Tozer in Prayer
From The Shepherd’s Scrapbook…
In the past I’ve been exhorted in my prayer life by the writings of A.W. Tozer. But in reading A Passion For God: The Spiritual Journey of A. W. Tozer by Lyle Dorsett (Chicago, IL; Moody, 2008 ) I’ve now been exhorted by Tozer’s practice of prayer.
Late in the book, Dorsett recounts a fairly famous account of Tozer’s writing of his classic The Pursuit of God. Here is that account—written by Tozer himself (a man not given to self-promotion).
He was invited to speak at McAllen, Texas, and he thought on the long ride down there that he would write on this book. He boarded the train—the old Pullman train—at LaSalle Street Station in Chicago—the days when you would pull the curtain on the roomette and he would be all alone. Well he asked for a little writing table which the porter brought him and he started to write. Along about nine o’clock the porter knocked on the side of the door and said, “Friend, this is the last call for dinner—would you want something to eat?” And he said, “Bring me some toast and some tea” which he did. [Tozer] kept on writing, all night long, this thing coming as fast to his heart as he could write, and when they pulled into the station, about 7:30 the next morning, at McAllen, Texas, that book was finished and all he had in front of him was just the Bible.
Dorsett follows with these exhortive descriptions.
The Pursuit of God is one of the most striking manifestations of the truth that if a man will concern himself with the depth of his ministry, the Holy Spirit will take care of the breadth. Zwemer was correct about the book’s origin. This powerful little book that has had such a profound impact on the souls of hungry Christians who crave a deeper knowledge of God was impregnated and nurtured in Tozers soul. And the gestation happened in long hours of adoration and awe of God. Although the author never boasted about his devotional habits, those few who knew him well knew that the angular man with little formal schooling learned much about his Lord and his God in the secret place.
Tozer spent incalculable hours in prayer. Most of his prolonged prayer time—with his Bible and hymnals as his only companions—took place in his church office on the back side of the second floor. He would carefully hang up his suit trousers and don his sweater and raggedy old “prayer pants” and sit for a while on his ancient office couch. After a time his spirit would drift into another realm. In time, he would abandon the couch, get on his knees, and eventually lie facedown on the floor, singing praises to the Lion of the Tribe of Judah.
No one presumed to interrupt these times of intimacy between A. W. Tozer and the Lover of his soul. But occasionally one of the men closest to him would climb the steps to his office and chance to see him on the couch or floor—totally oblivious to the world. Francis Chase, Harry Verploegh, and Tozer’s assistant pastor, Ray McAfee, all saw him at one time or another in one of these postures. And more than one of them mentioned that Tozer was weeping or moaning facedown in the old carpet.
-Lyle Dorsett, A Passion For God: The Spiritual Journey of A. W. Tozer (Chicago, IL; Moody, 2008 ), pp. 121-122.
Do People Bore You?
John Piper writes…
I’m working on a book on the new birth. The final chapter is designed to give encouragements for personal evangelism. I just added a quote by C. S. Lewis that I love. Here’s the whole section to help you move toward people:
Find People Interesting
Be encouraged that simply finding people interesting and caring about them is a beautiful pathway into their heart. Evangelism gets a bad reputation when we are not really interested in people and don’t seem to care about them. People really are interesting. The person you are talking to is an amazing creation of God with a thousand interesting experiences. Remember the words of C. S. Lewis:
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would strongly be tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. (The Weight of Glory, 14-15)
Yet, most of us don’t think this way. The gods bore us and we return to our video games. Very few people are interested in others. If you really find their story interesting, and care about them, they may open up to you and want to hear your story—Christ’s story.
An Ineffable Pitch of Pleasure and Joy
From Sam Storms at Enjoying God Ministries…
Meditate deeply on Jonathan Edwards’ comments concerning God’s design in our redemption:
“It was a great design of God to advance all the elect to an exceeding pitch of glory, such as eye has not seen. He intended to bring them to perfect excellency and beauty in his image and in holiness which is the proper beauty of spiritual beings, and to advance ‘em to a glorious degree of honor and also to an ineffable pitch of pleasure and joy.” In all this, says Edwards, “God designed to accomplish the glory of the blessed Trinity in an exceeding degree” (125).
