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    Success and the Christian: The Cost of Spiritual Maturity
    Success and the Christian: The Cost of Spiritual Maturity
    Success and the Christian: The Cost of Spiritual Maturity
    Ebook136 pages2 hours

    Success and the Christian: The Cost of Spiritual Maturity

    By A. W. Tozer

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    About this ebook

    Success and the Christian is a compilation of A.W. Tozer sermons on the subject matter of spiritual maturity—both its cost and criteria for the believer.

    The overall purpose of this collection is to "promote the personal heart religion"' among God's people, something Tozer consistently emphasized.

    Knowing God deeply and intimately brings purpose and meaning to life and should be the Christian's highest goal. So what holds us back from authentic spiritual success? A.W. Tozer contends that it is the excess baggage that most Christians carry that prevents them from going further with God.

    In this insightful and prophetic book, Tozer shows how we can recognize and clear away the stumbling blocks that keep us from a dynamic relationship with our Savior.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMoody Publishers
    Release dateNov 30, 2006
    ISBN9781600663482
    Success and the Christian: The Cost of Spiritual Maturity
    Author

    A. W. Tozer

    The late Dr. A. W. Tozer was well known in evangelical circles both for his long and fruitful editorship of the Alliance Witness as well as his pastorate of one of the largest Alliance churches in the Chicago area. He came to be known as the Prophet of Today because of his penetrating books on the deeper spiritual life.

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      Success and the Christian - A. W. Tozer

      Victory

      CHAPTER

      1

      Spiritual Perfection Defined

      Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing. (Hebrews 5:11)

      Did you ever try talking to a person who didn’t understand a word you were saying, who didn’t know your language? You can stand and talk earnestly to him and he just shakes his head and maybe speaks one word that he’s learned, meaning I don’t understand.

      Well, that is the reason it is hard. The writer of Hebrews is saying we have many things to say; but I’m talking one language and you understand another. Seeing ye are dull of hearing. For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat (Hebrews 5:11b-12). I want to call attention to the phrase, are become such. They weren’t such; but they had become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat (5:12b). They had regressed and gone back to their childhood state after having, obviously, grown some. For every one that useth milk, he explains, is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil (5:13-14).

      He said that we are to leave the first principles, that is, the elementary instructions of the Christian faith. We are to leave them, but not leave them behind. We are not to leave them as one would leave one house and go to another or leave one city and go to another. We are to leave them behind as a builder who is building a house lays the foundation and leaves it behind as he goes upward. If it’s a building like some of the buildings downtown, they leave the foundation far behind and go up several stories until they have thirty, forty or fifty stories towering in the air. They have left the foundation, not that they’ve departed from it, but they have built upon it. Now that is what the man of God means.

      The First Principles

      What are these first principles that we are to leave? He names them for us so there is no misunderstanding. He says, repentance … faith … baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment (6:1-2). These are the elementary first principles of the doctrine and we are to leave them as a builder leaves the foundation and builds on up. Not laying again the foundation (6:1), he says. The structure must rest on the foundation, no matter how high it may tower into the sky.

      It rests upon the foundation of Christ—of who He is and of repentance and faith in Him; of baptism into the body of Christ; of the coming resurrection of the dead and the judgment to come. These are basic doctrines of the faith that we rest upon, and no matter how far we go in the Christian faith we never leave them. They are there as a foundation upon which we build.

      The trouble was the Hebrews never went beyond the foundation. And this exclusive preoccupation with elementary truth is also characteristic of evangelicals today. Conversely, the ignoring of Christian truth is characteristic of the liberals. But exclusive preoccupation with the first principles is characteristic of the average church. He says that keeps us babies all our lives.

      Remaining a Baby

      Let’s first explore the metaphor about a baby and milk. It is possible to be frozen in your babyhood state, to have your growth suspended and stay right there. Notice the marks of a baby—beautiful in a baby, but terrible in a person when they get to be eighteen or twenty years old.

      First, a baby can’t concentrate on anything very long. A baby loses interest about as fast as it’s possible to lose interest. It’ll scream and yell and grab for something delightedly and get it, and ninety seconds later, throw it down and look for something else. That is typical of a baby and it’s the way God meant a baby to be. But He didn’t mean the baby’s father to be like that, nor the baby’s mother—nor even the baby’s seven-year-old sister. That is characteristic of a baby and it is also characteristic of Christians who became Christians, fundamental Christians, and then froze and stopped developing. They’re unable to stick to spiritual exercises. They can’t pray very long and can’t meditate. In fact, they smile at the whole idea of meditation. They think that was for Thomas Aquinas. As for Bible reading, they don’t do it very much—nor very much else that takes discipline and maturity.

