Spiritual Obesity

A great chasm yawns between disciplined believers and spiritual couch potatoes. Grace was never intended to produce sluggish, flabby Christians.  Although we rightfully gorge ourselves on an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of mercy, Scripture expects the opposite of spiritual obesity, out-of-shape believers lumbering lethargically through their spiritual journey. Grace results in heightened passion to pursue God, or we misunderstand its divine intent; grace and hunger are not only compatible, they are conjoined at the heart. The Bible unapologetically urges those who are being saved to strive, and those who have been found by grace to stay after the search for greater intimacy with the Grace-giver. Perhaps the best known story of pursuit in all of American literature is Herman Melville's 1851 epic tale Captain Ahab and the white sperm whale. Ishmael narrates the voyage of the whaleship Pequod and its captain's crazed pursuit of the whale Moby Dick, which on a previous voyage destroyed Ahab's ship and severed his leg below the knee. Unlike Ahab in his maniacal pursuit for revenge in the shadow of enormous loss, each of us is to be engaged in an all-consuming high and noble quest in light of inexplicable gain.

In what should be required reading for every believer, Tozer writes: “The yearning to know what cannot be known, to comprehend the incomprehensible, to touch and taste the unapproachable, arises from the image of God in the nature of man. Deep calleth unto deep, and though polluted and landlocked by the mighty disaster theologians call the Fall, the soul senses its origin and longs to return to its source" (A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God). This insatiable appetite for personal intimacy with Almighty God is the antidote for what Bonhoeffer terms "cheap grace." “Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession...Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate" (Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship). Grace pardons completely, and authentic discipleship accepts with it greater opportunity and responsibility, rather than entitlement.

“O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, so that I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, ‘Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away.’ Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long.” 

― A.W. Tozer