spirit of God upon the spirit of man. There is a filtering down, a getting down into the very cells of the human soul and the impression on that soul by the Holy Ghost that this is true. 

As I think about this some more, it is all becoming very convicting. Even the fact that I’m quoting Tozer proves his point a bit. “Tozer said it, it must be true!” is my tone here, not “God said it, it must be true.” I’m putting more faith in the messenger than in the message. If I quote Tozer, people will be more inclined to find the message credible. I’m showing little faith in the Holy Spirit’s ability to move through God’s Word without the assistance of a famous name, book, title or theory. Port that concept a bit and we can see how we have little faith in the Holy Spirit’s ability to move without the assistance of a multi-media presentation, a rock star band, a riveting drama or a well-articulated sermon. 

Basically, a lot of God-and is preached, because we don’t believe that God is enough. 

Deere cast some light on this idea a bit in Surprised as well, though in a little different vein. I couldn’t find the quote after a quick skim through the book, but I remember pondering the idea while reading that I hesitate to share Christ with people because I put way too much weight on my ability to craft a good conversation. I slip into thinking evangelism is about me, the messenger, instead of His message. That’s madness! I could deliver the most compelling argument of the ages and not see one soul saved if the Holy Spirit didn’t breathe life into the words. Sure… God needs a willing messenger. And equipping ones-self with God’s word is vital if you’re going to be His ambassador. But right about there is where it stops. 

Look who He chose to first proclaim the kingdom: John “Wild Wilderness Man” The Baptist. And it wasn’t just a few that heeded his word to repent, it was everyone—except, of course, those who were too sophisticated to associate with such a blunt-mouthed locust-eater. Matt. 3:5-6 says “Jerusalem, all Judea and all the region around the Jordan went out to him and were baptized by him in the Jordan, confessing their sins.” 

I could now go a million different directions in addition to the dozen I’ve already gone. But I’ll put this long-winded blog to rest. I’ve said a lot, but I don’t know that I’ve made many points. Hopefully you somehow find it challenging and edifying. 

I’m in a weird season. I’m pretty sure it’s a spring… but it’s unlike one I’ve been in before. Rather than a giant field of wheat or corn, I feel like a back-yard garden with 30 different seeds being planted in it. This Christmas break has been very, very good in a lot of unforeseen ways. But I’m convinced that God did foresee and ordain it all. I’m just slightly concerned about what my reaction is going to be. How will I be changed? How will I live differently? What’s my role? 

And this reminds me of one last idea: that of Jesus, the best leader to ever walk the earth. Step aside John Maxwell, FDR, Robert E. Lee and King David. Jesus was the greatest of all time. 

We need to shift hope in our ability to follow Christ onto His ability to lead us. I shouldn’t lean as heavily on my ability to discern God’s voice as I should on His ability to speak in a way I’ll understand. I shouldn’t place hope in my skills to learn His ways as I should in His skill to teach in a way that sinks in. 

Good leaders steer people in directions they don’t necessarily want to go. They pull skills out of people they didn’t even know they had. They teach people lessons without them knowing it. They prepare them for situations even without official training. 

If I truly believe God knows me more intimately than I know myself, then I have to admit that He knows how best to motivate me. He knows how best to inspire me. He knows how best to win more of my heart over to Him. He knows how best to cultivate the gifts He’s given me. The responsibility to walk the walk is not solely on me. He’s looking for me to be willing. He’s asking me to participate. But he’s calling me to follow. 

Great organizations succeed in part because of great employees. But they succeed most of all because of great leadership. 

Today I found myself coveting Tozer’s mind. I know that certainly wasn’t his intent when writing—to have people covet his mind and ability to think. I’m just being honest.

But about as soon as I engaged that thought, the Lord said: “He got that mind from me.” And then I thought about how wise and knowledgeable Christ was/is. I think we sometimes forget that Jesus was the smartest, most brilliant and influential person to ever live. Rarely does he rank on lists of great philosophers. In our minds He’s mostly a miracle worker, a compassionate person, a martyr, a prophet maybe, but hardly ever a genius, which he most certainly was—if for no other reason then He mastered the ability to yield Himself fully to the Father and did only what was asked of him and said only what was told to say.

Anyway, Tozer focused day 4 on the tyranny of things. Things, as in “stuff” or “material items” or “the consumer of 90% of our paycheck,” were given to man by God back in the days of creation. He told Adam to rule and reign and have dominion over the world. Things were good, when kept in their proper place. As Tozer puts it: “They were made for man’s use, but they were meant always to be external to the man and subservient to him.”

But, as we know, that isn’t the case. Things typically aren’t subservient to us. They consume us; they drive our desires and longings for happiness and contentment. Enough is never enough.

