Receptivity

I have been temporarily shut out of the internet. Our ISP has been fixing things that weren't broken, and therefore I have been unavailable. It wouldn't have mattered too much anyway. As it is I just had to interrupt this post for half an hour while I put out a brush fire. I seem to be running from one dilemma to the next these days. I have not allowed this frantic life to tear me away from my morning quiet time though. Here is another excerpt from The Pursuit of God: (Receptivity to God) may be increased by exercise or destroyed by neglect. It is not a sovereign and irresistible force which comes upon us as a seizure from above. It is a gift of God, indeed, but one which must be recognized and cultivated as any other gift if we are to realize the purpose for which it was given. Failure to see this is the cause of a very serious breakdown in modern evangelicalism. The idea of cultivation and exercise, so dear to the the saints of old, has now no place in our total religious picture. It is too slow, too common. We now demand glamour and fast flowing dramatic action. A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methoods of reaching their goals.We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relations with God. We read our chapter, have our short devotions and rush away, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy by attending another gospel meeting or listening to another thrilling story told by a religious adventurer lately returned from afar. The tragic results of this spirit are all about us: Shallow lives, hollow religious philosophies, the preponderance of the element of fun in gospel meetings, the glorification of men, trust in religious externalities, quasi-religious fellowships, salesmanship methods, the mistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit. ...We have all contributed directly or indirectly to this sad state of affairs.... What God in His sovereignty may yet do on a world-scale I do not claim to know. But what He will do for the plain man or woman who seeks His face I believe I do know and can tell others. Let any man turn to God in earnest, let him begin to exercise himself unto godliness, let him seek to develop his powers of spiritual receptivity by trust and obedience and humility, and the results will exceed anything he may have hoped in his leaner and weaker days." The first time I read this I was struck by the fact that this was written about 60 years ago! My particular denomination hasn't dealt with the "entertainment of religion" for 60 years. It has been a fairly recent advent, perhaps of a decade. I do feel that we have lost our grip on the deeper side of God. I am not laying blame, as I have admitted here in the last month or so, I too am feeling the shallow waters of drought. I very much was looking forward to having time this year to read some of these deeper thoughts with my older son, but it seems that our schedule is not condusive to that. We each seem to be reading on our own and then trying to have a conversation every couple of weeks at the end of a book. Currently we are reading Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence. He was a monk in the 1600s. #1 seems to be enjoying it. I finished it this morning. I may have some tidbits to share from it as well, but mostly I have been dwelling on the idea of always being aware of God's Presence. Perhaps if we were more aware we would not find ourselves in this predicament that Tozer describes.