      A second thing about a baby is that it is preoccupied with simple things, with foundational things. You never talk to a baby about existentialism or the cold war. The baby is satisfied with a half a dozen little things; it is enough to eat and to keep warm and dry and to keep its mother within yelling distance. That is about all a baby cares about.

      There are Christians who grow up and have no relish for anything spiritually advanced. They’re preoccupied with their first lessons. The average church is a school with only one grade and that is the first one. These Christians never expect to get beyond that and they don’t want to hear a man very long who wants to take them beyond that. If their pastor insists they do their homework and get ready for the next grade, they begin to pray that the Lord will call our dear brother somewhere else. The more they hate him the more they bear down on the words our dear brother. All he’s trying to do is prepare them for another grade, but that church is dedicated to the first grade, and the first grade is where it’s going to remain.

      Paul said some of them went up into the second grade and gave it up, and said, It’s too hard here, and they went back to the first.

      How long have you been in the first grade, Junior?

      Twelve years.

      Well, how long have you been listening to the same truth and hearing the same doctrine? You must be born again and there’s a judgment and so on. While that is true and we must not leave that, we must use that to advance. But we don’t do it. Whole generations of Christians grow up in the first grade. They learn to read their Bible in the light of this. To them, nothing in the Bible ever means anything beyond this elementary stage. They have Bible conferences dedicated to the first grade in the Christian life, Bible schools dedicated to the continuance of the first grade. For my part, I feel that I want a little ambition, a little spiritual ambition. Paul said, Forgetting those things which are behind … I press toward the mark (Philippians 3:13b-14a). There was a man not satisfied with the first grade.

      Another thing about a baby is its cry for amusement. It loves to be amused. When I’m on a bus somewhere I’m delighted to see a baby looking over a mother’s shoulder. If the mother sees me, I just sit there dignified as can be. But if I can see the baby, I begin to do things that invariably rouse the baby and we have a good time. Finally, the mother notices him and pulls him down and wonders who that old fellow is back there. Well, I won’t harm the baby; it loves to be amused. It doesn’t take $100 to do it. You can do it by wiggling your finger or looking through your fingers at it.

      Just as babies love to be amused, so the cry for amusement in religion is evidence that we are frozen in the first grade. We’re still children and we’re going to remain that way. Children have to have toys and they have to have novelties and they have to have new playmates every once in a while. And the Church is like that.

      Religious entertainment has so corrupted the Church of Christ that millions don’t know that it’s a heresy. Millions of evangelicals throughout the world have devoted themselves to religious entertainment. They don’t know that it’s as much a heresy as the counting of beads or the splashing of holy water or something else. To expose this, of course, raises a storm of angry protest among the people.

      A Christian businessman once said to me, Brother Tozer, I don’t make a god out of you; but I follow you and believe you. What I’d like to know is why so many people like you but don’t know what you’re talking about. And I said, Brother, I give up, I have no idea why it is. But it’s true. As soon as they think you’re exposing the love of religious entertainment, you’re finished in a minute.

      One man wrote an article as an exposé of me. He said that I claimed that religious entertainment was wrong and he said, Don’t you know that every time you sing a hymn, it’s entertainment? Every time you sing a hymn? I don’t know how that fellow ever finds his way home at night. He ought to have a seeing eye dog and a man with a white cane to take him home!

      When you raise your eyes to God and sing, Break Thou the bread of life, dear Lord, to me, is that entertainment—or is it worship? Isn’t there a difference between worship and entertainment? The church that can’t worship must be entertained. And men who can’t lead a church to worship must provide the entertainment. That is why we have the great evangelical heresy here today—the heresy of religious entertainment.

      And then there is another characteristic of immaturity—a child can neither read nor enjoy advanced literature, even when they get to be five or six years old. He’ll come and make you sit, he’ll read the book through, but all it says is, I saw a cat and the cat was white. You know, there’s nothing much to it. It’s nothing profound. If he never went beyond that, you’d feel very bad for your child. When he first comes home and says, Mommy, Daddy, listen to me read, no matter what you are doing or what’s burning on the stove, he grabs you and pulls you down and reads. He can read! How proud you are! He can read, wonderful! You never thought he’d make it, but he did; now he can read the whole book. We never knew how much our kids memorized and fooled us! But anyhow, they were reading.

      Suppose ten years from now he comes in—now he’s seventeen—and says, Mommy, Daddy, I can read—‘The cat is red.’

      You’d say to your husband or wife, I think we ought to do something for this boy. I think we ought to take him somewhere.

      That is exactly why the Holy Spirit wrote the book of Hebrews. He said, Let’s leave this. Why stay where you are and remain forever engrossed in the fundamentals of religion? We excuse anything by repeating, You’ve got to be born again. We can have any kind of show and say, Now, you ought to be born again—first principles all over. The Holy Spirit says, "Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance

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