The Family Crisis in America

(from the series “Family Focus”) by Michael Catt “We’ve got to stop mareketing religion and pandering to people’s desires. Our nation’s moral and spiritual crisis is much too deep-rooted to allow for superficial fixes. Even nonreligious people in America are beginning to realize that we are facing disintegration as a society. This is a problem […]

All quotes by A. W. Tozer…

“If there's anything necessary to your eternal happiness but God, you're not the kind of Christian that you ought to be. For only God is the true rest.”

“Sometimes I go to God and say, ‘God, if Thou dost never answer another prayer while I live on this earth, I will still worship Thee as long as I live and in the ages to come for what Thou hast done already.’ God’s already put me so far in debt that if I were to live one million millenniums I couldn’t pay Him for what He’s done for me.”

“Looking at what John wrote, I wonder how so many present–day Christians can consider an hour of worship Sunday morning as adequate adoration of the holy God who created them and then redeemed them back to Himself.”

“God is pleased with His people when His praise is continually and joyfully on their lips. The heavenly scene John describes is the unceasing cry of the adoring living creatures, ‘Holy, holy, holy!’ They rest not, day or night. My fear is that too many of God’s professing people down here are resting far too often between their efforts at praise.”

“There is a point in true worship where the mind may cease to understand and goes over to kind of delightful astonishment---probably to what Carlyle described as ‘transcendent wonder,’ a degree of wonder without limit and beyond expression!”

“It is always true that an encounter with God brings wonderment and awe!”

“It is delightful to worship God, but it is also a humbling thing; and the man who has not been humbled in the presence of God will never be a worshiper of God at all. He may be church member who keeps the rules and obeys the discipline, and who tithes and goes to conference, but he’ll never be a worshiper unless he is deeply humbling.”

“I can safely say, on the authority of all that is revealed in the Word of God, that any man or woman on this earth who is bored and turned off by worship is not ready for heaven.”

“In my opinion, the great single need of the moment is that light-hearted superficial religionists be struck down with a vision of God high and lifted up, with His train filling the temple. The holy art of worship seems to have passed away like the Shekinah glory from the tabernacle. As a result, we are left to our own devices and forced to make up the lack of spontaneous worship by bringing in countless cheap and tawdry activities to hold the attention of the church people.”

“I refer to the loss of the concept of majesty from the popular religious mind. The Church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshipping men. . . . With our loss of the sense of majesty has come the further loss of religious awe and consciousness of the divine Presence. We have lost our spirit of worship and our ability to withdraw inwardly to meet God in adoring silence.”

“Now we were made to worship, but the Scriptures tell us something else again. They tell us that man fell and kept not estate; that he forfeited the original glory of God and failed to fulfill the creative purpose, so that he is not worshipping now in the way that God meant him to worship. All else fulfills its design; flowers are still fragrant and lilies are still beautiful and the bees still search for nectar amongst the flowers; the birds still sing with their thousand voice choir on a summer’s day and the sun and the moon and the stars all move on their rounds doing the will of God.”

“And from what we can learn from the Scriptures we believe that the seraphim and cherubim and powers and dominions are still fulfilling their design – worshipping God who created them and breathed into them the breath of life. Man alone sulks in his cave. Man alone, with all of his brilliant intelligence, with all of his amazing, indescribable and wonderful equipment, still sulks in his cave. He is either silent, or if he opens his mouth at all, it is to boast and threaten and curse; or it’s nervous, ill-considered laughter, or it’s humor become big business, or it’s songs without joy.”

“Yes, worship of the loving God is man’s whole reason for existence. That is why we are born and that is why we are born again from above. That is why were created and recreated. That is why there was a genesis at the beginning re-genesis, called re-generation.”

“The purpose of God in sending His Son to die and rise and live and be at the right hand of God the Father was that He might restore to us the missing jewel, the jewel of worship; that we might come back and learn to do again that which we were created to do in the first place – worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, to spend our time in awesome wonder and adoration of God, feeling and expressing it, and letting it get into our labors and doing nothing except as an act of worship to Almighty God through His Son, Jesus Christ.”

“But a man who has passed the veil and looked even briefly upon the holy face of Isaiah’s God can never be irreverent again. There will be a reverence in his spirit and instead of boasting, he will cover his feet modestly.”

