Stop Apologizing for God

Awhile ago, in my blog post A Call to Something More I discussed some prophetic words Tozer said to the church then that have become our reality I was asked to share some of them and this is the second.

 In a sermon series (now book) titled And He Dwelt Among Us, Tozer brought up the issue of apologizing for God and hinted to where this could lead.

He said:

"The One who created all things, including the ground on which we stand and build our temporary buildings, does not need anyone running around and apologizing for Him.  Nor does He need anybody rushing in taking His part and saying: "Now just a minute, He doesn't mean that.  He sent judgment upon Sodom and Gomorrah but it doesn't quite mean that, it means something else."  It means exactly that...and when the Bible tells us there is a hell where the wicked are going, it means exactly that.  It does not mean something else." (Tozer, 2009, pgs. 65-66)

  In a culture that is uncomfortable with confrontation, judgment and punishment many Christians have begun apologizing for God's wrath, Hell and many other things that we see Scripture stand against.  We've acquiesced to the cultural pressure, back-pedaled and tried to explain certain portions of Jesus words, and God's actions away as "something else".

  This back-pedaling was not something that was really going on in Tozer's day but has become a HUGE reality today.  Never was there a time that a large number of mainstream Christians were against Hell as they are today.  Never has there been so much pressure to deny certain sinful acts and call them "not sinful" in God's eyes, when Scripture says something different.

 I realize that this post can come off as me saying we need to rush out there and declare to the world how wrong they are and how dangerously close to Hell they are.  I am NOT saying that.  Nor is this a political response to the whole Starbucks debacle of this week (see picture to the right...I'm sitting IN Starbucks right now!).

  What I am saying is that Tozer was right in his assertion that Christians were beginning to apologize for God and we are now reaping the total "benefits" of generations of back-pedalers.  We must stand strong and hold fast to what God has revealed about Himself and the nature of sin, when we back-off and tell a different story we are not leading people to Christ, but rather a false version of Christ...which isn't helpful at all!

  I saw this from other religions at a recent University Religious forum here at the University of Pittsburgh.  Muslims, Jews and one Christian group denied Hell's existence, stating that their religion doesn't hold to something so cruel as all that.  I was shocked because I may know more about their religions then them because last I checked...all 3 of those religious groups believes in a literal place of torment...

 In the midst of the mess of lies being weaved there was a lone voice from another Christian group who dared disagree.  He said: "I don't think it's wrong to believe in Hell.  That is my right and I'm not afraid to say I believe it".  I think his authenticity shocked folks and the Jewish representative rolled his eyes and whispered: "Whatever".

  The reality is: Heaven is the Presence of God and Hell is the absence of His Presence. Plain and simple.  Why would God force people who don't want Him to be with Him forever?  Why are we all so afraid to stand for truth?

  Again, I know this can sound "Driscolly" (made up word for things that sound like Mark Driscoll) but I'm not meaning to say we need to punch people in the face with it and make it our badge of "righteousness" that we believe in Hell or in the wrath of God, but when questioned we needn't back away from it.

  This current generation NEEDS something strong to believe in. They need a ROCK in which to build their spiritual house on, yet most of the things out there for them are SAND and as Christians we've been adding beaches to their options rather than keeping the Rock the Rock!

  Let us no longer pander to this generations "demands" but give them the truth in LOVE as we seek to lead them to the rock of their salvation because everything else truly is sinking sand.

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Who Needs Who?

  A few days ago, I felt led to write this post on A Call to Something More.  I literally agonized over this post for 2 weeks in thinking about it, then 4 days in editing it.  Now, as I promised at the end of that post I will embark in unpacking some of Tozer's prophetic and heart piercing quotes that many people ignored back when he said them and we ignore still.

"God does not need anything, because when you give God anything, you only give what God gave you in the first place"- A.W. Tozer

    I think many of us Christians feel as though God needs us and so we can treat church any which way we desire.  Church is not a place for me to grow so I can go out and give to those who need, nor a place that trains me to be the incarnate Christ to a dark world.  It is a place I feel justified in making demands.  A place that if it doesn't "fit me just right" I can leave and take my tithe somewhere else.

  If the music is too bumpin' or not bumpin' enough I can move on.  If the preacher is too dynamic or not dynamic enough I can move on.  

 I've seen a ton of Christians act as if they are God's gift to the church or that they are God's gift to himself... as if he needed them. 

