Our church has a book club, in case you weren’t aware. We’re currently in our fourth year of reading books together. This isn’t an advertisement per se, but I do think its awesome to be reading books together as a church. There are many people who join the group thinking they aren’t readers but quickly come to find that they not only enjoy reading, but can read a book a month (with a few breaks).
This month we read “The Root of the Righteous” by A.W. Tozer. It is worth grabbing at your favorite bookstore at church and reading. The book is comprised of 2-4 page chapters, though short, they are pointed and encouraging. There was a small section we read together that I wanted to share with you all. The chapter was called “We Can Afford to Wait”. This was published in 1955 but is prophetic to the day and age we live in. This is a quote from that chapter.
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A real Christian is an odd number anyway. He feels supreme love for One whom he has never seen, talks familiarly ever day to Someone he cannot see, expects to go to heave on the virtue of Another, empties himself in order to be full, admits he is wrong so he can be declared right, goes down in order to get up, is strongest when he is weakest, richest when he is poorest and happiest what he feels worst. He dies so he can live, forsakes in order to have, gives away so he can keep, sees the invisible, hears the inaudible and knows that which passeth knowledge. And all the while he may be confounding critics by his unbelievable practicality: his farm may be the most productive, his business the best managed and his mechanical skill the sharpest of anyone in his neighborhood.
The man who has met God is not looking for something-he has found it; he is not searching for light-upon him the Light has already shined. His certainty may seem bigoted, but his is the assurance of one who knows by experience. His religion is no hearsay; he is not a copy, not a facsimile print; he is an original from the hand of the Holy Ghost.
We have not here described a superior saint-merely a true Christian, far from perfect and with much yet to learn; but his firsthand acquaintance with God saves him from the nervous scramble in which the world is engaged and which is popular touted as progress.
No doubt we shall yet hear many a tin whistle and see many a parade bravely marching off towards the Four Freedoms of the Universal Mankind or the Age of Atomic Progress, and we will be expected to fall into step. Let’s be cautious. We are waiting for a trumpet note that will call us away from the hurly-burly and set in motion a series of events that will result at last in a new heaven and a new earth.
We can afford to wait.