The Dangers of a Shallow Faith: Awakening from Spiritual Lethargy

by A.W. Tozer

Tozer could not accept a juvenile attitude among believers in the Church. He could not tolerate Christians who became easily bored and looked around for entertainment to relieve that sense of boredom.

Is this my attitude? Boredom?

A true revival or awakening leads to drastic reformation.

To negotiate with the world is to forfeit the sense of God’s presence.

The average Christian today is addicted to exterior pleasures. Can any Christian church survive today without a heavy dose of entertainment? It is the culture of fun, fun and more fun. Performance has replaced worship. We no longer have worshipers but rather observers and spectators who sit in awe of the performance. The demand is for something that will make us feel good about ourselves and make us forget about all of our troubles.

we have now what I shall call a performance-oriented worship. Just because you tack the word “worship” onto a phrase does not mean that it is worship acceptable to God.

The Church Fathers came into the presence of God with a sense of overwhelming reverence, which captivated them and brought them before God in holy silence. What has happened to reverence today? Where are those who get caught up in the spirit of reverence before their God? Where are those who have experienced the holy hush in the presence of God?

To be a leader in the Church, a man does not have to have spiritual qualifications as much as a personality and a celebrity status.

Too many in the Church today are living on yesterday’s momentum. They feel that all of the battles have been fought. They assume that all the struggles in the Church are over. They are the privileged generation that goes to heaven on flowery beds of ease.

Probably the most discouraging aspect of this is that many have grown accustomed to a static condition and have succumbed to a spirit of non-expectation. The only expectation most have is that when they die they fully expect to go to heaven. Apart from that, they are going to spend their time having fun and enjoying their religion.

Apostasy starts when certain men creep in unawares and replace the Holy Spirit as the guiding force of the Christian movement. The Church was never designed to be piloted by men; rather, the Holy Spirit birthed the Church on the day of Pentecost as a vehicle through which He could do His work in each generation.

Religion, however, with all of its tiresome dos and don’ts, sets us up for such boredom. Anyone who tries to follow his religion religiously experiences great moments of boredom in the minutia.

Christianity is greatly misunderstood even by those who claim to be Christians.

True Christianity is a mystery, a wonder, something alien and transcendent in this world.

The true Christian has an insatiable appetite for Christ and the things of Christ, while the world has no such appetite.

What is my appetite?

It is true that what we feed is what grows. If we feed the carnal nature and its appetite, that will be the overpowering aspect of our life. If we feed the spiritual, our appetite for the things of God will grow.

We are allowing everything but “Him” to dazzle us these days. We have become rather bored with God and the truths of Scripture. We seem to need something to jazz it all up and excite us. This has taken us far down the road to replacing God.

The Early Church was in wonderment at Christ. He dazzled them and stirred within such feelings of amazement that they could never get over Christ. All they talked about was Christ. All they thought about, from morning to night, was Christ. Christ was their only reason for living, and they were more than willing to die for Him.

What we must remember is that only he who takes orders from Jesus Christ belongs to Him. The evangelical church is in the process of compromising this very thing and ignoring “thus saith the Lord.” Yes, we want any benefits that Christ may confer upon us. We want His help, protection and guidance. We even get misty-eyed over His birth, life, death, teaching and example. The problem comes when we will not take orders from Him. Christ cannot save the one He cannot control. To claim to be saved while ignoring His commandments is to live in utter delusion.

False teaching is the falsifying of data on vital points about God, about ourselves, about sin and about Christ.

No lasting structure can be built on a bad foundation. A faulty foundation will cause it to sink, collapse, lean and fall over, bringing the structure down in time.

Any wrong idea of God is bound to give us a wrong idea of ourselves. We can know ourselves only as we know God. If our theology is false, our anthropology must be false. If we are wrong about God, we will never know who, what or why we are where we are.

Until you take God in and understand God, and let Him be what He claims to be, and believe about you what God says about you, you are believing false doctrine.

Believe about yourself what God says about you. Believe you are as bad as God says you are, and believe you are as far from Him as God says you are. Then believe in Christ and that you can come as near to Him as He says you can, and accept what He says about you as being true.

Dare to contend without being contentious. Dare to preserve truth without hurting people. Dare to love and to be charitable.

If you have been reared in a Christian home where the Bible, the Gospel, the Sunday School and the presence of Christian people have become a routine thing, and you’re not affected by them at all; if even prayer does not affect you, that is a proof that you are morally asleep and need to wake up.

To have a cold heart with little pity, little fire, little love and little worship is spiritual lethargy.

If there is anything I have asked God for, it is spiritual discernment.

in the Bible, garments, of course, are righteousness and true holiness; basic goodness, moral soundness.

Backsliding always begins with the heart.

When a man is backslidden in heart, he tends to get a little bit bored.

The simplest word you have uttered today was a result of some conditioning of your mind and heart yesterday.

The act of accepting Christ, if it is a true act, has an instant effect upon our entire moral life,

A fool is a man who acts without regard to consequences.

According to God’s definition, a fool is one who acts without regard to consequences and who chooses without thinking of eternity.

We make the right choice by starting with repentance.

I want to influence you, if you are living a casual Christian life, to consider your ways and start living a Christian life that will shame the devil and please God and start you on the way to victorious living and fruitful service and holy character.

No real harm can come through the physical body to a man, only through the soul.

God is not spiteful.

He is infinitely kind and merciful.

Christian liberty is freedom to live in the Spirit and worship God in spirit and in truth.

I am positively sure that nervous breakdowns do not come from working in the easy yoke of Jesus Christ. They come from frustrations, hidden sins, stubbornness, refusing to hear God and wanting your own way; but they do not come from working. “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:30).

The devil always finds something for idle men and women to do. There is a danger in idleness.

The simple fact is that the history of men, Israel, the Church and the nations and of individual churches shows that we trust in God last.

We tend to trust in God when we have nothing else in which to trust.

He walked calmly, quietly through the world and left one garment behind Him.

God’s children are not resident birds, but are migratory birds, passing through from where they were to where they are going.

If there is ever a time when we need to be honest, it is when we are alone in the presence of God.

If you want to be holy—if you want to serve God—you have to give time to God.

Reverence is the astonished awe that comes to the human heart when it sees God.

Remember that without prayer, you cannot win; and with it, you cannot lose. Granted, of course, that it is true prayer, and not just the saying of words; and granted that your life is in harmony with your prayer. If you fail to pray, you cannot win. For the Lord gave us the example of anticipatory prayer—getting ready for any event by seeking the face of God in watchful prayer at regular times.