Tozer explains what happened this way:

Our woes began when God was forced out of His central shrine and things were allowed to enter. Within the human heart things have taken over. Men have now by nature no peace within their hearts, for God is crowned there no longer, but there is the moral dusk, stubborn and aggressive usurpers fight among themselves for first place on the throne.

You may be tempted to think. “Oooo… great word picture, Tozer.” But he counters that by saying:

This is not a mere metaphor, but an accurate analysis of our real spiritual trouble. There is within the human heart a tough, fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets things with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns “my” and “mine” look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do. They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease… God’s gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.

When I start quoting Tozer, I just never feel like it’s a good place to stop. He’s always making good points. But let me wrap up by hitting on a final point of his and then rabbit-trailing.

He brings the cross into the picture as a solution to the problem of “things” in our lives. He says:

…it would seem that there is within each of us an enemy which we tolerate at our peril [emphasis mine]. Jesus called it ‘life’ and ‘self,’ or as we would say, the self-life. Its chief characteristic is its possessiveness; the words gain and profit suggest this. To allow this enemy to live is, in the end, to lose everything. To repudiate it and give up all for Christ’s sake is to lose nothing… …The only effective way to destroy this foe: It is by the cross.

The book then has a bunch of Tozer quotes concerning the cross from his other writings. They are terribly challenging.

The cross would not be a cross to us if it destroyed in us only the unreal and the artificial. It is when it goes on to slay the best in us that its cruel sharpness is felt.

We must do something about the cross, and one of two things only we can do—flee it or die upon it.

No one wants to die on a cross—until he comes to the place where he is desperate for the highest will of God in serving Jesus Christ.

One of the reasons we exhibit very little spiritual power is because we are unwilling to accept and experience the fellowship of the Savior’s sufferings, which means acceptance of His cross.

The pain of the cross means that we are in the way.

Ugggh. So the cross isn’t some dainty thing to string around my neck after all…

This is the one I want to focus on:

Every advance that we make for God and for His cause must be made at our inconvenience. If it does not inconvenience us at all, there is no cross in it! If we have been able to reduce spirituality to a smooth pattern and it costs us nothing—no disturbance, no bother and no element of sacrifice in it—we are not getting anywhere with God.

I feel the (post)modern church movement makes it way too convenient for the masses. Jesus’ call isn’t easy. His call to repentance is. It’s easy to ask for forgiveness of sins and escape eternal damnation. Who wouldn’t want that?

But who wants to be discipled by Jesus? Who wants to fellowship in his sufferings? Who wants to bear a freakin’ cross? Not many. Heck, even most of the people who were eye witnesses to Jesus himself didn’t want to. Only a handful went with him to the cross. Only a hundred or so tarried in Jerusalem until the Day of Pentecost. And he had ministered to thousands! The masses followed him wherever he went—except to the cross.

Jesus was tough on his followers. And sometimes it seems American preaching isn’t tough enough. While there is certainly a time for comforting messages, there is also a time for a hard word… a time for a “Get behind me, Satan!” or a “You of little faith!”

I read 2 Corinthians 7 the other day. In verse 8, Paul says “For even if I made you sorry with my letter, I do not regret it.” He had ripped the Corinthians in his first letter and came back with more the second time around. And he wasn’t appologizing because he knew they needed it and it produced results.

What diligence it produced in you, what clearing of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what vehement desire, what zeal, what vindication! In all things you proved yourselves to be clear in this matter. Therefore, although I wrote to you, I did not do it for the sake of him who had done the wrong, nor for the sake of him who suffered wrong, but that our care for you in the sight of God might appear to you. (v. 11-12)

Look at that last sentence again. Paul’s exhortation was evidence of his care for the people God had entrusted to him. He owed them nothing less than the hard truth.

I pray our congregations are hearing the truth every week, whether it pats them on the back or slaps them up-side the head.

Some days are longer than others, I guess. I’ve been hung up on day three of my 31 day experience with Tozer for quite a while now. My natural tendency is to beat myself up and say: “That’s about right, Joel. You’re not very good at following through with your plans, no matter how simple they are…”

But I’m going to give myself a break, if for no other reason than it would simply accent the point Tozer makes on day three: We make our relationships with God far too complicated. If missing a reading/blogging assignment is cause to bash myself, then I’m way off base and Satan’s won without doing a single thing. There are far greater battles to fight.

Every age has its own characteristics. Right now we are in an age of religious complexity. The simplicity which is in Christ is rarely found among us. In its stead are programs, methods, organizations and a world of nervous activities which occupy time and attention but can never satisfy the longing of the heart.

Seems like I could just stop there and be satisfied with point-made. And Tozer spoke this in the 40s! What would he think of the church’s current state of relentless programming, organizing, methodizing and busy-bodying? Brace yourselves; he continues with the thought…

The shallowness of our inner experience, the hollowness of our worship and that servile imitation of the world which marks our promotional methods all testify that we, in this day, know God only imperfectly, and the peace of God scarcely at all.