  I too have fallen into this trap as a pastor and have lived out this attitude plenty of times.  Yet, God doesn't need anything.  He is self sustaining, self fulfilling and has all the love he needs within Himself.

  This then leads us to ask (as it should) Why am I here?  Why does it matter if I follow Christ or not then?  The answer is that we need Him.  Every fiber of our being is bent to worship Him.  We intrinsically need to give our time, money, work, worship and love to Him.  We are built that way, by His design.  We find ourselves empty when we are not filling it with Him.  He created us way back in the Garden to walk with Him and to have a deep, face-to-face relationship with Him but this was broken and we've been trying to find our way back to Him ever since...many of us just didn't know it (and still may not know).  We try to fill it with happiness and we may go to church expecting church, the worship, the sermon or the conversations afterwards to fill us up, but we are not looking to Him to fill us as He was meant to.  God doesn't need anything and when we give to Him, it's simply giving back to Him what he already has given to us.  He is our sustainer, He gives us life, time, money, love and everything else.  It all belongs to God already!

  This idea changes the way we view everything, not just church.  

  Many churches have forgotten this, because many have been trying to be God's gift to everybody, rather than leading everybody to the true gift: God Himself, the one we all actually need.  They've pandered to the masses and have put certain things in place to please people. That was the main thrust of my first blog post in this series.

  Tozer brought this idea forth with this quote and many like it that pointed to the folly the church then (1950's and 60's) was dealing with.  He also said many things to warn folks who thought other than the quote above and how perilous that type of thinking could be to the Christian himself as well as the church at large.

 In many respects, I think this idea of God needing nothing has been lost among many American Christians.  

Let us remember that God doesn't need us, we need Him.  We are utterly dependent upon His favor and when we realize that, the game changes.

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A Call to Something More

A.W. Tozer was a prolific writer, preacher and considered by many a prophet.  He was a Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor (most of his time spent in Chicago) who wrote weekly for the C&MA journal and also wrote many books (41) in his lifetime.  His most prominent time in the public eye were 1940's-1963 when he died.

  Tozer was known for his rebuke against consumer Christianity calling pastors to stop catering to the masses, and to preach the truth.  His most famous book: The Pursuit of God got him labeled as a "Mystic" because he taught what is known as the "Deeper Life" where one pursues more of God and allows the Presence of God to overtake and change a person.

  Tozer prophesied time and time again, in books and in his preaching that the church was going down a road direct to secularization where soon the church would be more like the world around it then like the God it was made to serve.  He challenged pastors and everyday Christians to go deeper with God and not to accept what he labeled: "Nominal Christianity" where a person simply has the name "Christian" but little else.

When Tozer was alive and even more so today, we has been labeled a modern day prophet.  Many people rejoiced at his messages as many rejoice at his books today. I like many have come closer to God through reading his challenging writing.

  Just like the prophets of old however, his message has gone largely ignored.  He was honored for who he was (a prophetic voice) and is still being honored as such today but many who claim to have read and enjoyed his messages have not allowed the God  about whom Tozer preached to change their hearts to cause them to become children of the burning heart.

  As I look back and see what he called the church to become so many years ago, my heart is broken to see that much of what he proposed possible was ignored.  Also, his warnings to his listeners for not heeding the message in many ways have come true.

Instead of deep pursuit of God in America, much entertainment goes on in the name of church.  People go away feeling like they paid for a good worship set and paid for a good sermon but it does little to nothing in their daily lives.

  Church in America is largely a consumeristic show put on to please man rather than God.  This above all else I believe Grieves the heart of God.

  We've trained many in this young generation that God is all about fun, and have largely ignored the deeper truths of the Christian life with them saying: "Oh, they can go deeper when they're older.  Plus, they wouldn't even understand it now".

 I tell you with sincerity that nothing has bothered me more in the past few years than those statements.  

  I've been wrestling with this for years on again and off again but I feel it in my gut that if we continue to entertain and make God nothing but "fun" we are headed for a greater church recession than even Europe has known.  There is a constant need to up the ante, always having to one-up our last big thing or worse, to one up the other churches big thing.

 Drawing new believers from a show is not intrinsically bad but it is dangerous.  It's dangerous because many times when a young person comes to know Jesus at something like that, their experience dictates their view of God for the rest of their Christian life. They will constantly be expecting God to be more and more fun.

So, as Pastors, what can we do to help solve this issue and spiritual decay we find in America?