An ineffable pitch of pleasure and joy in God! This is his design for you, forever, for his glory. Amen.
Suffering is Not a Sin
Bryan Wolfmueller…
Suffering is not a sin. The devil would try to tempt us otherwise. Remember how it was with Job. His three friends (then four), all poor theologians, tried to connect the dots between Job’s suffering and his sin. The same temptation comes to us when we thing that a Christian must always be happy and cheerful, or when we imagine that there is some sort of shame in suffering and trouble.
There is a type of “Billboard Christianity” where everyone is smiling and successful, healthy and happy. This plastic faith understands Jesus as spiritual “Botox”, and the if you are sad or depressed it is because you faith is not strong enough. In fact, we hear this type of thing from the television preachers. “God wants you,” they say, “to be healthy, wealthy and wise.” And if you are not, you must be under God’s curse or the control of the devil and so forth and so on. As if we are Christian robots with these two facial expressions: happy and ecstatic. I know that this false teaching hasn’t made its way among us, but perhaps there is even in our midst a shame in our suffering, a thought (even if we haven’t thought about it in these words) that our suffering is a sin.
This is simply not the case. If suffering was a sin, then Jesus would have committed sin. Who, after all, suffered more than our Lord Jesus in His cross? On the cross He tasted God’s wrath, knew the depths of the affliction of hell. Jesus suffered. He did not sin.
And Jesus was not alone in His suffering. As Christians we share in the Lord’s suffering. Rather than being sin, suffering is part and parcel of the Christian life.
When Jesus asked if anyone would follow Him He didn’t say, “If any would be My disciple, let Him take up His victorious life and follow Me.” No. Jesus bids us take us “take up your cross and follow Me.” [Matthew 16:24] Jesus has warned us that in this world we will have trouble. “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” [John 16:33]
This trouble and tribulation comes from the world, the flesh and the devil, the three constant enemies of the Lord and His church. It was this way from the beginning, and will be this way until the Lord returns, the Lord’s people suffer. From Abel to Noah to Joseph and Moses and David and all the prophets. In fact, when you read Hebrews 11, a chapter often called “The Hall of Faith”, you find a list of the Old Testament faithful, which is also a list of their suffering.
In the New Testament it is the same way. Jesus says, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” [John 15:18-19] The apostle’s suffered because of the name of Jesus, and far from considering this to be sin, they thought it pure joy. “Then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name [of Jesus].” [Acts 5:41]
St. Paul encourages the church to “rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” [Romans 5:3-5]
When St. Peter tells us to follow the example of our Jesus, he instructs us to be like Jesus in His suffering. This is incredible. Rather that showing us Jesus as an example of life, of victory, of overcoming trouble or any such thing, Jesus is our example in suffering. “For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.” [1 Peter 2:20-21]
Far from being a sin, suffering is a mark of being Christian. The holy cross is a mark of the church. In this life we are traveling through a vale of tears, the valley of the shadow of death, but the Lord is with us in our suffering. He knows what it’s like. And He comes to us with His comforting promises that He will never leave or forsake us [Hebrews 13:5], that He will be with us always, even to the end of the age [Matthew 28:20]. He promises that while our suffering will be for a while, His comfort and life and salvation will last forever.
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. [Romans 8:18]
ht: Extreme Theology
Why Reformed?
Thank you to Nathan Pitchford at Reformation Theology.
Lately, there seems to be growing interest in the resurgence of Calvinism and Reformed Theology among the younger generation of Evangelicals. Persons from within Evangelicalism/Fundamentalism, as well as outsiders, are taking note, and wondering what could be fueling the phenomenon. I was recently approached by someone asking for possible reasons or motivations underlying this resurgence among younger evangelicals, and after a little deliberation I came up with five motivations that I see at work, as listed below. I am sure there are others, but these seem highly instrumental to me. What do the rest of you think?
