“The Great God Entertainment”

I posted this on “The Great God Entertainment” by A. W. Tozer over at Reformation21. It’s a stonker.

Now . . . here . . . us

Unbelief says: Some other time, but not now; some other place, but not here; some other people, but not us. Faith says: Anything He did anywhere else He will do here; anything He did any other time He is willing to do now; anything He ever did for other people He is willing to do for us! With our feet on the ground, and our head cool, but with our heart ablaze with the love of God, we walk out in this fullness of the Spirit, if we will yield and obey. God wants to work through you!

A. W. Tozer, The Counselor (Camp Hill, 1993), page 116.

via Ray Ortlund.

Abiding by communion

What follows is from Ted Donnelly, in his book Life in Christ, on what it means to abide in Christ.  He speaks of abiding by faith, by obedience, and by personal and corporate communion with the living God.  With regard to the latter, and specifically the life of the church, Pastor Donnelly writes:

We need also, as churches, to focus on communion with the Lord.  We must give worship, study and prayer first place in our agenda.  Our age is an impatient one, in love with activity, and A. W. Tozer’s words are truer now than when he wrote them a generation ago:

‘The accent in the church today,’ says Leonard Ravenhill . . . ‘is not on devotion, but on commotion’ . . . The adolescent taste which loves the loud horn and thundering exhaust has got into the activities of modern Christians . . . We must begin the needed reform by challenging the spiritual validity of externalism.  What a man is must be shown to be more important than what he does . . . We must show a new generation of nervous, almost frantic, Christians that power lies at the centre of the life . . . The desire to be dramatically active is proof of our religious infantilism; it is a type of exhibitionism common to the kindergarten.[1]

This is not a plea for quietism, defined in the dictionary as ‘a passive attitude towards life, with devotional contemplation and abandonment of the will, as a form of religious mysticism.’  It is simply a recognition of the truth of the promise, ‘they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength’ (Isa. 40:31).  The church which makes a priority of fellowship with Christ will find itself brought by him, as he has promised, to a new level of fruitfulness.[2]

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[1] A. W. Tozer, The Root of the Righteous (Harrisburg, PA: Christian Publications Inc., 1955), 75-76.

[2] Edward Donnelly, Life in Christ: Walking in Newness of Life (Bryntirion, Wales: Bryntirion Press, 2007), 71-72.