The Pursuit of God by Tozer - Reflections (18)

 

 

As I pondered how to conclude our reflections on Chapter Two, The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing, my thoughts were drawn to 2 Corinthians chapters 8 and 9. I have never heard these chapters fairly preached or taught, and I don’t expect to in my lifetime. Yes, I have heard preachers cherry pick them when speaking on “stewardship,” for “God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor. 9:7) is too good to pass up – but this is really crass manipulation of the passage for it rips it out of context and spares us the challenge of obedience.

 

These two chapters have the potential to expose our hearts regarding possessions, regarding what Tozer terms, “my and mine,” more than any other passage in the Bible. They have the potential not only to do this to us as individuals, but also as marriages, as families, as congregations, as denominations, and as various institutions (such as parachurch ministries and seminaries).

 

In this passage the Holy Spirit, through the apostle Paul, calls us not just to a single act of obedience, but to a way of life – and it is in confronting this way of life that our attitude toward possessions is especially revealed.

Saturday, July 5: I intended to complete this post today in order to conclude Chapter Two, however, we have a tropical storm moving into our area and it is uncertain what to expect. This means that I’ve spent a couple of hours already (it’s 7:32 AM right now) preparing for the storm – bringing umbrellas inside, making room in the garage for the car (ha!), and otherwise preparing for what will hopefully be a couple of days of uneventful weather. We have learned over the years, whether with New England blizzards or Virginia and South Carolina tropical storms and hurricanes, that it is wise to prepare for the worst and pray for the best.

 

So I am going to post what I’ve written above and ask you to read and ponder 2 Corinthians chapters 8 and 9. What is Paul saying about how we should live in Christ toward one another? What should our attitude toward possessions be – as seen in these chapters? What are the challenges in these chapters? That is, what are the barriers in thinking and living like they portray?

 

I’ll circle back to this passage in my next post and complete what I began in this post, the Lord willing.

 

Right now I still have other things to do regarding the storm.

 

Much love,

 

Bob

 

The Pursuit of God by Tozer - Reflections (17)

 

“The Christian who is alive enough to know himself even slightly will recognize the symptoms of this possession malady, and will grieve to find them in his own heart. If the longing after God is strong enough within him, he will want to do something about the matter. Now, what should he do?” (pages 28 – 29).

 

“First of all, he should put away all defense and make no attempt to excuse himself either in his own eyes or before the Lord. Whoever defends himself will have himself for his defense, and he will have no other. But let him come defenseless before the Lord and he will have for his defender no less than God Himself. Let the inquiring Christian trample under foot every slippery trick of his deceitful heart and insist upon frank and open relations with the Lord” (page 29).

 

Our Father and Lord Jesus want the best for us, and that includes setting us free from being possessed by possessions, whether material or otherwise. As Tozer writes on page 22, “There is within the human heart a tough, fibrous root of a fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess” (italics mine). As we’ve pointed out, what this looks like in my life is probably not what it looks like in your life, our calling is not to evaluate one another, it is to stand before Jesus Christ and ask Him to search us and try us, to shine His Light upon us, and to ensure that only God is worshipped within the Holy of Holies of our hearts and souls.

 

I wonder how it is possible to have this conversation in the world and church in which we live, it is like speaking a different language; more than that, it is speaking a different language within an alien culture, one with different values than our own.

 

We exalt worldly success within the professing church, we talk about money as a central benchmark of our congregational health (and we are adept at justifying this focus), we justify hoarding money while neighbors are hungry and homeless, we are more interested in our children and grandchildren having well – paying jobs than knowing Jesus and living godly lives, we know the composition of our 401ks but not our Bibles, we are more prone to speak to one another of the financial markets at church than of how Jesus is revealing Himself to us.

 

We forget, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9).

 

I find it hard to conceive that in a society and a church that is obsessed with money and things and power and pleasure that we can even begin to approach the problem of the insidious idols within us; all the more reason to cry out to Jesus for mercy and help.

 

For sure, as Tozer writes, we must put away all defense and excuses – and this goes against our grain, for again we live in a church and society that tells us we deserve the best, that we deserve all that we can obtain. We can’t do this without the grace of Jesus, and we need His grace every day to do it.  Only the Holy Spirit can enable us to “trample under foot every slippery trick” of our deceitful hearts.

