The Dangers of a Shallow Faith: Awakening from Spiritual Lethargy

by A.W. Tozer

After the Methodist society became established and had circled the world and were growing in number, John Wesley admitted, “We are in a peculiar paradox in our Methodist societies.” He said, “I have noticed that as soon as a group of people meet together and form a society and subscribe to the New Testament doctrines and bring their lives into line with the truth, they immediately get honest, frugal, saving, hardworking, and upright and industrious and the result is they lay out money.” Then he said, “As soon they get some money, they begin to trust it. As soon as they begin to trust their money, they cease to be holy and spiritual, frugal, hardworking, honest, good, and so they backslide and so, here is the vicious circle. Get right with God and you become frugal, saving, honest, hardworking, serious. That is the path to get rich. When you get rich, you tend to backslide.” He said, “Here’s the vicious circle. What are we going to do?” Leave it to John Wesley. He was not going to be licked by a vicious circle. He said, “I have the answer.” He said, “Be honest, holy, hardworking, frugal, saving, get all you can, then give it all away, and that way you’ll never backslide. Make all you can, save all you can, give all you can.” That is exactly what John Wesley did. The wealth of England would have been laid at his feet—at least the common people would have laid their money there—but when he died, he died with 28 pounds, approximately $130, after a lifetime. He lived 83 years a...