Here are a few suggestions:

Stop entertaining and playing games and preach the Word

We need to talk about healing, emotional, physical and spiritual.

We need to talk about the empowering Holy Spirit, who He is and what His role in the life of the believer is all about.

We need to teach surrender.

We need to preach dependence.

We must discuss the meaning of discipleship, not just conversion, both among each other as pastors and with the people who follow us.  Bonheoffer wasn't afraid to share the Cost of Discipleship and neither should we.  I think, as pastors we fear we will turn people away if they knew how hard true discipleship would be.  Here again, I think we sell people short!  If they knew it was such an adventure, wrought with tough times and amazing victories, I think more people would buy into it as valid for their lives.  After all real life is hard...delusional religionists make things look ethereal...

  I fear that for too long many in the American church have been worried so much about conversions that they have lost sight of discipleship altogether.  Once someone comes to Jesus, that's it! Yay!  We did it!  Then that person, with very little guidance is expected to join the ranks and get some conversions under their belt as well.

  Have we forgotten that God is the ultimate goal?  The redemption happened so we could be reunited with our first love.  The Cross and Resurrection happened so we can once again have a walking side by side, hand in hand, face to face relationship with our Creator.  The Fall took that away and God offers us a way to get it back.

He desires community with us.

 He doesn't want to be our court Jester, he desires to be our Daddy, our Coming (and present) King, our God, our Friend, our Savior, Our Healer, Our Sanctifier.  We need to re-tell the story of God for the people who follow us, not simply pander to their desires.

As Parents of children, youth and young adults what can we do?


Here are a few suggestions:


Live a life of surrender before your kids

Pray for your kids and with them

Live a life that is seeking more of God's presence

Don't hope the Sunday School teachers will teach your children about the Word, or God, teach them yourself

Don't be so consumeristic in your church talk, or in the way you treat church

EXPECT God to show up in your prayer times, your church services and share this expectation with your children, so when God does show up (because he most certainly will) you can point to Him and his work amongst you

Love your children the way God does

Admit your mistakes and apologize when you sin against your children

Don't pretend you have it all together, be real!

As Christians what can we do?


Here are a few suggestions:

Expect God to move

Live lives of surrender

Stop thinking of "Christian" as a title but rather a deeper life reality.

Be the INCARNATE Christ to a world who desperately needs Him

Think of God and others before we think of ourselves

  Tozer is one of many forefathers who spoke of things about where we'd be today.  Many of those before us didn't heed the advice and we are further than we were before.  May we as pastors, parents and Christians heed the Spirit's advice and reset a new course for the generations to come!  I think we should take a deeper look at some of Tozer’s (and other forefather’s) statements and unpack them.  So, in the coming blog posts, this will be what appears!

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I Need a Larger Bottle!

Recently,  I've been a bit more as some writers call it "inside my own head" rather than writing my thoughts out.  That coupled with some pretty busy days and weeks, I have neglected my writings as of late...I am sad it has been so long but so is life.

 With that said, I believe I am back in the saddle and ready to get back to the constant writing I have become accustomed to.  Yesterday, I was struck by something I considered to be pretty profound.  It may just be me, but for me it has made a world of difference in the way in which I view myself in light of my need for the Holy Spirit.

  I was reading in a book titled The Counselor: Straight Talk About the Holy Spirit by A.W. Tozer, when I came across this awesome bit of writing.

"Dr. AB Simpson used an illustration which was about as good as any I ever heard.  He said, 'Being filled with the fullness of God is like a bottle in the ocean.  You take the cork out of the bottle and sink it in the ocean, and you have the bottle completely full of ocean.  The bottle is in the ocean, and the ocean is in the bottle.  The ocean contains the bottle, but the bottle contains only a little bit of the ocean.  So it is with a Christian'.  We are filled unto the fullness of God, but, of course, we cannot contain all of God because God contains us; but we can have all of God that we can contain.  If we only knew it, we could enlarge our vessel.  The vessel gets bigger as we go on with God" (Page 65).


 This struck me so hard yesterday because I always pictured it kind of like a glass under the faucet, where the overflow of God could happen when the faucet was turned on.  Yet, with this idea, we can spill out some of our Jesus and some of our Spirit power...not so with the ocean!  When seen through our being contained an surrounded by the ocean of the Spirit it changes things!  The overflow is then not limited to God but our ability to receive!

