Spiritual Complacency

Paraphrased from A. W. Tozer, The Root of the Righteous

One of the greatest enemies of a Christian is spiritual complacency.  The person who believes he has arrived will not go any further; from his viewpoint that would be foolish.  The trap is to believe we have arrived when we have not.  The popular habit of quoting a text in order to prove our spirituality may be dangerous if in fact, we have no actual inward experience of the text.  Truth that has not been experienced is no better than error, and possibly just as dangerous.  The scribes who sat in Moses’ seat [a reference to Matthew 23] were not the victims of error; they were the victims of their failure to experience the truth they taught.

Religious complacency is encountered almost everywhere among Christians these days and its presence is both a sign and a prophecy.  This is because every Christian will become at last what his desires have made him  We are the sum total of our cravings.  The great saints all had thirsting hearts.  They cry has been, “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God: when will I come and appear before Him?”  Their longing after God consumed them; it propelled them onward and upward to heights toward which less passionate Christians look with tired eyes; heights which they hold no hope of reaching.

…Among the many who profess the Christian faith, scarcely one in a thousand reveals any passionate thirst for God… We fear extremes and shy away from too much passion in religion as if it’s somehow possible to have too much love or too much holiness.

A. W. Tozer, The Root of the Righteous
Christian Publications 1955 edition, pp. 55-56