| The Saint Must Walk Alone (prophet); Ref: Tozar | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Oct 29 2006, 12:39 PM (496 Views) | |
| Stace4Jesus | Oct 29 2006, 12:39 PM Post #1 |
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Quote _____ The Saint Must Walk Alone A.W. Tozer A lonely saint is not a haughty man. His loneliness makes him sympathetic to the approach of the brokenhearted and the fallen and the sin-bruised. ~ ~ ~ ~ Most of the world's great souls have been lonely. Loneliness seems to be one price the saint must pay for his saintliness. In the morning of the world (or should we say, in that strange darkness that came soon after the dawn of man's creation), that pious soul, Enoch, walked with God and was not, for God took him; and while it is not stated in so many words, a fair inference is that Enoch walked a path quite apart from his contemporaries. Another lonely man was Noah who, of all the antediluvians, found grace in the sight of God; and every shred of evidence points to the aloneness of his life even while surrounded by his people. Again, Abraham had Sarah and Lot, as well as many servants and herdsmen, but who can read his story and the apostolic comment upon it without sensing instantly that he was a man "whose soul was alike a star and dwelt apart"? As far as we know not one word did God ever speak to him in the company of men. Face down he communed with his God, and the innate dignity of the man forbade that he assume this posture in the presence of others. How sweet and solemn was the scene that night of the sacrifice when he saw the lamps of fire moving between the pieces of offering. There, alone with a horror of great darkness upon him, he heard the voice of God and knew that he was a man marked for divine favor. Moses also was a man apart. While yet attached to the court of Pharaoh he took long walks alone, and during one of these walks while far removed from the crowds he saw an Egyptian and a Hebrew fighting and came to the rescue of his countryman. After the resultant break with Egypt he dwelt in almost complete seclusion in the desert. There, while he watched his sheep alone, the wonder of the burning bush appeared to him, and later on the peak of Sinai he crouched alone to gaze in fascinated awe at the Presence, partly hidden, partly disclosed, within the cloud and fire. The Prophets of pre-Christian times differed widely from each other, but one mark they bore in common was their enforced loneliness. They loved their people and gloried in the religion of the fathers, but their loyalty to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their zeal for the welfare of the nation of Israel drove them away from the crowd and into long periods of heaviness. "I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother's children," cried one and unwittingly spoke for all the rest. Most revealing of all is the sight of that One of whom Moses and all the Prophets did write, treading His lonely way to the cross. His deep loneliness was unrelieved by the presence of the multitudes. 'Tis midnight, and on Olive's brow The star is dimmed that lately shone; 'Tis midnight; in the garden now, The suffering Savior prays alone. 'Tis midnight, and from all removed The Savior wrestles lone with fears; E'en the disciple whom He loved Heeds not his Master's grief and tears. - William B. Tappan He died alone in the darkness hidden from the sight of mortal man and no one saw Him when He arose triumphant and walked out of the tomb, though many saw Him afterward and bore witness to what they saw. There are some things too sacred for any eye but God's to look upon. The curiosity, the clamor, the well-meant but blundering effort to help can only hinder the waiting soul and make unlikely if not impossible the communication of the secret message of God to the worshiping heart. Sometimes we react by a kind of religious reflex and repeat dutifully the proper words and phrases even though they fail to express our real feelings and lack the authenticity of personal experience. Right now is such a time. A certain conventional loyalty may lead some who hear this unfamiliar truth expressed for the first time to say brightly, "Oh, I am never lonely. Christ said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you,' and 'Lo, I am with you alway.' How can I be lonely when Jesus is with me?" Now I do not want to reflect on the sincerity of any Christian soul, but this stock testimony is too neat to be real. It is obviously what the speaker thinks should be true rather than what he or she has proved to be true by the test of experience. This cheerful denial of loneliness proves only that the speaker has never walked with God without the support and encouragement afforded him/her by society. The sense of companionship which he/she mistakenly attributes to the presence of Christ may and probably does arise from the presence of friendly people. Always remember: you cannot carry a cross in company. Though a man or woman were surrounded by a vast crowd, his or her cross is his or hers alone and his or her carrying of it marks him or her as a man or woman apart. Society has turned against him or her; otherwise he or she would have no cross. No one is a friend to the man or woman with a cross. "They all forsook Him, and