  I realized that all along, I had been praying the wrong thing...rather than praying for His Spirit to overflow in me, I should have been praying for Him to enlarge my bottle, so as I can be able to receive more of Himself.  I don't want to settle for the overflow of a small glass, I desire to be a HUGE basin drowned in the ocean of God!

  It's such a soothing thought that there is so much more to God than we sometimes think.  Our minds try to rationalize God, minimize God but He is a vast ocean containing several millions of Christians and His desire is that we would enlarge our bottles so we can receive even more of Himself!

  WOW!  I hope this hits some of you the way it hit me, because it is a sweet, sweet revelation!

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Fearing God

"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight." (Proverbes 9:10 ESV)

  Much has been said on fearing God and much has been said wrongly about the "Fear of the Lord". 

  Many who teach it talk about God as a vengeful, wrathful God who desires to burn you up and you need to fear his power or you'll get scorched.

  Does God have this power?  Yes, in deed He does.  Has God done this in the past?  Yes, in fact He has.

 However is the formula (the answer to the riddle) to be afraid of God and do what is right so He doesn't scortch you? No, I believe it is not.

 That formula is neither the answer to the riddle or what is mean behind the idea of "Fearing God."  Does the "fear of the Lord" help us put sins in to perspective and help us along our way to sanctified living?  Yes I believe it does.  The true fear of the Lord does in fact lead us to repentance and does in fact lead us down a journey of jettisoning out sins that take over God's position in our lives...yet it's not due to the fear he will fry us up like an egg on a skillet but rather a right understanding of how little, how miniscule we are in the presence of a mighty God.  A.W. Tozer in his book The Knowledge of the Holy says this:

  "In the olden days men of faith were said to "walk in the fear of God" and to "serve the Lord with fear."  However intimate their communion with God, however bold their prayers, at the base of their religious life was the conception of God as awesome and dreadful.  This idea of God transcendent runs through the whole Bible and gives color and tone to the character og the saints.  This fear of God was more than a natural apprehension of danger; it was a nonrational dread, an accute feeling of personal insufficiency in the presence of God the Almighty." (Tozer, 1961, p. 71)

  It's not a fear of God destroying you rather it's a full on understanding of how insignificant you and I are when we are before God.  Seeing how powerful, transcendent He is makes us feel week and insufficient.  We realize our sheer incapacity to do anything and His omnipotence to do everything.  We understand just how ugly we are and how marvelous He is.

  Fearing God can then be understood as a right understanding of God and ourselves in comparison.  People sin because they are acting as if they know better than God.  We do what we want because we stick up our finger to God and say: "I do what I want because I'm in control"  that is NOT fearing God. That's why Tozer says:  "When men no longer fear God, they transgress His laws without hesitation." (Tozer, 1961, p. 71)

  We we don't properly understand ourselves compared to God we will sin with abandon.  When we don't fear God and see Him rightly, we will begin down a dangerous path to destruction.

  Lastly, in the Proverb quoted twice above the ending says: "...and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight." (Proverbes 9:10 ESV).   If fearing God is the beginning of wisdom, than seeking to know God more rightly is insight, or "understanding" as the NIV puts it.  Our lives should be surrounded around Knowing God and Making Him Known.

  The greatest thing about this calling is that God has left us His Spirit on the earth to indwell our hearts and make the desires come alive inside of us.  We must be willing to yield our hearts over to Him so we can begin the process of seeing Him rightly, ourselves rightly and spreading His Good News whereever we go!

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The Omniscience of God

O LORD, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it. (Psalm 139:1-6 ESV


  God cannot learn. This is an idea of God's omniscience I had never pondered before today. There is no new knowledge to God; nothing can be added to his knowledge, for He is aware of all knowledge.
A.W. Tozer in his book The Knowledge of the Holy puts it this way: "To say that God is omniscient is to say that He possesses perfect knowledge and therefore has no need to learn. But it is more: it is to say that God has never learned and cannot learn." (Tozer, 1961, p. 55)

We as humans have a tough time grasping this truth. We can state it as "God knows all" but when we say it in a negative form like: "God cannot learn," something in us tweaks and has trouble now grasping something we thought easily grasped. We as finite human beings always learn and are always learning. Our brains take in and give off so much information that to say someone can't learn is so foreign we balk at the very thought of it.
Yet God is so knowledgeable that learning is impossible, for God to learn would be for God to admit he didn't know something and that some other being had information He Himself did not possess. It would be to admit flaw and the Bible says that God is perfect and without flaw. (Matthew 5:48)

Tozer, in The Knowledge of the Holy also says: "We have seen that God had no origin, that He had no beginning that He requires no helpers that He suffers no change, and that in His essential being there are no limitations." (Tozer, 1961, p. 56)

Tozer here is going through the list of attributes of God in which he already discussed in the book, but when you look at this list, God is so other than us! He is so close, yet so foreign, so attainable yet so unattainable. He is Holy, set a apart and so hard to conceptualize. These attributes especially that of Omniscience is what I believe causes hang ups for those who don't believe.

