A. W. Tozer managed to work me over pretty good today. I read the following passage and was challenged to think about what little effort I put into my pursuit of God.
“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 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, salesmen methods, the mistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit: these and such as these are symptoms of an evil disease, a deep and serious malady of the soul.” (The Pursuit of God)
I am personally guilty of reading a chapter or two saying a a prayer and rushing off to some other task whether I have encountered God or not. I can’t say it any better than Tozer, so I will let his words speak for themselves save this. Perhaps our lives are hollow because we fill our lives with hollow things.
James 4:8:
Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
Maybe, just maybe, God feels distant, because we have not done what we need to come near to him.