1. Dissatisfaction with the theology and religious environment of our parents. The milieu in which we grew up was characterized on the one hand by a high-stress, high-guilt, man-powered striving after sanctification, evangelism, etc., that left a great deal of burned-out and disillusioned Christians all around us. On the other hand, the services and worship were often characterized by a frivolity and superficiality that left us unsatisfied and longing for more substance. The combination was virtually unsustainable for the long term. We were constantly striving to obey a long list of rules and standards, by our own efforts, feeling the crushing weight of guilt for our many failures, for all the unevangelized people around us whom we passed on the streets without sharing the gospel, and whose blood was therefore on our hands, and so on. And then, on Sunday, to be recharged and equipped for another week of will-motivated strivings, we sang a handful of trite and trivial choruses. It just didn’t cut it. When Reformed doctrine came into the picture, it was the most liberating and captivating thing that could be imagined. All of a sudden, my salvation, sanctification, acceptance with God, and so on, wasn’t dependent on me. God was responsible for my salvation, from beginning to end. I didn’t produce faith from my own dead and hardened nature in the first place, even that was a gift of God; and what God had begun, God would finish. And then, in proportion as my view of myself diminished, my view of my Savior increased, to such an extent that gazing on his manifold perfections truly was an unending source of delight and nourishment for the Christian race. My rest became my strength, my despair in myself became my confidence in Another, my confidence apart from my works became the motivation by which my works abounded as a labor of love and not a torture of guilt.
2. Desire for a rootedness and connectedness with the historic faith. We also became quite dismayed over the fragmentation of the Evangelical Church, the consumer-minded, individualistic shopping for the denomination, worship style, and points of doctrine which are “right for you,” which is so characteristic of the American protestant culture. The Reformed tradition has a rich legacy of unbroken doctrinal tradition from the days of the Reformers, who themselves labored to show their connectedness and continuity with the Church fathers and apostles.
3. The resurgence of Puritan literature. There is no greater motivation to become Reformed than reading the light-and-heat writings of Edwards and others, who evinced a doctrinal depth, exegetical precision, and ardor of heart like no one else. Banner of Truth Trust, J. I. Packer’s intros and popularizing, etc., are having a tremendous impact.
4. John Piper. He is probably the major reason that there is such a high percentage of Reformed Baptists in the modern resurgence. But many paedo-baptists also love him and have learned much from his passionate and articulate recasting of Reformed Theology for the Church of today.
5. The internet (and Monergism in particular). Monergism was the website which introduced me and many of my friends to the Reformed worldview, and it continues to have an impact on our thinking, studying, etc. Just the growing availability of reliable resources on the internet has been phenomenally helpful, and sites like Monergism, where all the best contemporary and classic resources of historic Christianity are available at the click of a button, has greatly facilitated the desire to be “always reforming” (semper reformanda).
(emphasis mine)
Sing the Glory of His Name
In the middle of this series on “Why Do We Sing?” some of you may be asking, “Why is he making such a big deal about singing? Don’t we sing because we want to sing? It sure beats talking for the whole meeting!”
Yes, it certainly does. And so far in this series, we’ve discussed how God gave us singing to help us remember and meditate on truth about Him. But the purposes for our singing go far beyond that. Singing is also one of the Christian’s primary means for expressing objective truth about
God.
Psalm 66:2 says, “Sing the glory of his name; make his praise glorious!” When we sing the glory of God’s name, we declare and reflect on who He is, what He has done, and what He will do. God wants us to sing the glory of His name because He is like no other. He is the I AM, Redeemer, Shepherd, Almighty Lord, God our Provider, Deliverer, Holy One. He wants us to sing about His unique work as Redeemer, Creator, and Savior. Each name represents a unique aspect of God, and each draws us to worship Him in a slightly different way. He wants us to describe over and over again the specific ways He has proven His faithfulness, goodness, greatness, majesty, purity, compassion, love, and mercy. He wants his name and character to be set apart.
