Wanted: God Seers
The church's decline can be attributed to a lack of spiritual discernment among its leaders, making it difficult to address complex spiritual issues.
A.W. Tozer addresses the complexities of modern Christianity, cautioning against oversimplifying the church's issues by attributing them to a single cause. He emphasizes that the decline of true Bible religion is evident, yet identifying the root cause is challenging due to the interrelated nature of spiritual ailments. Tozer highlights a critical deficiency in the church: the lack of spiritual discernment among its leaders, suggesting that this lack may be the key to understanding and addressing the broader spiritual troubles faced by evangelical Christians today.
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When viewing the religious scene today, we are tempted to fix on one or another weakness and say, "This is what is wrong with the church. If this were corrected, we could recapture the glory of the early church and have pentecostal times back with us again."
This tendency to oversimplification is itself a weakness and should be guarded against always, especially when dealing with anything as complex as religion as it occurs in modern times. It takes a very young man to reduce all our present woes to a single disease and cure the whole thing with one simple remedy. Older and wiser heads will be more cautious, having learned that the prescribed nostrum seldom works for the reason that the diagnosis has not been correct. Nothing is that simple. Few spiritual diseases occur alone. Almost all are complicated by the presence of others and are so vitally interrelated as they spread over the whole religious body that it would take the wisdom of a Solomon to find a single cure.
For this reason, I am hesitant to point to any one defect in present-day Christianity and make all our troubles to stem from it alone. That so-called Bible religion in our times is suffering rapid decline is so evident as to need no proof, but just what has brought about this decline is not so easy to discover. I can only say that I have observed one significant lack among evangelical Christians which might turn out to be the real cause of most of our spiritual troubles. Of course, if that were true, then the supplying of that lack would be our most critical need.
The great deficiency to which I refer is the lack of spiritual discernment, especially among our leaders. . . .
Sermon Outline
- The Dangers of Oversimplification
- The Complexity of Spiritual Diseases
- The Lack of Spiritual Discernment
- A significant deficiency among evangelical Christians
- The impact on spiritual leadership
Key Quotes
“Nothing is that simple. Few spiritual diseases occur alone.” — A.W. Tozer
“It takes a very young man to reduce all our present woes to a single disease and cure the whole thing with one simple remedy.” — A.W. Tozer
“The great deficiency to which I refer is the lack of spiritual discernment, especially among our leaders.” — A.W. Tozer
Application Points
- We should be cautious when trying to identify a single cause for complex problems in the church.
- Spiritual discernment is essential for effective leadership and decision-making in the church.
- The church should prioritize developing spiritual discernment among its leaders to address the decline of Bible religion.