“But thinking is not enough. Men are made to worship also, to bow down and adore in the presence of the mystery inexpressible. Man’s mind is not the top pea, of his nature. Higher than his mind is his spirit, that something within him which can engage the supernatural, which under the breath of the Spirit can come alive and enter into conscious communion with heaven, can receive the divine nature and hear and feel and see the ineffable wonder that is God. . . . The wise of the world who have not learned to worship are but demi-men, unformed and rudimentary. Their further development awaits the life – giving touch of Christ to wake them to spiritual birth and life eternal.”

“Abraham was completely satisfied with God’s friendship. He becomes to us a faithful example in his willingness to put God first. With Abraham, only God mattered. . . . In Abraham’s encounter with God he learned why he was here upon earth. He was to Glorify God in all things and to continually worship.”

“There is a necessity for true worship among us. If God is who He says He is and if we are the believing people of God we claim to be, we must worship Him. . . . Oh, how I wish I could adequately set forth the glory of the One who is worthy to be the object of our worship! I do believe that if our new converts – the babes in Christ—could be made to see His thousand attributes and even partially comprehend His being, they would become faint with a yearning desire to worship and honor and acknowledge Him, now and forever.”

“God wants worshippers before workers; indeed the only acceptable workers are those who have learned the lost art of worship. It is inconceivable that a sovereign and holy God should be so hard up for workers that He would press into service anyone who had been empowered regardless of his moral qualifications. The very stones would praise Him if the need arose and a thousand legions of angels would leap to do His will. . . . Gifts and power for service the Spirit surely desires to impart; but holiness and spiritual worship come first.”

Worship

You Might Be a Pastor If…

You believe you are supposed to take a covered dish to heaven. You have never sung the third verse of any hymn. You think that someone who says ‘amen’ while the pastor is preaching is charismatic. You complain because your pastor only works one day a week and then ‘he works too long.’ You clapped […]

Church Attendance Boosts GPAs

By Robert Roy BrittLiveScience (Aug. 19) – If you want to boost your teenager’s grade point average, take the kid to church. Or, a new study suggests, find some similar social activity to involve them in. Researchers found that church attendance has as much effect on a teen’s GPA as whether the parents earned a […]

Volume 08, Issue 14

Stinkin’ Thinkin’Michael Catt My study is located in a separate building from my office. I have my books and files there, and it is the place where I write books, articles and most of my sermons. It’s quiet and I’m rarely disturbed there. Last week I got a whiff of something that didn’t smell right, […]

In Search of a Confident Faith

– J. P. Moreland and Klaus Issler. IVP Books. “…written out of their concern for the lack of clarity as to what faith is, why it exists and how to grow in it. Filled with real-life stories and examples, the book not only provides solid answers to these issues, but also encourages readers to believe, […]

Between Heaven and Hell

A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis & Aldous Huxley – Peter Kreeft. InterVarsity Press. “On November 22, 1963, three great men died within a few hours of each other: C. S. Lewis, John F. Kennedy and Aldous Huxley. All three believed, in different ways, that death is not the […]

My Date with the Christian Bookstore

Due to the torrential downpours we’ve been experiencing as a result of Tropical Storm Fay, my husband and I have been trying to intersperse our evenings with quick errands or outings to curb our cabin fever. Last night, we went to our local Christian bookstore. I honestly don’t frequent Christian bookstores very often, normally opting […]

Be Still

In 1988, National Geographic photographer Eric Valli received both national and international recognition for his effort in securing an amazing photograph which he entitled, “Honey Hunters.” The photograph was of a jungle nomad named Mani Lal gathering honey in the Himalayan foothills where the world’s largest honeybee takes shelter. What made this such an adventurous […]

Meeting with a Giant

A few weeks ago I was able to spend the day with Warren and Betty Wiersbe. Since we are hundreds of miles apart and they rarely travel these days, it was a special joy to see them. Jim McBride and I were in Nebraska for a Fireproof screening and spent most of the day with […]

A Gift of Peace and Rest

(originally appeared in Songs in the Night, may not be reprinted without permission of 2ProphetU.com) He stood in the busy marketplace in Capernaum, and everybody knew who He was. He was Jesus of Nazareth, the teacher, the healer. And He looked at the crowd as they rushed here and there, just the way the crowds […]