That’s why the songs we sing ought to be derived from or thoroughly tested by Scripture. A friend pointed out to me that if most of our songs can be sung just as well by Buddhists, Muslims, or Hindus, we need to change our repertoire! This doesn’t mean that the songs we sing are intended to be a systematic Christian theology, but they should help us clearly and accurately glorify the only true God. That’s why, when we’re choosing songs for the Sunday service or our small group, the lyrics are of greater concern than the chords and the beat!
It’s also a good idea to memorize songs as we’re able. You’ve heard of A.D.D? That’s Attention Deficit Disorder. Well, I think on Sundays many of us can suffer from a modern affliction called O.D.D. - - Overhead Dependency Disorder — which is closely related to a much older malady
known as H.F.S., or Hymnal Fixation Syndrome. I’ve watched people keep their eyes glued to the screen or printed page throughout the worship, even when they’re singing songs they know by heart! How much more valuable it would be to learn some of these songs, and then sing them, from memory! The more words about God I can store up in my heart, the more I can be helped by them throughout the day.
Some years ago I realized I had a very limited knowledge of hymns. So I started using a hymnal in my devotional times. What a difference it made! My prayer life received a fresh infusion of truth, passion, and depth. Over time I’ve tried to memorize a number of the hymns, and this
has benefited me immeasurably by expanding my vocabulary for singing God’s praise.
What an amazing gift God has given us in singing. Next time we’ll look at a second way in which singing helps us respond to God. Until then, remember how much we have to sing about — because of Jesus.
-Bob Kauflin
Nick Vujicic
Visit Nick’s website here.
Gospel Love and the Horror of Abortion
“Yesterday I met with a friend who told me a troubling story. A lifelong friend of his had gotten pregnant. This gal was like a sister to him. She told him she was pregnant and was thinking of abortion. He tried to reason with her and even told her that if she gave birth to the child, he and his wife would adopt it. A few days later he got a text from her saying that she went ahead and terminated the child. My friend was utterly heart-broken and asked to meet with me to help him think through this tragedy. How should he proceed in his relationship with his friend in light of this horror that she committed? Here is what we talked about:
1. Some time and space from your friend for the purpose of grieving might be wise, healthy and necessary. In the face of such a complex situation emotionally, sometimes a little distance is good for the sake of healing and prayer. Emotional flooding can lead to confusion in our thinking in light of the pain of a situation like this.
2. We can’t expect non-Christians to act like Christians. Should we appeal to them and reason with them to do what is right? Surely. But we should not be surprised when unbelievers act out of pure selfishness as opposed to understanding that “it is more blessed to give than receive” (Acts 20:35). May we do our battling on our knees in prayer as we ask God to remove a selfish heart that desires to kill for the sake of convenience and replace it with a heart that loves to serve in light of how Jesus served. Our reasoning can only go so far. Sin is never reasonable or rational. Though we should seek to reason with people in light of God’s word, we should not be surprised when they forsake it. Pharisees saw Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead and hated him for it.
Thus we have to start with the gospel with unbelievers and not with asking them to stop sinning. Unregenerate people are doing just what comes naturally to them. Thus, we can’t ask them to get cleaned up and then come to Jesus. This is pure legalism. We ask them to see their need for a Savior and then we trust his Holy Spirit to “clean them up” after they are united to Him by faith in his work on their behalf.
3. The pain of this experience gives us a front and center window into the gospel. The Bible does not say that Christ loved us when we did all the right things and followed the law of God perfectly. What does the Bible say? “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). So if we are going to love like God loves we have to love in the face of horrific sin. Did not God do the same with us? Forgiveness and love are certainly costly and uncomfortable. Those descriptors would be an understatement when it comes to crucifixion. If we want to follow Jesus, should we not expect gospel-centered loving to be costly and painful as well?
So we move forward with a tear-filled and broken, yet prayful and hopeful heart remembering that we too would be selfish and murderous if not for the grace of God in our lives. Read what Paul says here to the church in Corinth:
Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God (1 Cor. 6:9-11).
“Such were some of you” rings loudly in my head as we come face to face with the gospel in this situation. May God’s grace to us inform how we love those who are far from him.”
-Zach Nielsen
