The third chapter was over abiding in Christ. I couldn't be reading this at a better time.
Finding ourselves here in McKinnon there will be a great temptation to do lots of things to "help the church grow". While as Christians we are called to serve, evangelize, and disciple these all come second to our primary command. Abiding in Christ should always be first and foremost in my/our lives. I struggle with this and can easily take on too much thinking that I can stubbornly overwork to produce results.
This quote from chapter three particularly hit home and along with the accompanying verses is something I need to have stapled on my forehead. Also tying my legs together so I can't walk anywhere probably wouldn't hurt either :-) I am continually reminded and humbled that I am a Martha needing to be a Mary first.
...A.W. Tozer's words are truer now than when he wrote them a generation ago:
'The accent in the Church today', says Leonard Ravenhill...is not on devotion, but on commotion'...The adolescent taste which loves the loud horn and thundering exhaust have got into the activities of modern Christians...We must begin the needed reform by challenging the spiritual validity of externalism. What a man is must be shown to be more important than what he does...We must show a new generation of nervous, almost frantic, Christians that power lies at the center of the life...The desire to be dramatically active is proof of our religious infantilism; it is a type of exhibitionism common to kindergarten.
This is not a plea for quietism, defined in the dictionary as 'a passive attitude towards life, with devotional contemplation and abandonment of the will, as a form of religious mysticism'. It is simply a recognition of the truth of the promise, 'they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength' (Isa. 40:31). The church which make a priority of fellowship with Christ will find itself brought by him, as he has promised, to a new level of fruitfulness.
Edward Donnelly
John 15:5 'Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit'
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