“Religion has accepted the monstrous heresy that noise, size, activity and bluster make man dear to God. But we may take heart. To a people caught in the tempest of the last great conflict God says, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10), and still He says it, as if He means to tell us that our strength and safety lie not in noise but in silence. It is important that we get still to wait on God. And it is best that we get alone, preferably with our Bible spread out before us. Then if we will we may draw near to God and begin to hear Him speak to us in our hearts.” – A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God
I think I do not consciously believe this lie that my spiritual or religious activity make me close to God, but functionally I live it out almost every day. When I survey the often shallow landscape of my walk with God, I look at my Christian activities—my small group leadership, my service on the worship team at church, my morning devotions, my volunteer work—and conclude that “I’m doing well in my relationship with Him”. In truth, my feelings about “how I’m doing” are often just quick things I make up to make myself feel better about how much I actually ignore God and am more focused on the next hobby session or the next trinket or book I buy from Amazon.com.
I believe it is this self-focus that keeps me from regularly having meaningful time with Jesus. My approach is wrong. I look at my life, and then take the Gospel, the proof of God’s Great Love for me and desire for my good and the good of this world through Jesus, and spread a thin layer like spackeling putty over my life to fill in any knicks or holes I notice I’ve created in the past few days. The Gospel becomes a tool to patch up my conscience about my sin, in particular my deep selfishness, so that I can get back to what I really want to do.
What I need to do, and this is where Tozer’s insight is helpful, is learn “that our strength and safety lie not in noise but in silence.” If I regularly experience anything like a tempest in my life, it is the normal drumbeat of life that, like a Siren, draws my attention away from Jesus and serving others and bends my thoughts inward trying to constantly answer the questions, “What do I want? What do I need? What would make me happy?” I sinfully want to be able to both answer those questions finally and go fulfill the answer to them. That is the noise of my life that I try to find strength and safety in. It is the lie that I scream to myself all the time, “I can acquire for myself that which will fulfill my soul!”
God says otherwise. And Tozer is practical in his application of this verse: “It is important that we get still to wait on God. And it is best that we get alone, preferably with our Bible spread out before us.” I cannot expect to hear from God and learn to fix my eyes upon Jesus and be deeply thankful for the Cross and even more deeply transformed to be like Jesus if I never truly stop and listen. The point of daily devotions is to do no more than this. Yet how often have I forgotten that. I have too many times turned personal worship time into theological analysis time. I sit and read a few verses and then write pages of stuff about it, rarely letting it weigh heavily upon my soul and change me. God would have me sit before him in silence until I hear from him. Instead, I sit down and rush through a few verses, make a few notes, and say a quick, routine prayer (mostly for myself) before rushing on to the next thing.
Tozer says the intention of my heart should be to “draw near to God” so that I may then hear Him speak to me in my heart. This is personal worship. I sit down and open the Scriptures and then simply ask to see and hear. The point of it all is to know God in personal experience, the way Jesus intended us to know him when he saved us: a foretaste of what we are promised to experience forever with Him in heaven. So my hope is to learn to experience God through personal worship in the progression that Tozer describes:
“First a sound as of a Presence walking in the garden. Then a Voice, more intelligible, but still far from clear. Then the happy moment when the Spirit begins to illuminate the Scriptures, and that which had been only a sound, or at best voice, now becomes an intelligible word, warm and intimate and clear as the word of a dear friend. Then will come life and light, and best of all, ability to see and rest in and embrace Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and All.”
We are all fools if we think we met and experienced Jesus enough once in a moment of conversion. The goal of the whole Christian life is to know God deeply and trust Him fully as we “see and rest in and embrace Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and All.” None of us have done that perfectly. I certainly haven’t. I’ve been too preoccupied with my hobbies and pity parties about how life isn’t exactly how I want it to be. But I want the sight Tozer is talking about here. I want to be discontent with not yet having enough of Jesus, which would drive me to Him, rather than discontent with other desires, which so often draw me away from Him. I want to rise each morning and seek Him out in His Word, the Bible, and to be unwilling to move on until I have heard his Voice. I want to learn to finally listen to the voice that always whispers, “That isn’t really what you want” whenever I am tempted to sin. And I am convinced that will never happen until I am ready to sit in silence and wait until I hear the faintest sound of a Presence walking in the garden.
Cameron Lockey 