God in the midst? (Tozer for Tuesday)

We have bushels of religious gatherings but only once in a great while is God in the midst. I would walk through mud up to my knees to get to a group where nobody was showing off, where only God was present. The Early Church prayed—talked to God. When they sang, they talked to God and sang about God. Today we have programming, that awful, hateful word “programming”; but God is absent.

The Early Church were worshipers; and when an unbeliever came in among them they said, “God is among them, of a truth.” It was not the personality of the speaker; they might not have even had one. It was the presence of the Lord that made them fall down and worship. I will join anything, any group, when I can go in to and spend 10 minutes and come away relaxed and say, “I’ve been where God was.” They were like that in apostolic times.—A.W. Tozer, Reclaiming Christianity, 59–60