It is all too easy, at least for me, to go through Christian life with a strange dullness or emptiness about the truths of our supposed faith, about Jesus who is the center of it all, about God Himself who ought to be the object of such awe and fear and gratitude and joy that the very thought of Him should take our breath away. But no, too ooften there is a dullness, a distractedness a big nothingneess. And only nowand then, such as for me right now, the last few days or so, a recognition of how wrong this is, a wondering about why it is, and an ateempt to come to a realistic feeling and knowledge of what are really the most amazing things in this world.
From time to time I try to renew my original hristian excitement, those days when the idea of God was new to me and staggeringly prsent and real and breathtaking. I go back to some of the books that hold that perspective and used to be able to kindle it in me. Even now they can but not as mucsch as they could years ago.. It is a great loss. Of course they always tell you it's not possible to expect to always have mountain highs in the Christian life, you must come back to earth. But do we alwaYS HAVE TO COME BACK TO THIS DULLNESS? I'm nso disappointed in myself that this happens ove and over again and efforts to renew my orighinal zeal and passion just don't do it any more. I've fallen so many times back into the flesh, even at times into pretty horrendous zin, perhaps theLord just insn't ogoint to let e come back in trhis life. But I'm trhing again, I'm praying that He will give me a right response to knowledge of Him. A right response, not the abstracteddullness of mind that He certainly doesn't deserve and certainly doesn't do anything fo rmy spiritual life.
Paul and Todd of Let's Talk Creation this week did a show on theology and had a guest who ws very inspiring, a Judd Dabis, who is one of those rare people who know the Bible so well he knows it in both original languages and knows it on more than one level. He describes frustrations in his learly Christian life with churches that didn't teach the whole Bible and he acquired a real desaire to know the origianl languages. That's rare. I now many want to learn those languages but I don't think I've ver heard anyone talk about such a craving to know them as this man describes. To be BLE TO to know God's word as it was originallyh written, and know it well. And by now he says he's read through the Old Testament in Hebrew maybe a hundred times, and the New Testament in Greek thousands of thiimes. It was an inspiring show for me and helps to keep me on the scurrent path of trhying to renew my own Christian life, again, for the zillianoth time.
But I still go for certain books, and always A W Tozer is at the top of my list. The Pursuit of God, God's Puruist of Man, and now I'm listening through The Knowledge of the HOly, in wqhich he takes one of God's attributes and makes a chapter of it and succeedss in making it relevant to ordinary daily human life on this fallen world.
Of all things how can God becom boring? He is so high above us and so out of reach or so it seems, I guess that's why. Bug Tozer brings Him into focus in this book i such a way that it really does cause me to have more of that right response to Him that I've been praying for.
Sometimes it seems heaven will just be boringly endless if all it is is worshiping bGOd, but a book like this makes the worship of God seem like the only thing a human being hould ever want to do, endlessly exciting endlessly fed by new knowledge of Him, knoqwledge to which there can literally be no end.
I often feel sorry for people who don't beliee. My efforts at evangelism are not very effective and I guess I have only myslef to blame, but nevertheless I still feel sorry for those who don' believe. What they are missing, and I think that even when I mhyself am missing so much as I've deascribed above. But hey have no idea. No idea. No idea. Even the barest knowledge of the truth is so amazing it takes the breath awa. For years, even at my lowest spiritual level I've been able go siply open the Bible and be filled with a peace that takes all the kinks out of my tensed muscles. Or when I hear it read or uotesd, or even somethiges when someone like Tozzer shows me a new perspective on Him. Just that wave of peace coming over me is a great gift of God, based on my siply acceptance of His sacrifice to pay for my wsins, . Just knowing that brings the new borth and the new birth is the regeneration of the spiritual faculty we lost at the Fall, wen Adam and Eve disobeyed God and punged their posterity into the darkness of his current world. God is such an enrapturing object in HImself just the tiniest taste of Him through the renewed spirit is all it takes for the psalmist to say As the edeer panteth after the water brooks so paneteth my soul after Thee.
I'm no good at writing aout these things. I want to but I'm just not good at it.
