While going through old boxes in preparation for moving, I discovered an old letter from an old friend. When I started out in youth ministry ten years ago, I quickly became friends with Jeff Schofield, an inspiring pastor and currently a church planter in Ohio.
Jeff had sent me a letter of encouragement that made its way into an old shoe box for safe keeping. Jeff's words were as true a decade ago as they are today. He wrote in part:
"Don't forget to reflect on your spiritual life. A.W. Tozer once said, 'The impulse to pursue God originates with God, but the outworking of that impulse is our following hard after Him.'
To have found Him and still pursue Him is the whole goal of life. Come near to the holy men and women of the past and you will see and sense their burning passion to know God.
'The stiff wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire. Complacency is a deadly foe of spiritual growth... He waits to be wanted. Every age has its own characteristics. Right now we are in an age of religious complacency. The shallowness of our inner experience, the hollowness of our worship, show we only know God imperfectly' - Tozer."
To have found Him and still pursue Him is the whole goal of life. Come near to the holy men and women of the past and you will see and sense their burning passion to know God.
'The stiff wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire. Complacency is a deadly foe of spiritual growth... He waits to be wanted. Every age has its own characteristics. Right now we are in an age of religious complacency. The shallowness of our inner experience, the hollowness of our worship, show we only know God imperfectly' - Tozer."