 

What a challenge this can be in the face of churches and so-called ministries that exalt material prosperity, that teach us to avoid the Christ of the Cross and laying down our lives for Christ and others.

 

Tozer writes that we ought to, “Insist that God accept his [our] all, that He take things out of his [our] heart and Himself reign there in power” (page 29). We ought not to be among those “Who coddle their feelings and insist upon caution in their dealings with God” (page 29).

 

Will we take the walk of Abraham with our Isaac up Mt. Moriah and offer to God that which is most precious to us? Will we say with David, “Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth” (Psalm 73:25)? Will we allow God to reorient our hearts and minds from the earthly and self-centered to the heavenly and Christ-centered?

 

Tozer says that we must experience this work of God in our hearts, that it is not a truth to be intellectually learned. He writes that we must “live through Abraham’s hard and bitter experiences if we would know the blessedness which follows them. The ancient curse will not go out painlessly…” (page 29).

 

I have never preached this nor taught it, and this shames me. O yes, I have preached the Way of the Cross, I have taught the intercessory life, I have quoted Mark 8:34 – 38 times without number. But O how I wish I could go back and lead my people with Abraham up Mt. Moriah, how I wish I could ask each one of us to bring our Isaacs to offer to God, how I wish we could ponder each step, one foot in front of the other, allowing the Holy Spirit to speak to us and to work deep within our hearts and souls.

 

Even now I am not sure I understand the depth of what Tozer is writing, I have been in the religious opium den too long. What was once familiar to me was lost in layer after layer of pragmatic American religion. Have we not become like Peter in trying to shield Jesus from the Cross, from His calling and destiny and glory? (Matthew 16:21 – 23). And let’s not forget, one minute Peter confessed Jesus, the next he played the role of Satan!

 

Do we not strive to shield one another from Mt. Moriah, from the Cross of Christ?

 

“If we would indeed know God in growing intimacy, we must go this way of renunciation. And if we are set upon the pursuit of God, He will sooner or later bring us to this test” (page 30).

 

Does this make any sense to you?

 

The Lord willing, we’ll take one more look at this before we conclude Tozer’s chapter on, The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing.

 

What might the “way of renunciation” look like in our lives?

 

 

The Pursuit of God by Tozer - Reflections (16)

 

“Our gifts and talents should also be turned over to Him. They should be recognized for what they are, God’s loan to us, and should never be considered in any sense our own” (page 28).

 

The first “gift assessment” I saw was around 1990. I’m sure they existed before then, but the first one I saw was when a friend brought one to me that his church was doing. This particular assessment required that the participants have people who knew them fill out portions of the assessment based on their knowledge of the participants. I dutifully and politely (unusual for me I suppose) filled out the request form, but I did so with inner hesitation.

 

Since then, I have seen many forms of gift assessment, and I have yet to see one with which I am comfortable – not one. In fact, the more sophisticated they become, the more I am not only uncomfortable, but the more I fear in terms of a descent into Gnosticism and beyond (more on this below).

 

The most critical element which these gift assessments lack is the Cross of Christ. 

 

As our chapter on possessing nothing emphasizes, all that we have must go to and through the Cross, it must be offered up to God. Without having been to the Cross, and remaining in the Cross, our gifts and talents are poison for they are rooted in self-reliance and not in Jesus Christ. When Jesus says, “Apart from Me you can do nothing,” He includes our talents and gifts. This means, in part, that our greatest gifts are also our greatest weaknesses and dangers, for if we rely on ourselves and our own abilities we will live according to the flesh, the natural – and our fruit will be death, death to ourselves and death to others.

 

Our fruit may not look like death, it may look, “Good for food, be a delight to the eyes, and desirable to make one wise” (Genesis 3:6), but it will most certainly result in death.

 

Then we have the assumption that God wants us to primarily use our “natural” gifts and talents and to not venture into areas in which we are not naturally gifted. This thinking is carnal and not spiritual; it rests on the natural and not on the Holy Spirit – it requires no dependence on God. We ought not to make such assumptions.

 

Moses argued with God that he was not, “eloquent,” and that he was “slow of speech and slow of tongue” (Ex. 4:10). Paul writes to the Corinthians, “I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom…” (1 Cor. 2:3 – 4). Jeremiah protested to God, “I do not know how to speak, because I am a youth” (Jer. 1:6).

