“Part of our failure today is religious activity that is not preceded by aloneness,” so says, A.W. Tozer in his classic work Faith Beyond Reason: With God Nothing is Impossible.
Much of the Christian movement today is just that: movement. We are like a rocking chair—lots of movement but going nowhere.
Tozer says that in his day, which is especially true now, we jump into religious activity without having first been prepared in time alone with God. As Tozer writes, “there are certain things that you and I will never learn in the presence of other people.”
We need time alone with God.
We see this even in the life of Jesus.
While surrounded by ministry and crowds, He often snuck away for time alone with the Father (see Matthew 14:23; Mark 6:46–47; Luke 6:12; John 6:15). We also see Jesus taking His disciples away from the crowds to have time alone with them. For example, Jesus took Peter, James, and John up the Mount of Transfiguration (Matthew 17) or before He fed the multitude with bread and fish, John records, “Then Jesus went up on the mountain, and there He was sitting down with His disciples” (John 6:3).
Time apart from the hubbub and hussle of crowds is essential.
A.W. Tozer wrote this …
There are some things that you and I will never learn when others are present. I believe in church and I love the fellowship of the assembly. There is much we can learn when we come together on Sundays and sit among the saints. But there are certain things that you and I will never learn in the presence of other people.
Unquestionably, part of our failure today is religious activity that is not preceded by aloneness, by inactivity. I mean getting alone with God and waiting in silence and quietness until we are charged with God’s Spirit. Then, when we act, our activity really amounts to something because we have been prepared by God for it. …
Now, in the case of our Lord, the people came to Him, John reports, and He was ready for them. He had been quiet and silent. He had sat alone with His disciples and meditated. Looking upward, He waited until the whole hiatus of divine life moved down from the throne of God into His own soul. He was a violin tuned. He was a battery recharged. He was poised and prepared for the people when they came.*
We DO need other people; but we also need time alone with God. Most of us have the first, few pursue the second.
Like a cup continually being filled with liquid that it overflows, what if everything we did was a result of the overflow of the time with spent with God alone?
What about you? Do you have a lot of religious activity (movement) going on in your life but not going anywhere? How often do you prepare for activity by first “getting alone with God and waiting in silence and quietness until we are charged with God’s Spirit”?
*A. W. Tozer, Faith Beyond Reason: With God Nothing is Impossible (Camp Hill, PA: WingSpread, 1989), 130, 133.
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