The complacency of Christians is
the scandal of Christianity.
Time is short, and eternity is
long. The end of all things is at hand. Man has proved himself morally unfit to
manage the world in which he has been placed by the kindness of the Almighty.
He has jockeyed himself to the edge of the crater and cannot go back, and in
terrible fear he is holding his breath against the awful moment when he will be
plunged into the inferno.
In the meantime, a company of
people exist on the earth who claim to have the answer to all life’s major
questions. They claim to have found the way back to God, release from their
sins, life everlasting and a sure guarantee of heaven in the world to come.
These are the Christians. They
declare that Jesus Christ is very God of very God, made flesh to dwell among
us. They insist that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. They testify that
He is to them Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification and Redemption, and they
steadfastly assert that He will be to them the Resurrection and the Life for
eternity to come.
These Christians know, and when
pressed will admit, that their finite hearts have explored but a pitifully
small part of the infinite riches that are theirs in Christ Jesus. They read
the lives of the great saints whose fervent desire after God carried them far up
the mountain toward spiritual perfection; and for a brief moment they may yearn
to be like these fiery souls whose light and fragrance still linger in the
world where they once lived and laboured.
But the longing soon passes. The
world is too much with them and the claims of their earthly lives are too
insistent; so they settle back to live their ordinary lives, and accept the
customary as normal. After a while they manage to achieve some kind of inner
content and that is the last we hear of them. This contentment with inadequate
and imperfect progress in the life of holiness is, I repeat, a scandal in the
Church of the Firstborn.
The whole weight of Scripture is against such
a thing. The Holy Spirit constantly seeks to arouse the complacent. “Let us
go on” is the word of the Spirit. The Apostle Paul embodies this in his
noble testimony as found in his Philippian epistle:
“But what things were gain to me,
those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss
for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have
suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win
Christ … that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection … but this one
thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those
things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high
calling of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:7-14)
If we accept this as the sincere
expression of a normal Christian I do not see how we can justify our own
indifference toward spiritual things. But should someone feel a desire to make
definite progress in the life of Christ, what can he do to get on with it? Here
are a few suggestions:
1. Strive to get beyond mere
pensive longing. Set your face like a flint and begin to put your life in
order. Every man is as holy as he really wants to be. But the want must be
all-compelling.
Tie up the loose ends of your
life. Begin to tithe; institute family prayer; pay up your debts as far as
possible and make some kind of frank arrangement with every creditor you cannot
pay immediately; make restitution as far as you can; set aside time to pray and
search the Scriptures; surrender wholly to the will of God. You will be
surprised and delighted with the results.
2. Put away every un-Christian
habit from you. If other Christians practice it without compunction, God may be
calling you to come nearer to Him than these other Christians care to come.
Remember the words, “Others may, you cannot.” Do not condemn or criticize, but
seek a better way. God will honour you.
3. Get Christ Himself in the
focus of your heart and keep Him there continually. Only in Christ will you
find complete fulfilment. In Him you may be united to the Godhead in conscious,
vital awareness. Remember that all of God is accessible to you through Christ.
Cultivate His knowledge above everything else on earth.
4. Throw your heart open to the
Holy Spirit and invite Him to fill you. He will do it. Let no one interpret the
Scriptures for you in such a way as to rule out the Father’s gift of the
Spirit. Every man is as full of the Spirit as he wants to be. Make your heart a
vacuum and the Spirit will rush in to fill it.
Nowhere in the Scriptures nor in
Christian biography was anyone ever filled with the Spirit who did not know
that he had been, and nowhere was anyone filled who did not know when. And no
one was ever filled gradually.
5. Be hard on yourself and easy
on others. Carry your own cross but never lay one on the back of another. Begin
to practice the presence of God. Cultivate the fellowship of the Triune God by
prayer, humility, obedience and self-abnegation.
Let any Christian do these things
and he will make rapid spiritual progress. There is every reason why we should
all go forward in our Christian lives and no reason why we should not. Let us
go on.
** Written by Aiden Wilson Tozer (A.W. Tozer) **
*** From the Book - "Man: The Dwelling Place of God" ***
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