Push Button Spirituality
Stumbled on to this challenging quote by A.W. Tozer. We'll definitely use it in our worship folder down the road, but I thought I'd throw it out here now for your contemplation and response. I'm definitely guilty of push button spirituality. . . how about you?
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 lately returned from afar.Lord, take us deep. The life of faith is usually slow business, usually a walk, not a run. What is happening in our souls? Do we even know? Can we even tell?
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, salesmanship methods, the mistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit; these and such as these are the symptoms of an evil disease, a deep and serious malady of the soul.
---A. W. Tozer, in THE PURSUIT OF GOD, Harrisburg, PA: Christian Publications, 1948, pp. 69-70.
I think we've been unkowingly shoved into the world's mold in thinking a relationship with God is instant and easy.
4 comments:
That is the very essence of modern day America. I want therefore I get - NOW!!!
What amazes me about that quote is it was written in 1948--well over 60 years ago. So the vast majority of people who read that have known nothing different.
It makes me wonder if this impatience is endemic to "modern society," or just an epidemic of the human race. I certainly feel like it's speeding up, but it doesn't sound like we're all that different from the people of the 1940s.
In fact, if memory serves, microwave ovens weren't even prevalent until the 1970s, so Tozer was facing "microwave" culture years before the microwave was really around.
That's exactly what I was thinking... how much moreso has our world changed since 1948?!
I pray that we would be able to spend long, deep, meaningful time with our Maker and understand that a relationship with Him will require that we invest our time to cultivate. It isn't one that we can put energy into for 5 min./day and expect something REAL from it.
Another good find, Pastor Tim!
Very thought provoking...thanks for sharing.
Post a Comment