Time With God
The sermon emphasizes the importance of giving time to God and cultivating a deeper acquaintance with Him in order to experience spiritual growth and eternal life.
A.W. Tozer emphasizes the eternal nature of God, asserting that while Moses has passed, the God of Moses remains unchanged and ever-present. He highlights the necessity of dedicating time to cultivate a relationship with God, rejecting the notion of quick fixes in spiritual growth. Tozer illustrates the loneliness felt by those who perceive God as distant, comparing it to a child lost in a crowd, and stresses that true fulfillment comes from knowing God intimately. He reminds us that eternal life is found in knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ, reinforcing the importance of connection with the divine.
Text
Moses was dead, but the God of Moses still lived. Nothing had changed and nothing had been lost. Nothing of God dies when a man of God dies.
Here we acknowledge (and there is fear and wonder in the thought) the essential unity of God's nature, the timeless persistence of His changeless Being through out eternity and time. Here we begin to see and feel the Eternal Continuum. Begin where we will, God is there first. He is Alpha and Omega.
. . . . I am often caused to wish that there were some way to bring modern Christians into a deeper spiritual life painlessly by short easy lessons; but such wishes are vain. No short cut exists. God has not bowed to our nervous haste nor embraced the methods of our machine age. It is well that we accept the hard truth now: the man who would know God must give time to Him. He must count no time wasted which is spent in the cultivation of His acquaintance.
We talk of Him much and loudly, but we secretly think of Him as being absent, and we think of ourselves as inhabiting a parenthetic interval between the God who was and the God who will be. And we are lonely with an ancient and cosmic loneliness. We are each like a little child lost in a crowded market, who has strayed but a few feet from its mother, yet because she cannot be seen the child is inconsolable. So we try by every method devised . . . to relieve our fears and heal our hidden sadness; but with all our efforts we remain unhappy still, with the settled despair of men alone in a vast and deserted universe. (A. W. Tozer, The Divine Conquest, pp. 21-23).
And this is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent. . . . And I am no more in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to Thee. Holy Father, keep them in Thy name, the name which Thou hast given Me, that they may be one, even as We are (John 17:3, 11).
Sermon Outline
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I
- The Timelessness of God's Nature
- The Essential Unity of God's Being
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II
- The Importance of Time with God
- No Short Cut to Spiritual Life
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III
- The Loneliness of a Godless World
- The Desperation of Unfulfilled Longing
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IV
- The Promise of Eternal Life
- Knowing God as the Only True Source of Fulfillment
Key Quotes
“Nothing had changed and nothing had been lost. Nothing of God dies when a man of God dies.” — A.W. Tozer
“Begin where we will, God is there first. He is Alpha and Omega.” — A.W. Tozer
“And this is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.” — A.W. Tozer
Application Points
- Make time for God and prioritize your relationship with Him.
- Recognize that there is no shortcut to spiritual growth and that God's ways are not bound by our haste or machine age.
- Seek to know God as the only true source of fulfillment and eternal life.