This is a continuation from a devotional (Hebrews 2:1-4) in A.W. Tozer's, "Experiencing the Presence of God."
The Curse of Our Contemporary Culture
All Christians face some obstacle or hindrance in our seeking the presence of God. For the contemporary Christian, we often get too caught up in the busyness of today's world. We allow all the things the world has to become distractions which keep us from taking the matters of God seriously. For many of us we attempt to do every good thing, which makes it impossible for us to do everything good.
The most dangerous situation facing us today (according to Tozer) is Moral Insensitivity. We have become insensitive or callous to sin in the world around us. Our feelings toward morality have been deadened. Just look around at the lack of outrage of certain areas of immorality in our times. Not only have some sins become okay, they have become celebrated. Tozer calls this a cauterization of the conscience and it happens through our sin. Every time we sin, we numb our conscience even if ever so slightly. When you cauterize something, it hurts at first, but once it heals over, it has no feeling. Sin does that. It cauterizes our conscience until it starts to not bother us that we are sinning. And this is ultimately the work of the devil attempting to blind us.
We are also facing Spiritual Lethargy, which is described as a drowsiness, or laziness, when it comes to the things of God. When we hear about dangers of a potential apocalypse, people begin building storm shelters and underground bunkers. There was even a TV show called Doomsday Preppers. Or we hear a program about cancer and began over-examining ourselves and worrying about every little pain or discomfort. We spend so much time, money, and energy on superficial things, but give little thought to spiritual matters. Thomas a Kempis writes, "We give all our attention to things that do us little good, or none at all; things that are vitally necessary we don't bother about them, just give them the go-by. Yes, all that goes to make man drives him to meddle with outward things, and if he doesn't soon recover his senses, is only too glad to wallow in material interests and pleasures."
Moral Insensitivity and Spiritual Lethargy are dangerous curses because they keep us from taking our spiritual health seriously. It's sad that there is so much more information, guidance, and commercialism floating around online and on TV about our physical diet and fitness than there is about our spiritual health. If we do not take our spiritual well being seriously, and our pursuit of God seriously, we will flounder in those quests.
Our pursuit of a closer relationship with God may be compared to a boat dragging an anchor. It can still move and get you across the lake but it doesn't handle quite right and doesn't move like it should. But once you remove that hindrance, it's able to take off and glide freely to its destination. Dear Heavenly Father, I pray today that you make me more sensitive to your voice, more sensitive to my sin, and less lethargic in my pursuit of a growing relationship with you.
Our pursuit of a closer relationship with God may be compared to a boat dragging an anchor. It can still move and get you across the lake but it doesn't handle quite right and doesn't move like it should. But once you remove that hindrance, it's able to take off and glide freely to its destination. Dear Heavenly Father, I pray today that you make me more sensitive to your voice, more sensitive to my sin, and less lethargic in my pursuit of a growing relationship with you.
Comments
Post a Comment