 

God calls people into areas of service for which they are not naturally gifted; let us not be so foolish as to look at the outward, or to evaluate people and church life the way the world does, Christ Jesus is the Head of the Body. The Word of God may very well come to us through the most shy and soft-spoken man or woman in our midst, but we will never know if our eyes are focused on the natural and not on the Cross of Christ. We are too easily impressed.

 

It is easy for us to forget that God’s strength is “made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). We tend to forget that it is the Holy Spirit who works in us, the Body of Christ, as He wills, not as we will (1 Cor. 12:11). Our presumptions are dangerous. Just because we can do things does not mean that we should do things, things done in the “natural” are best left undone. If it is not of Christ Jesus, if it is not through the Cross, then we had better leave the task alone.

 

One of our problems today is that we have built edifices ourselves rather than in Christ, ignoring Psalm 127:1, “Unless the LORD builds the house, they labor in vain who build it; unless the LORD guards the city, the watchman keeps awake in vain.” What we have built ourselves we must maintain ourselves, what we have artificially built, must be artificially maintained.

 

Then we have groups and ministries that were born of the Spriit, but at some point veered into the flesh or worse (Galatians 3:3; also see Revelation chapters 2 and 3). Naturally we justify our actions and thinking, for we must grow, we must acquire more, we must be bigger and better each year. We end up riding a tiger which will devour us if we dismount.

 

Let’s recall that Isaac was a child of promise. In the “natural,” Abraham and Sarah could not produce Isaac, they were old, they were just too old. When Isaac was given to them, he was not given to become an idol, he was not given so that Abraham and Sarah should center their lives around him, he was not given to be taken into the inner most shrine of the heart – the place where only God is to dwell.

 

So with us, so with our churches, what God gives us is never ours to possess, it is given to us in trust and we are to be good stewards of God’s gifts and resources – we are to own nothing – how can we own anything if we are owned by Jesus Christ? The words “my” and “mine” ought to never enter our minds, for all is to be surrendered to the Cross, and all is to remain in the Cross.

 

Before we conclude this reflection (in our next reflection we’ll ponder what Tozer writes about how we can respond to Christ in obedience), I’ll comment on gift assessments which include personality and temperament analysis (more and more gift assessments now include this element).

 

Only God truly knows us (Psalm 139) and only the Holy Spirit can reveal what we need to know about ourselves (Psalm 19:11 – 14; Psalm 139:23 – 24; Hebrews 4:12 – 16; Philippians 2:12 - 13). Preoccupation with self-analysis is never-ending and leads downward and downward into Gnostic darkness. The great question of life is not, “Who am I?” but rather, “Who is Jesus Christ?”

 

Our lives are transformed into goodness, truth, and beauty as we behold Jesus Christ, not as we ponder our emotional and psychological navels (1 John 3:1 – 3; 2 Cor. 3:17 – 18; Rom. 12:1 – 2). We are not capable of defining ourselves, of truly understanding ourselves, only our Creator – Father truly knows us. (I have written more extensively about this on Mind on Fire when exploring John 15:1ff.)

 

I have seen people become trapped within psychological assessments, adopting them as core identities and using them to pigeonhole others. I have witnessed people obsessed with these assessments. Some of these assessments have their roots in anti-Christian teaching, and one which is quite popular in some Christian circles has been propagated by a heretical “Christian” teacher who is opposed to the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ.

 

In Christ, we discover our gifts and callings as we live in relationship in the Body of Christ, as we experience daily life with other disciples. Our gifts and callings can change, for sure they ought to mature, we have various seasons of life, and we must always abide in the Vine. The fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which humanistic assessments offer, leads to death.

 

Because I can hear some readers protesting, I will add that I have used basic assessments before, both in business and in the church, that make no pretense of exploring the “inner person.” People in church tended to make more of them than intended, often confusing them with their identity – I would not do this again. People in business tended to see them as tool to help them understand how they make decisions and communicate, nothing more.

 

We are a supernatural people, living in communion with a supernatural God, let us trust our Lord Jesus in these things as we live in relationship with one another.

 

Let us recall that all must be offered to Christ on the altar of the Cross, including ourselves.

 

Have your gifts and talents been crucified with Christ?

 

Galatians 2:20.