♣ We Forget

Coming across these two readings by Tozer leaves me thinking, how in the world has Christianity been reduced to the ways of man? The majority of Christianity today has no time for messages that are deemed to be labeled as negative. It is because of God’s mercy we are given such warnings and exhortations and we ignore them at our own peril!

Do we forget that many will approach Christ when He returns and say, “Lord, Lord have we not done many miracles in Your name…” only to have the reply, “Depart from Me, I never knew you…”? Such notions are foreign to our modern day Christianity. There will be many surprising and horrifying truths revealed that day. This should urge us all the more to make sure we are in the faith and to prove our election – not just to assume. Many will be eternally lost who lived with a false sense of peace and assurance.

It has been stated that many who experienced God in the true revivals felt they were never Christians before (and some of these were very devout believers). We can be sure that if God were to truly manifest His presence in our church gatherings we would be utterly ashamed to realize our shallow forms of teaching, worship and other church activities that go on in the name of God.

We are promised life in abundance and a joy inexpressible, but we forget that there is a coinciding; a refining, a breaking and being molded after the image of Jesus Christ to experience the realities of these truths.

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We Forget
A.W. Tozer

And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us. –Hebrews 11:39-40

Then there is the matter of constant consolation and peace–the promise of always feeling relaxed and at rest and enjoying ourselves inwardly.

This, I say, has been held up as being quite the proper goal to be sought in the evil hour in which we live. We forget that our Lord was a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief. We forget the arrows of grief and pain which went through the heart of Jesus’ mother, Mary. We forget that all of the apostles except John died a martyr’s death. We forget that there were 13 million Christians slain during the first two generations of the Christian era. We forget that they languished in prison, that they were starved, were thrown over cliffs, were fed to the lions, were drowned, that they were sewn in sacks and thrown into the ocean….

There was much distress, many heartaches, painful bruises, flowing tears, much loss and many deaths.

But there is something better than being comfortable, and the followers of Christ ought to find it out – the poor, soft, overstuffed Christians of our time ought to find it out! There is something better than being comfortable!

We Protestants have forgotten altogether that there is such a thing as discipline and suffering. (Who Put Jesus on the Cross? page. 17-19)

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him…. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever. –1 John 2:15,17

Any appeal to the public in the name of Christ that rises no higher than an invitation to tranquility must be recognized as mere humanism with a few words of Jesus thrown in to make it appear Christian….

Christ calls men to carry a cross;
we call them to have fun in His name.

He calls them to forsake the world;
we assure them that if they but accept Jesus the world is their oyster.

He calls them to suffer;
we call them to enjoy all the bourgeois comforts modern civilization affords.

He calls them to self-abnegation and death;
we call them to spread themselves like green bay trees or perchance even to become stars in a pitiful fifth-rate religious zodiac.

He calls them to holiness;
we call them to a cheap and tawdry happiness that would have been rejected with scorn by the least of the Stoic philosophers….

We can afford to suffer now; we’ll have a long eternity to enjoy ourselves. And our enjoyment will be valid and pure, for it will come in the right way at the right time. (Born After Midnight, page. 141-142)