Words from A. W. Tozer that are as timely as when he penned them

It has been a full week here and I am once again rushing about to get things done so I hopefully can run errands and get to work on time! Sigh! Always so much to do and so little time.

As I went through this week, one of my morning devotional readings spoke so strongly into what 2020 has brought out in our world. Yet it was written many, many years ago by A. W. Tozer.

“The moral shock suffered by us through our mighty break with the high will of heaven has left us all with a permanent trauma affecting every part of our nature. There is a disease both in ourselves and in our environment.”
A. W. Tozer November 16, in Faith that Matters; Harper One, 2011 excerpt taken from Tozer’s “Knowledge” pg. 103

Hello.

This year of the pandemic/the voicing of masses of people who feel they have not been heard/political shenanigans/global crisis/violent storms, fires and disasters of nature…all of these have brought to the surface what we are made of as a nation and , oh my, have mercy. We have seen what we are and what we are capable of within our own hearts and out in the world.

To name a few things we have seen a sharp rise in rebellion of all kinds (from burning cities to refusing to follow government restrictions for health), mean spirited confrontations from the head of our political parties down to our personal social media feeds with friends and acquaintances, confusion of all manner in regarding what is fact and what is spin, a complete upturning of the economy where we are closing businesses and then manufacturing funny money to help them out, shortages because of people hoarding products we all need, anxiety, depression, abuse, addiction, pornography and racial tension are astronomical, suicide is on the rise along with anger and rage at increasingly alarming measures.

You get it. You live in it just like I do.

You have probably felt it, too. You, like me, have watched the college football game with students clustered in the stands while you held your child who was mourning his little youth basketball season canceled.

We shake our heads as one business after another is on the brink of going out of business and we spread wide our hands and wonder how children are going to be educated and how much more we can stretch our already stretched out teachers, nurses and hearts.

And yet so many refuse to acknowledge God.

We blame everyone but our own sinful and rebellious nature as humans. Flawed humans living amongst other flawed humans looking for the ones we could weed out so that everything would go the way it’s supposed to.

And this is on all sides. No matter where you stand on any issue, the ones who don’t agree with and support you are the wrong ones and should be silenced at best and possibly eliminated at worst.

We continue to cling to the idea that this leader or that plan of health care or some magic bullet will bring peace and comfort and prosperity for all.

Tozer offers these words:

“Until we have seen ourselves as God sees us, we are not likely to be much disturbed over conditions around us as long as they don’t get so far out of hand as to threaten our comfortable way of life. We have learned to live with unholiness and have come to look upon it as the natural and expected thing.”
A. W. Tozer November 16, in Faith that Matters; Harper One, 2011 excerpt taken from Tozer’s “Knowledge” pg. 103

Wow.

Perhaps we might look at the ways our “comfortable way of life” has been disrupted in 2020 and begin to ask God, as Christians, ask God to help us see ourselves and our choices and our sin the way He sees it.

And then repent and ask Him to remind us what holiness looks like and how we can move toward that in what’s left of 2020 and beyond <3

Bless you.

You are worth the price of God’s only Son, the gift of salvation has been given to you. Rejoice in this and seek to be holy as He is holy <3

You are loved.

If this resonates with you, here are some additional resources:

This series but particularly Jonathan’s sermon from this past Sunday. https://www.firstdecatur.org/messages/overflow/

Romans 12:1 & 2

Isaiah 6

Psalm 51

That should give you a start <3

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