“Our Lord
referred to this tyranny of things when He said to His disciples, “If any man
will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his
life for my sake shall find it” (Matt. 16:24-25).
“It would seem
that there is within each of us an enemy which we tolerate at our peril. Jesus
called it “life” and “self,” or as we would say, the self-life. Its
chief characteristic is its possessiveness: the words gain and profit
suggest this. To allow this enemy to live is, in the end, to lose everything.
To repudiate it and give up all for Christ’s sake is to lose nothing at last,
but to preserve everything unto life eternal.” (pages 22 – 23).
As I ponder what
Tozer says, I wonder if I missed this as a pastor and Bible teacher. While I
emphasized the intercessory life, while time after time I recited Jesus’ call
to take up our cross, deny ourselves, and follow Him, did I fail to make the
connection for others that this directly affects our attitude toward possessions?
While I did teach about us being stewards of all that God has given us, did I
fail to explicitly challenge my people concerning the idolatry of possessions?
I have often
thought about reading Ron Sider’s, Rich Christians In An Age of Hunger, and
then asking the leader of a marketplace ministry about the book. It seemed to
me natural that we’d want to introduce successful businesspeople to Sider’s
challenge. I was told that if the ministry did that it would lose many of its participants.
While I did not
press the issue with my friend, our interchange helped convince me that all
ministry, including marketplace ministry, must have its nexus in the Cross.
I am not sure
that we would have lost folks if we had presented Sider’s book, after all, the
men and women we were serving were professing Christians and the very reason we
were connected to them was because they wanted to go deeper with Jesus.
Yet, I also
recall a response to some Bible teaching of mine (I don’t recall the specific
teaching), some people were concerned that I was saying they couldn’t seek
profits and wealth and possessions – in other words, they wanted to avoid the Cross
working these things out in their lives, they wanted easy answers and they
weren’t getting them from me.
It is good to
remind ourselves that we ought to desire God to reveal our hearts to us and that
we ought not to judge others, we can’t really know the hearts of others. For
that matter, we can’t really know our own hearts, which is why we must seek the
Holy Spirit and the Word of God and trust our Father to reveal to us what we
need to see, trusting God to give us grace to respond to Him in obedience.
A person with
many possessions may have God in the shrine of his heart, and the possessions may
be external to his soul. A person with few possessions may worship them as
idols and may have placed them in the depths of his heart, and God may be on
the outside.
What we do know
is that we live in a society obsessed with possessions. We are obsessed with
the stock market, with economic reports, with investments, and with the
accumulation of things. We check the financial markets the way a sports fan
checks the Super Bowel score – except we do it as a way of life, not one day a
year for a few hours.
“There can be no
doubt that this possessive clinging to things is one of the most harmful habits
in life. Because it is so natural, it is rarely recognized for the evil that it
is. But its outworkings are tragic” (page 28).
Jesus says, “Beware,
and be on your guard against every form of greed; for not even when one has an
abundance does his life consist of his possessions” (Luke 12:15). Jesus then
proceeds to tell the story of a rich man planning to build bigger barns to
store his increasing harvest. God calls him a “Fool!” Jesus then says, “So is
the man who stores up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God” (Luke
12:16 – 21).
We measure life
by money and possessions, and as Tozer says, it is “so natural,” and yet, isn’t
it also so foolish?
Many churches
and church leaders measure themselves by how much money they bring in and by
their physical campus. I can’t count the number of times over the years friends
and acquaintances have told me how big their capital campaign was, how much their
new building cost, how much they spent on a new multimedia system.
I recall having lunch
with an associate pastor at a church we were attending. Vickie and I had been
bombarded with building fund marketing, as had the entire congregation. I said
to the pastor, “Since this capital campaign began some months ago, I don’ recall
one time we were told by church leadership that this is a result of prayer, or
that leadership sensed God was leading them and the congregation in this
direction. All we have heard is that consultants recommended we build a new
building.”
The pastor
thought for a few moments and then said, “You are right. This has not been
about prayer or our sense of God’s direction.”
I guess everyone
assumed that the more we had, the more money, the more buildings on campus, the
more space, the better off we would be as a congregation. Bigger must be
better.
Why don’t we
speak of our pursuit of God? Why don’t we talk of loving Jesus more today than
yesterday? Why don’t we rejoice in the members of our congregations growing in
the Word, sharing the Word with one another, sharing the Gospel with those who
don’t yet know Jesus, praying for one another, becoming a mature Body of Christ
Jesus?
“The way to
deeper knowledge of God is through the lonely valleys of soul poverty and
abnegation of all things. The blessed ones who possess the Kingdom are they who
have repudiated every external thing and have rooted from their hearts all
sense of possessing…These are the “poor in spirit.”
“These blessed
poor are no longer slaves to the tyranny of things. They have broken the yoke
of the oppressor; and this they have done not by fighting but by surrendering.
Though free from all sense of possessing, they yet possess all things. “Theirs
is the kingdom of heaven.”” (page 23).
To teach such
things today seems impossible in our nation and in our churches. For pastors it
would be a sure way to lose your job.
This is a result
of us making conversion mechanical (as Tozer has pointed out) and of our
failure to make disciples in obedience to the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18 –
20). Instead of asking people to “receive Jesus,” we are to call people to
Jesus as Jesus calls people to Himself, “If anyone desires to come after Me, he
must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever desires to
save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the Gospel’s
will save it” (see Mark 8:34 – 38).
As Tozer writes,
the root of possessiveness is the self-centered life, the selfish soul which is
as a black hole, pulling all things into its dense self-centered gravity. Arguments,
broken relationships, anger, emotional and mental problems, divorce, wars,
fraud, the list of the poison fruit of the “self” and possessiveness is endless
– when we make ourselves gods we make the world hell.
We are drunk
with the hemlock of profit and gain and consumption and we can’t get enough,
perhaps we should take a good look at Revelation Chapter 18 and see that we are
not only fools, but that we are dancing with demons.
What have we
done with our lives? With our marriages and families? With our churches? With
our nation? With our world?
Might not the
fact that what Tozer says is so foreign to our experience, that it is so impractical,
that it seems like it is from another world, indicate how far we have departed
from the Gospel and the Word of God and the Cross of Jesus Christ?
Well, for sure
it is from another world, it is from heaven. Since we are to be citizens of
heaven (Phil. 3:20), perhaps we ought to pay attention to it.
Tozer has more
to show us in the blessedness of possessing nothing, there is more to come,
including a way out of our dilemma.
O dear friends,
let us remember that life is about knowing Jesus, loving Him more today than
yesterday, and being the Presence of Christ to those around us. As Jesus laid
down His life, we are to lay down our lives for others. What a blessed calling,
and what a glorious future obedience to this calling assures us.
“Yet not I, but
Christ,” (Galatians 2:20).
Shall this be
our testimony today?
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