The Speaking Voice

I was taught that God was silent from Malachi to Matthew and that He ceased speaking at the end of Revelation. I wondered about that at the time. It is believed by some that the written Word is God's FINAL word. I no longer believe that. I like this from AW Tozer's, The Pursuit of God

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. — John 1:1

"An intelligent plain man, untaught in the truths of Christianity, coming upon this text, would likely conclude that John meant to teach that it is the nature of God to speak, to communicate His thoughts to others. And he would be right. A word is a medium by which thoughts are expressed,and the application of the term to the Eternal Son leads us to believe that self-expression is inherent in the Godhead, that God is forever seeking to speak Himself out to His creation. The whole Bible supports the idea. God is speaking. Not God spoke, but God is speaking. He is by His nature continuously articulate. He fills the world with His speaking Voice."

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος

John Ortberg on spiritual growth, "Spiritual growth, in a sense, is simply increasing our capacity to experience the presence of God."

After I read this this morning, I started thinking about it and its implications. We are told that we will bear fruit and my former church would say that we are measured by our fruit. I would ask them where is THEIR fruit from all of the activity? Where are all of the souls being saved at every invitation? Where are all of the new members from the weekly visitation? Why is the world not beating down the doors in order to get in?

They might say that we can't really measure the fruit of their labors, and I would say EXACTLY. WE judge by externals - numbers, appearance, etc.

I like seeking Father better than the busy-ness I used to be in bondage to.

REAL Reality

Our trouble is that we have established bad thought habits. We habitually think of the visible world as real and doubt the reality of any other. We do not deny the existence of the spiritual world but we doubt that it is real in the accepted meaning of the word.

The world of sense intrudes upon our attention day and night for the whole of our lifetime. It is clamorous, insistent and self-demonstrating. It does not appeal to our faith; it is here, assaulting our five senses, demanding to be accepted as real and final. But sin has so clouded the lenses of our hearts that we cannot see that other reality, the City of God, shining around us. The world of sense triumphs. The visible becomes the enemy of the invisible; the temporal, of the eternal. That is the curse inherited by every member of Adam’s tragic race.

At the root of the Christian life lies belief in the invisible. The object of the Christian’s faith is unseen reality.

Our uncorrected thinking, influenced by the blindness of our natural hearts and the intrusive ubiquity of visible things, tends to draw a contrast between the spiritual and the real; but actually no such contrast exists. The antithesis lies elsewhere: between the real and the imaginary, between the spiritual and the material, between the temporal and the eternal; but between the spiritual and the real, never. The spiritual is real.

A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

Tozer

You can be as straight as a gun barrel theologically and as empty as one spiritually.

Removing the "And"

When religion has said its last word, there is little that we need other than God himself. The evil habit of seeking God-and effectively prevents us from finding God in full revelation. In the "and" lies our great woe. If we omit the "and" we shall soon find God, and in Him we shall find that for which we have all our lives been secretly longing.

A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

Good and Becoming Good

Spiritual growth is a process of replacing temporal appearances with eternal reality, and living out of it.

Dan Stone & Greg Smith, The Rest of the Gospel

John's Story

Excerpt from Recover Your Good Heart by Jim Robbins

John’s Story (Not me, though it could be)

My first experience in Christian fellowship after I became a believer was in a large Bible-believing institutional church where know knowledge was equated with Christian maturity. The heart was rarely mentioned at all, and when it was, it was in the context of emotion. I came to understand that if one had deep feelings about anything that indicated they “had a heart”. I was led to believe that it was rare to find men with hearts in the church. I actually had an elder in the church tell me he wished he had a heard like mine, “but,” he said matter-of-factly, “I just don’t.”

In the subsequent 12 years or so, in the same denomination but different locations, that attitude was pretty much the same. Personal interests or desires, let alone passions, were rarely discussed. The concept of “heart” was restricted to the synonym of emotion. The message from the leadership was always more about duty and responsibility. The common theme was simply that Jesus died for our sins and thus, out of gratitude, we should live our lives like this…

The religious spirit facilitated an appropriate comfort zone in my experience in the church body. It did that by justifying the laying aside of passion and the asking of difficult questions. I was confused by much of the Scripture that was quoted and how it related to my life now. It actually seemed like all that was required of me was to know what the Bible said, and then, somehow, when verses were said, we were expected to make the application to our own lives without honest questions. It was all Greek…all didactic, with very little opportunity for questions.

Because everyone was silent, we were like a bunch of cattle going through the rituals of activities, never being challenged. In retrospect, it was settling into an environment which was arrogant and boring…and lacking in life. The religious spirit promoted the attitude of “not rocking the boat” above all, and it was promoted by “strong leadership” which was really very weak…a group of men hiding from difficult questions I their rote memorization of theology. Amazing. For a very long time I allowed my own independent thought, along with my passion, to be locked up, and I actually sought to do the same to others.

The religious spirit caused me to put my faith in theology created by men. I had faith in faith, but not in God. I worshipped the Bible rather than its author, and the natural consequence of all that was that I was kept at a distance from the source of life; I was kept from the very intimate, “personal relationship” with Jesus which was being advocated from the pulpit.

End of Excerpt

For me, church activity WAS the means to the end. EVERYTHING was laser-beam focused around church. If one had any outside interests that took one out of church on a regular basis, that person was not considered "faithful" and, not prayed for, but internally and corporeally scorned by those how WERE "faithful". Remember Jesus parable about the man who paid all his workers the same no matter when they started, morning, noon, or evening? Baptists HATE that THEY are doing all the work while some seem perfectly happy to let them. I was one of them!

I worshipped the Bible rather than its author

Yes, yes, yes!! The written word has supplanted the living Word.