The sacred page is not meant to be the end, but only the means toward the end, which is knowing God Himself.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that religious texts are tools to help us understand and connect with God rather than being an end in themselves.
Aiden Wilson Tozer's quote suggests that the purpose of sacred scriptures is not simply to be read or revered in isolation but rather to guide individuals towards a deeper relationship with the divine. The 'sacred page' serves as a pathway through which believers can gain insight and understanding about God, highlighting the importance of relationship over mere knowledge.
In practice
In a sermon discussing the importance of faith, one might reference this quote to emphasize that understanding scripture is vital to developing a personal relationship with God.
Peace of heart that is won by refusing to bear the common yoke of human sympathy is a peace unworthy of a Christian. To seek tranquility by stopping our ears to the cries of human pain is to make ourselves not Christian but a kind of degenerate stoic having no relation either to stoicism or Christianity.
The average Christian is so cold and so contented with His wretched condition that there is no vacuum of desire into which the blessed Spirit can rush in satisfying fullness.
Let a man set his heart only on doing the will of God and he is instantly free. If we understand our first and sole duty to consist of loving God supremely and loving everyone, even our enemies, for God's dear sake, then we can enjoy spiritual tranquility under every circumstance.
The church that can't worship must be entertained. And leaders who can't lead a church to worship must provide the entertainment.
Before the Christian Church goes into eclipse anywhere there must first be a corrupting of her simple basic theology. She simply gets a wrong answer to the question, βWhat is God like?β and goes on from there. Though she may continue to cling to a sound nominal creed, her practical working creed has become false. The masses of her adherents come to believe that God is different from what He actually is; and that is heresy of the most insidious and deadly kind
People who are crucified with Christ have three distinct marks: 1. they are facing only one direction, 2. they can never turn back, and 3. they no longer have plans of their own.
All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to the world by the hands of storytellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain.
I never force myself to be devout except when I feel so inspired, and never compose hymns of prayers unless I feel within me real and true devotion.
If prayer stands as the place where God and human beings meet, then I must learn about prayer. Most of my struggles in the Christian life circle around the same two themes: why God doesn't act the way we want God to, and why I don't act the way God wants me to. Prayer is the precise point where those themes converge.
Suffering times are a Christian's harvest time.
To keep me from sin and straying from Him, God has used devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. My life vows destined to be spent in the light irradiating from the tabernacle, and it is to the Heart of Jesus that I dare go for the solution of all my problems
It has come to be a dreadfully common belief in the Christian Church that the only man who has a βcallβ is the man who devotes all his time to what is called βthe ministry,β whereas all Christian service is ministry, and every Christian has a call to some kind of ministry or another.
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