fled." . . . . + The pain of loneliness arises from the constitution of our nature. God made us for each other. The desire for human companionship is completely natural and right. The loneliness of the Christian results from his or her walk with God in an ungodly world, a walk that must often take him or her away from the fellowship of good Christians as well as from that of the unregenerate world. His or Her God-given instincts cry out for companionship with others of his or her kind, others who can understand his or her longings, his or her aspirations, his or her absorption in the love of Christ; and because within his or her circle of friends there are so few who share inner experiences, he or she is forced to walk alone. The unsatisfied longings of the Prophets for human understanding caused them to cry out in their complaint, and even our Lord Himself suffered in the same way. The man or woman who has passed on into the divine Presence in actual inner experience will not find many who understand him or her. A certain amount of social fellowship will of course be his or hers as he or she mingles with religious persons in the regular activities of the church, but true spiritual fellowship will be hard to find. But -- he or she should not expect things to be otherwise. After all, he or she is a stranger and a pilgrim, and the journey he or she takes is not on his or her feet but in his or her heart. He or She walks with God in the garden of his or her own soul - and who but God can walk there with him or her? He or She is of another spirit from the multitudes that tread the courts of the Lord's house. He or She has seen that of which they have only heard, and he or she walks among them somewhat as Zacharias walked after his return from the altar when the people whispered, "He has seen a vision." The truly spiritual man or woman is indeed something of an oddity. He or She lives not for himself or herself, but to promote the interests of Another. He or She seeks to persuade people to give all to his/her Lord and asks no portion or share for himself or herself. He/She delights not to be honored but to see his/her Savior glorified in the eyes of men and women. His/Her joy is to see his/her Lord promoted and himself/herself neglected. He/She finds few who care to talk about that which is the supreme object of his/her interest, so he/she is often silent and preoccupied in the midst of noisy religious shoptalk. For this, he/she earns the reputation of being dull and overserious, so he/she is avoided and the gulf between him/her and society w i d e n s . He/She searches for friends upon whose garments he/she can detect the smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces, and finding few or none, he/she, like Mary of old, "keeps these things in her heart." It is this very loneliness that throws him/her back upon God. "When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up." His/Her inability to find human companionship drives him/her to seek in God what he/she can find nowhere else. He/She learns in inner solitude what he/she could not have learned in the crowd - that Christ is All in All, that He is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption, that in Him we have and possess life's summum bonum. Two things remain to be said. One, that the lonely man or woman of whom we speak is not a haughty man or woman, nor is he or she the holier-than-thou, austere saint so bitterly satirized in popular literature. He or She is likely to feel that he or she is the least of all men and is sure to blame himself or herself for his or her very loneliness. He/She wants to share his/her feelings with others and to open his/her heart to some like-minded soul who will understand him or her, but the spiritual climate around him or her does not encourage it, so he or she remains silent and tells his/her griefs to God alone. The second thing is that the lonely saint is not the withdrawn man or woman who hardens himself or herself against human suffering and spends his or her days contemplating the heavens. Just the opposite is true. His/Her loneliness makes him/her sympathetic to the approach of the brokenhearted and the fallen and the sin-bruised. Because he/she is detached from the world, he/she is all the more able to help it. Meister Eckhart taught his followers that if they should find themselves in prayer and happen to remember that a poor widow needed food, they should break off the prayer instantly and go care for the widow. "God will not suffer you to lose anything by it," he told them. "You can take up again in prayer where you left off and the Lord will make it up to you." This is typical of the great mystics and masters of the interior life from Paul to the present day. The weakness of so many modern Christians is that they feel too much at home in the world. In their effort to achieve restful "adjustment" to unregenerate society they have lost their pilgrim character and become an essential part of the very moral order against which they are sent to protest. The world recognizes them and accepts them for what they are. And this is the saddest thing that can be said about them. They are not lonely, but neither are they saints. A.W. Tozer |
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2:24 PM Jul 11