How can we be made in God's image, yet Him be so foreign some may ask. My answer may not be the best, but it's simple: we have to have faith that it is true, we all believe in something and having a being who created everything in this world not be unattainable seems awkward at best. I mean think about it: this world has been here for at least 10,000 years and we still have no clue as to how all things work. Why would we expect to know the maker?

God's omniscience freaks me out a bit, but it is also very amazing to think that He knows so much that He can never learn anything!

I love that God is a mystery. I love that I can't box him up and put a bow on Him. I love that He is so very "other" (or Holy) that I can't even scratch the surface of who He is. He graciously gives us glimpses as to His true nature...but even those revelations stump us and make us dig deeper! Oh how I love that about God! Plunging the depths of His ways, plunging headlong into the bosom of who He is, drowning in the wealth of it! It's unparalleled in its amazing-ness!

A.W. Tozer was a man of a great wealth of knowledge and he has even today, some great insights on who God is, was and will forever be.  Tozer discusses how easy, yet hard it is to understand the omniscience of God and says it is easier for us to understand these deep truths by thinking in what God is "not" rather than what "God is."  To illustrate this, he says in The Knowledge of the Holy " And that abrupt statement by God Himself, "I am the Lord, I change not,"[Malachi 3:6] tells us more about the divine omniscience than could be told in a ten-thousand word treatise, were all negatives arbitrarily ruled out." (Tozer, 1961, p. 56)

 I agree, Tozers negative statement: God cannot learn caught my attention and made me better understand God's omniscience!  God is deep, vast and Holy!  We serve a Mighty God!

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A Passion for God

 I am part of a denomination with a rich heritage and wonderful Pastors have been born out of this denomination.  A.W. Tozer was one of those wonderful Pastors.  He was a Pastor in the Christian and Missionary Alliance for many years, authored many books, spoke at numerous college chapel services and led many people to the Person of Jesus Christ.

    I recently read a Biography of A.W. Tozer by Lyle Dorsett titled: A Passion for God: The Spiritual Journey of A.W. Tozer.  This recent book on A.W.'s life has deeply impacted me and reminded me not only of who A.W. was, nor simply about my rich heritage in the C&MA but it also deeply impacted me about my own personal yeilding to the Holy Spirit.

  Last week and for several weeks prior I noticed a bit of a short fuse within myself.  I was getting easily angered and was being really grumpy with my wife and 1 year old son.  I'm normally not like this, so I was curous as to what was going on within myself.  It was in the midst of this whirlwind of questions I was reading this book on the life of A.W. Tozer. 

  Seeing Tozer's utter devotion to Christ and his whole-hearted desire to be completely yeiled to the Spirit of the living God convicted me.  I noticed I was doing the work of the ministry without the Holy Spirit's presence.  I was going it alone so to speak and was putting my head down to get the "work done" but I was not fully yielding to the Spirit of God. 

  I desire to be a man filled with the Holy Spirit, having His life feed me, empower me, teach me, illuminate mysteries to me and love me.  I didn't realize how utterly unfilled I was until I saw a man who was so very filled.  A.W. Tozer was not perfect, in fact he neglected his family and wife way too often, but he was a man that was yeilded to the Spirit of God!

  When I was in college I learned numerous things about the Holy Spirit, things I had never been taught before and these new learnings caused me to understand the importance of a yeilded life.  For some reason, the past few months I had forgotten those lessons.

  In the Christian walk, nothing is more important than yeilding ourselves to the power of the Spirit of God.  Christ has accomplished tons on the cross and sending us the Spirit was the best earthly accomplishment.  Having the Spirit of God free to reign in us is incalculable in its value, and huge in its effect on our lives and our worlds.

   The only way to live the Christian the way we were always meant to is by yeilding to the Spirit of God, giving Him the drivers seat in your life and letting Him take you where He wants you.

  I want to live a yeilded life, no more doing it on my own, no more getting grumpy and losing the joy of the Lord!

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