This quote was recently brought to my attention by @Neil_Cole and Margaret Feinburg who posted this quote on her blog. It is so encouraging to me to see Tozer, a man so central to the history of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, penning these thoughts some 60 years ago. If Tozer thought we had “religious complexity” in 1948, I wonder what he would make of the “nervous activity” found in our Christian world today? Lord, help us to “proceed in the way of simplicity!”
Every age has its own characteristics. Right now we are in an age of religious complexity. The simplicity which is in Christ is rarely found among us. In its stead are programs, methods, organizations and a world of nervous activities which occupy time and attention but can never satisfy the longing of the heart. The shallowness of our inner experience, the hollowness of our worship, and that servile imitation of the world which marks our promotional methods all testify that we in this day, know God only imperfectly, and the peace of God scarcely at all.
If we would find God amid all the religious externals, we must first determine to find Him, and then proceed in the way of simplicity.
–A.W. Tozer (The Pursuit of God, p. 17-18)