“Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God, just as her most significant message is what she says about Him or leaves unsaid, for her silence is often more eloquent than her speech. She can never escape the self-disclosure of her witness concerning God.” (A.W. Tozer, “The Knowledge of the Holy,” [Harper and Row Publishers, 1961] p.9) Today we find ourselves at best floundering about notions and thoughts about God that can be scarcely called fruitful. We vaccilate from God our buddy to God our adventurer. Gone are our days when a God-centered and high view of God was the norm. To think highly, lofty, majestically, and profoundly about God has long disappeared. Have you noticed lately where they place all the commentaries (if any can be found), theology books, and serious readings in our Christian bookstores? If you haven’t, I challenge you to ask where they can be found, if any are being stocked. Noticeably they are placed in the back, not in front of the store, away from the popular fiction, devotionals, contemporary biographies, pop-culture topics, etc. These popular staples of our Christian book stores rule the day. It is highly visible and blatant that the Church has fallen prey to oversimplification and bite-size pop-culture, God-stuff. No real or weighty books of theology or of any subsatnce is current. They’re too hard, too serious, too weighty, too much, too boring, too difficult, and of course, too irrelevant. We must recapture, rediscover, and refuel our passion for knowing God in a profound and intimate way. This always requires time, effort, sweat, reading, discipline, training, passion, and honest search of the lofty thoughts of God. All revivals and great transformations of Christians of the past were possible because of their deep earnest search, study, and stick-to-itness. Luther received fire and his heart was aflamed becasuse of his deep thoughts of God in the book of Romans. Calvin found great truths of the sovereignty of God through painstaking study. These and many others were totally and entirely absorbed with the great thoughts of God. Have you thought deeply about God lately? Have you ventured into a deep contemplation about God lately? Or, are your thoughts nothing but fleeting and so transient that are not worthy to be called thoughts at all? Ask God to give you the desire to read intently and deeply about Himself. (Ehesians 1:15-19, 3:18-19; 2 Peter 1:5-8; -1 Timothy 4:16)
0 Comments