“Our woes began when God was forced out of His central shrine and things were allowed to enter. Within the human heart things have taken over. Men have now by nature no peace within their hearts, for God is crowned there no longer, but there in the moral dusk, stubborn and aggressive usurpers fight among themselves for first place on the throne.
This is not a mere metaphor, but an accurate analysis of our real spiritual trouble. There is within the human heart a tough, fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets things with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns my and mine look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant… The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God’s gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.” -from “The Pursuit of God” by A.W. Tozer
To my Christian friends (and to myself) I pose the following question: all other things aside, if all God ever did for you was send Jesus to die for your sins would that be sufficient for you to seek God?
After mulling over a variety of personal spiritual experiences and doing a great deal of soul-searching I have come to believe that if our answer to that question is anything other than a resounding “Yes!”, we have misunderstood and perverted the very gospel we claim to believe.
If we cannot answer “yes” to this basic question, we have not understood the profundity of God’s unfailing love toward us, that even in our wretched, debauched state he would still send Jesus to bear our sins and remove our self-inflicted yoke of bondage. Without this awareness, how could we ever hope to communicate the depths of that love to the lost who still suffer? Without understanding the depths of God’s love, how can we really seek God with any true, pure, humble sincerity?
Additionally, if we cannot answer “yes” to this basic question, we have attached conditions to whether or not we serve God whole-heartedly. God’s love for us was without condition and without regard to our sin. How much more should our love for God be without condition?
What concerns me is that for many of us, if we are truly honest with ourselves, the answer to this basic question is “No.” We’ve desired all sorts of things from God like favor, spiritual gifts, wisdom, knowledge, financial blessings, healing, etc. Are we seeking God or are we just pandering to God for auxiliary benefits which fit our self-serving agenda?
In the end, if all Jesus did was die for our sins to redeem us from our own iniquity, that ought to be enough for us to seek him and serve him with all of our strength. This one fact should compel us to serve others with the same love which was given so freely to us. Seeking God with the intention of obtaining whatever secondary blessings may exist is foolish and has lead to innumerable distortions and perversions of the gospel.
May we always live in the shadow of the cross, humbly asking God for the love and strength to carry our own, that others make take up theirs and follow.
No comments:
Post a Comment