More Thoughts From A.W. Tozer

Dear Friends,

Today is my first day back after three weeks away. Unlike God, we as humans do need occasional vacations to relax, get refreshed and refocus. For there is a degree of truth to the saying, “All work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy.” God affirmed our need to rest from work when He ordained the Sabbath. He even expanded the Sabbath from its original limitation of one day, and through Jesus made it possible for us to “enter His rest,” or the continuous, ongoing, “Sabbath rest for the people of God” (Hebrews 4:1 & 9).

It’s an idea that fits well with our ‘thought’ for today from A. W. Tozer entitled, “God is Easy to Live With,” found in his book, “The Root of the Righteous.” If you are looking at the length and thinking, “It’s a bit long…” you will skip over something profoundly relevant, insightful, and personally healing, since many still struggle with thoughts that God is hard to live with. He is not, as Tozer beautifully explains. Enjoy.

“Satan’s first attack on the human race was his sly effort to destroy Eve’s confidence in the kindness of God. Unfortunately for her, and us, he succeeded too well. From that day, people have had a false conception of God, and it is exactly this conception that has cut out from under them the ground of righteousness and driven them to reckless and destructive living.

Nothing twists and deforms the soul more than a low or unworthy conception of God. Certain sects, such as the Pharisees, while they held that God was stern and austere, yet managed to maintain a fairly high level of external morality; but their righteousness was only outward. Inwardly they were “whitewashed tombs,” as our Lord Himself told them. Their wrong conception of God resulted in a wrong idea of worship.

To a Pharisee, the service of God was a bondage which he did not love, but from which he could not escape without a loss too great to bear. The God of the Pharisee was not a God easy to live with, so the Pharisee’s religion became grim and hard and loveless. It had to be so, for our notion of God must always determine the quality of our religion. Much Christianity since the days of Christ’s flesh has also been grim and severe. And the cause has been the same – an unworthy or inadequate view of God. Instinctively, we try to be like our God, and if He be conceived to be stern and exacting, so will we ourselves be.

From a failure to properly understand God comes a world of unhappiness among good Christians even today. The Christian life is thought by many to be a glum cross-carrying under the eye of a stern Father who expects much and excuses nothing. He is austere, peevish, highly temperamental, and extremely hard to please. The kind of life which springs out of such libelous notions must of necessity be but a parody of true life in Christ.

It is most important to our spiritual welfare that we always hold in our minds a right conception of God. If we think of Him as cold and exacting, we shall find it impossible to love Him, and our lives will be ridden with servile fear. If, again, we hold Him to be kind and understanding, our whole inner life will mirror that idea. The truth is that God is the most winsome of all beings and His service is one of unspeakable pleasure. He is all love, and those who trust Him need never know anything but that love. He is just, indeed, and He will not condone sin. Yet, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, He is able to act toward us exactly as if we had never sinned. Toward the trusting sons of men His mercy will always triumph over justice.

The fellowship of God is delightful beyond all telling. He communes with His redeemed ones in an easy, uninhibited fellowship that is restful and healing to the soul. He is not sensitive, nor selfish, nor temperamental. What He is today we shall find Him tomorrow and the next day and the next year. He is not hard to please, though He may be hard to satisfy. He expects from us only what He Himself first supplied. He is quick to mark every simple effort to please Him, and just as quick to overlook imperfections when He knows we meant to do well. He loves us for ourselves and values our love more than galaxies of newly created worlds.

Unfortunately, many Christians cannot get free from their perverted notions of God, and these notions poison their hearts and destroy their inward freedom. These friends serve God grimly, as the elder brother did, doing what is right without enthusiasm and without joy, and seem altogether unable to understand the buoyant, spirited celebration when the prodigal comes home. Their idea of God rules out the possibility of His being happy in His people…

How good it would be if they could learn that God is easy to live with. He remembers our frame and knows that we are but dust. He may sometimes chasten us, it is true, but even this He does with a smile – the proud, tender smile of a Father who is bursting with pleasure over an imperfect but promising son who is coming to look more and more like the One whose child he is.

Some of us are religiously jumpy and self-conscious because we know that God sees our every thought and is acquainted with all our ways. We need not be. God is the sum of all patience and the essence of kindly good will. We please Him most, not by frantically trying to make ourselves good, but by throwing ourselves into His arms with all our imperfections, believing that He understands everything and loves us still.”

Few have said it better, leaving me no need to add anything more!

Praise God for the Riches of His Grace, Pastor Jeff