seed, flower & fruit
HINDRANCES TO A DEEPER SPIRITUAL LIFE :
“What prevents the seed of truth from springing into flower and fruit? Without pretending to solve the whole problem in a few words, I would nevertheless point out some hindrances which should be plain enough to everyone once the brush is cleared away.
A loss of subjective faith. One thing is this, that for more than a full generation we have been under the influence of a type of Christian teaching which (intentionally or not) constantly stressed the objectivity of the Christian faith at the expense of its subjectivity. Stated simply, the objective in religion is that which is external to me, the subjective is that which is within me. Whatever the psychologists might think of this definition, it yet does define the words as I shall use them. Now the two elements must be kept in balance if we are to have the true faith of the New Testament. But this we have not done. In our praiseworthy effort to preserve correct doctrine and to magnify the finished work of Christ, we have unconsciously created the impression that Christianity is an objective thing, consisting of certain acts of God done outside of us and apart from us in time and place. We have stressed objective truth to the near exclusion of subjective experience. We have led people to believe that if they accept the historic truth of Christianity, they do indeed possess its true spiritual content.
I submit that the historic facts of Christianity do not constitute the faith of our Fathers. They constitute instead only one-half of it. The other half consists of the contemporary acts of God done within the souls of men, based upon and springing out of the historic acts already accomplished.
A lack of inner zeal. This almost exclusive preoccupation with the objective elements in the Christian religion has created a generation of textualists characterized by a burning zeal for the letter of the faith, but at the same time revealing a strange lack of understanding of its subjective and experiential elements. Everything is in the text, but the textualists do not explain how to get the vital content of the text into our hearts. The interiority of true faith is overlooked, and we find ourselves like a hungry boy counting the bread and rolls through the thick plate glass of the bakery window. If the boy were to compose a song about what he sees, or write a book telling the number, size, and shape of the loaves in the window, he might win himself a reputation as a pretty good fundamentalist. I am afraid that for a long time we have been doing just that. We stand greatly in need of men to tell us how to get the bread through the plate glass and into our famished bodies.”
—A.W. Tozer, 1950, in Moody Monthly magazine
(more recently published in a collection of Tozer’s magazine articles on the subject of “the deeper life” for Moody Monthly & Christian Life magazines from 1950-1957 under the title of The Deeper Life : Go Beyond Knowledge to Experience Spirit-Filled Living by Moody Publishers, 2022.)
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“The deeper life must be understood to mean a life in the Spirit far in advance of the average and nearer to the New Testament norm.” Tozer, 1954. (more on Tozer and “the deeper life” here…)
“these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.”
I Corinthians 2:10 NIV
