3. The Dangers of a Shallow Faith

The Dangers of a Shallow Faith. A.W. Tozer. Edited by James L. Snyder. 2012. 219 pages. [Source: Bought]

First sentence: The evangelical church in America is facing some serious hazards that threaten to bring it to the brink of apostasy.

Although A.W. Tozer died in 1963, his words for the church (and for the world) seem to be written for this  generation. Perhaps because to some extent truth is truth is truth is truth. Perhaps because the church seemed to be heading towards danger then if you had eyes to discern it, and has plunged further in with each passing generation so that now very little discernment is needed to see what is obvious. 

Tozer argues that the church--much of it, some of it--is spiritually (and somewhat morally) lethargic and is in need of awakening. To what degree and extent the church or "the church" needs awakening, believers may always quibble. 

One observation I have is that things that did concern Tozer greatly now seem so ordinary, so casual, so "normal" that they no longer concern us. Or rather they rarely concern us, and to "major" in these "minors" make us the weird, strange, out-of-touch ones. For example, Tozer's thoughts on television and movies. There are still some believers who ponder and reflect on the rights and wrongs of specific titles. Should I watch this movie? Is this series okay for me to watch? But those that object to EVERYTHING are few and far between. We see that as too extreme. One could easily dismiss Tozer as being irrelevant...if you wanted to throw the baby out with the bath water. 

Here's the thing, Tozer IS relevant. You don't have to read very far to realize this. Tozer has a very God-centered, Jesus-centered, Word-centered way to see the world. Not just bits and pieces, but the world at large. Because of this, his writing is hard to ignore or dismiss. 

His works are thought-provoking. I may not agree 100% with every single sentence in every single book. But I will be sure be thinking deeply about what I'm reading.

Quotes:

The Bible has no compromise whatsoever with the world. The Bible has a message for the evangelical church, calling it back home. The Bible always sends us out into the world, but never to compromise with the world; and never to walk in the way of the world, but only to save as many as we can. That is the one direction.

I would estimate that no denomination has ever survived its 100-year anniversary without a drastic overhaul from the inside out.

The average Christian today is addicted to exterior pleasures. Can any Christian church survive today without a heavy dose of entertainment? It is the culture of fun, fun and more fun. Performance has replaced worship. We no longer have worshipers but rather observers and spectators who sit in awe of the performance. The demand is for something that will make us feel good about ourselves and make us forget about all of our troubles.

The Church Fathers came into the presence of God with a sense of overwhelming reverence, which captivated them and brought them before God in holy silence. What has happened to reverence today? Where are those who get caught up in the spirit of reverence before their God? Where are those who have experienced the holy hush in the presence of God?

If we do not know where we have been, how in the world are we going to determine where we are going? That is the only reason for looking back. We do not look back in order to go back. Rather, we look back so that we can make sure we are going forward in the right direction.

Every time a new translation is published, I am one of the first to purchase it. However, a new, updated translation of the Scripture is not the answer. It is amazing that in a generation of Christians with more modern translations of the Scriptures than all the other generations put together, it is just about the weakest group of Christians we have ever seen.

It is not by reading the Scriptures in the original languages or in some contemporary version that makes us better Christians. Rather, it is getting on our knees with the Scriptures spread before us, and allowing the Spirit of God to break our hearts. Then, when we have been thoroughly broken before God Almighty, we get up off our knees, go out into the world and proclaim the glorious message of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world.

The Church was never designed to be piloted by men; rather, the Holy Spirit birthed the Church on the day of Pentecost as a vehicle through which He could do His work in each generation.

Boredom with religion is conceivable, but being bored with God is not. Those who have encountered God and His mighty, awesome presence could never come to the point of boredom.

The true Christian has an insatiable appetite for Christ and the things of Christ, while the world has no such appetite. Christ stands alone, and He does not imitate; neither does He court the world in a lame attempt to win the world.

We swoon over celebrity. Whatever they say, we accept as the important word for the day, even if it goes contrary to plain biblical teaching.

St. Ignatius said, “Apart from Him, let nothing dazzle you.” We are allowing everything but “Him” to dazzle us these days. We have become rather bored with God and the truths of Scripture. We seem to need something to jazz it all up and excite us. This has taken us far down the road to replacing God.

The world lives by overstimulation, one soul-wrenching episode after another. And the Church is right there with the world. It should be that great thoughts stimulate us to the highest passion our mind and feelings can stand!

What we must remember is that only he who takes orders from Jesus Christ belongs to Him. The evangelical church is in the process of compromising this very thing and ignoring “thus saith the Lord.” Yes, we want any benefits that Christ may confer upon us. We want His help, protection and guidance. We even get misty-eyed over His birth, life, death, teaching and example. The problem comes when we will not take orders from Him. Christ cannot save the one He cannot control. To claim to be saved while ignoring His commandments is to live in utter delusion.

When truth has been revealed in the Word of God, our business is to find out what that truth is, and in all of our teaching conform to that truth. We are not to edit or change it, but to let it stand just as it is. Nonconformity to the truth brings disaster. The enormity of the disaster depends upon the high level or the low level of the facts you have before you. No one who holds a right concept of God can go far wrong in anything else. All the mistakes that have been made, all the great fundamental errors, have rested on a wrong concept of God.

Men are not willing to let God be what He says He is. They attempt to change, correct, alter and apologize for God, in an attempt to make Him be other than what He is. God is, and we had better accept Him as He is. God is, and the angels want Him to be what He is. God is, and the elders and the saints and heavenly creatures want Him to be what He is. We had better want Him to be what He is, and conform ourselves to what He is. No lasting structure can be built on a bad foundation.

It would be a great and bitter error for a man or woman to go on for a lifetime believing certain things about God only to learn they were not true. To think they were talking to the God of heaven and earth and find that they were talking to a god fashioned out of their own imagination. It would be a tragic calamity to the human spirit to pray and preach a lifetime about a god who was not the true God but a composite of ideas drawn from philosophy and psychology and other religions and superstitions. God is what He is, and we had better learn what God is and then conform our teachings to that truth. If we take away any of the attributes of God, we weaken our concept of God.

Believe about yourself what God says about you. Believe you are as bad as God says you are, and believe you are as far from Him as God says you are. Then believe in Christ and that you can come as near to Him as He says you can, and accept what He says about you as being true.

Our enemy believes in slavery. There are two kinds of slavery. There is the slavery of the body, which seeks to control conduct by physical force. That slavery was once in the United States, much to our everlasting historical shame. But there is another kind of slavery that seems to me to be so much worse. It is the slavery of the mind that is achieved by means of insidious ideas that are supplied to the mind. Once these ideas get our focus, our obedience is rendered willingly and we are unaware that we have become slaves to the enemy’s propaganda.

But conditioning the mind creates a slave who doesn’t know it. We are constantly being fed harmful ideas that we adopt and learn to believe in, thinking they are all right, and so we ignorantly follow. This is done without our knowing that a keen, sharp, unscrupulous mind is seeking to control us.

How shall my ignorance become wisdom? Through the counsel of the Word of God. How shall my false notions become right notions? By being corrected by the Word of God. How shall my darkness become light? By this Book that is a light unto my pathway.

There is no such thing as automatic pilot in our Christian experience; every step is an operation of faith that will be fiercely contested by the enemy of our soul. This kind of automatic pilot thinking leads to spiritual lethargy. Breaking out from the tyranny of spiritual lethargy—whatever the cost—should be the number-one priority of every Christian.

© Becky Laney of Operation Actually Read Bible