Isn’t that all of us sometimes? We know that “shallowness” and “hollowness;” we’re familiar with that lack of peace. We know there’s more.

They do too. By “they” I mean… the world… the lost… the people without hope… the people who we think should come to church to hear about God. They sense the shallowness and hollowness. They understand that if some all-powerful being could make the world by speaking, He sure must be a lot more powerful than the god most churches talk about… and He sure must be worthy of a lot more worship than offered Him at 10 a.m. each Sunday morning.

People are leaving the church in droves in search of God.

If we would find God amid all the religious externals, we must first determine to find Him and then proceed in the way of simplicity. Now, as always, God discovers Himself to the “babes” and hides Himself in thick darkness from the wise and the prudent. We must simplify our approach to Him. We must strip down to essentials (and they will be found to be blessedly few). We must put away all effort to impress and come with the guileless candor of childhood…

This is where it gets really good…

When religion has said its last word, there is little that we need other than God Himself. The evil habit of seeking God-and effectively prevents us from finding God in full revelation. In the and lies our great woe. If we omit the and we shall soon find God, and in Him we shall find that for which we have all our lives been secretly longing for.

And it keeps going. Tozer is just on fire here. Hits me so hard every time I read this passage…

We need not fear that in seeking God only, we may narrow our lives or restrict the motions of our expanding hearts. The opposite is true. We can well afford to make God our All, to concentrate, to sacrifice the many for the One.

I don’t know how many times the Lord has tried to teach me this, yet it still hasn’t sank from my head to my heart. Oftentimes I crumble, frenzied with all the things that request my time, or all the dreams that swirl in my head, the curse of thoughts trapped in a Thinkers mind… I just want to burst with frustration, shouting—in my head of course—When will my life simplify! When, when will I be able to focus and really invest in something without so many distractions!

The Lord’s answer, time and time again, is that it’s always simple. There’s always a point of focus, no matter how much is going on. It’s Him, every single day. The choice is always there. He’s calling for us to pour our hearts into Him. And Tozer reminds us that we can “well afford” to do so.

When the Lord divided Canaan among the tribes of Israel, Levi received no share of the land. God said to him simply, “I am thy part and thine inheritance,” and by those words made him richer than all his brethren, richer than all the kings and rajas who have ever lived in the world. And there is a spiritual principle here, a principle still valid for every priest of the Most High God…

The man who has God for his treasure has all things in One.

I’d like to end with just that, but I really had to include the prayer Tozer leads us through at the end of the chapter.

O God, I have taster They goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still.

I’ve read through day 3, but have been distracted the past two evenings with bat and then talking with Scott…

God and man exist for each other and neither is satisfied without the other.

Have you ever thought about that we exist for God, not simply because of God? Interesting concept. Here’s another one that I don’t know I’ve pondered before: We often discuss God’s will for our lives… questions like: What does He want me to accomplish while I’m here on Earth? But what about his eternal will for me? I suppose it’s maybe a bit premature to think about too much, since we are, after all, here and not there. But maybe it would help us figure things out now if we understood better our eternal destiny.

I think these two ideas connect because there was a reason God created each of us. He had something specific in mind. And it wasn’t just to live 100 years and then fertilize the earth we walked upon. It has to do with us knowing Him and Him knowing us.

Lead us up the mountain. Lead us to the place your glory dwells, God.
Lead us up the mountain. Lead us to the place your glory dwells, God…

Clark played that Matt Redman song for us at small group on Tuesday. It’s pretty simple; those are all the lyrics for it. Yet after really listening to those words over and over again, a new revelation hit me. We often ask for God’s leading, assuming he’ll send us this way or that… maybe to a new job, or into the missions field, or into relationship with an old friend or even into repentance. But how often do we pray for him to lead us into His presence?

I think we easily get off track. We continually think it’s about doing stuff for God rather than being in relationship with him. We figure if He’s going to lead us, He’ll surely lead us to get something done for him. He’ll send us somewhere. Maybe his leading is more calling.

We are called into an everlasting preoccupation with God.

Com’on now. Be honest. Are you preoccupied with God? Yes or no.

Come near to the holy men and women of the past and you will soon feel the heat of their desire after God. They mourned for Him; they prayed and wrestled and sought for Him day and night, in season and out, and when they had found Him the finding was all the sweeter for the longseeking. Moses used the fact that he knew God as an argument for knowing Him better… (Exodus 33)

Read the story. It’s pretty cool how Moses proded the Lord for more of Him. It seems the deeper he went with God, the more he realized that God was even more so deep. Moses wasn’t content with his level of intimacy with God. It works the other way, too.

God is not satisfied until there exists between Him and His people a relaxed informality that requires no artifical stimulation. The true friend of God may sit in His presence for long periods in silence. Complete trust needs no words of assurance.