Culture: Living as Citizens of Heaven On Earth is a collection of insights--excerpts--from A.W. Tozer's works. There are twenty-four chapters in all. I would be tempted to use the word devotional, but, something holds me back. Often people think of devotionals as short inspirational feel-good reads. Warm. Cozy. Fuzzy. This book would be the opposite. The goal? To make you THINK, to encourage you to step back and truly consider yourself, the world we live in, and our BIG, BIG God.
These chapters are a bit about what's wrong with ourselves, what's wrong with the world around us, what's wrong with our view of God.
Tozer's zeal can be seen as confrontational. I won't lie. But what I enjoy is his passion for God.
Favorite quotes:
A nominal belief is what you hold in name, and the practical belief is what you hold in reality and what holds you. While probably there are not many faults to be found with the nominal beliefs, there are a great deal to be found with the practical beliefs. These practical beliefs need restoration to their happy and bright state with faults and abuses purged.
We have been brainwashed to believe that we cannot read the Bible as we used to. We must now read it through glasses colored by change. We have been hypnotized by the serpent, the devil, into believing that we no longer have a trustworthy Bible, so Protestantism is no longer a moral force in the world.
I believe we need a reformation back to the belief that God knew what He was talking about in the first place. We need to get back to the belief that Jesus Christ did not miss anything but foresaw it all, back to the belief that the apostles spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. We must return to the belief that our fathers who gave us the great creeds were not fools but wise saints who knew what they were talking about. We must get back to the belief that Protestants are to protest, dissenters are to dissent and nonconformists must refuse to conform.
We have simplified so Christianity amounts to this: God is love; Jesus died for you; believe, accept, be jolly, have fun and tell others. And away we go—that is the Christianity of our day. I would not give a plug nickel for the whole business of it.
Have you got the Christian courage to bring your personal life into line with the will of God, to purge everything that is not of God?
To hear a so-called Christian cooing in a voice indelicately familiar, addressing words of saccharine sweetness to one whom he or she calls “Jesus dear,” is a shocking experience for anyone who has once seen heaven opened and stood speechless before the Holy Presence. No one who has ever bowed before the Burning Bush can thereafter speak lightly of God, much less be guilty of levity in addressing Him.
When will Christians learn that to love righteousness it is necessary to hate sin? That to accept Christ it is necessary to reject self? That to follow the good way we must flee from evil? That a friend of the world is an enemy of God?© Becky Laney of Operation Actually Read Bible
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