Born After Midnight by A. W. Tozer

True Revivals Are Born After Midnight - Spititual Renewal Comes To Those Who Want It Badly Enough

This book brought me to one of those times where you find yourself prone upon your face, and broken before a Sovereign God…. To be suspended in an “Oh!” moment, where no words can express the Holy Spirit's light upon the soul…. “The sacred gift of seeing, the ability to peer beyond the veil and gaze with astonished wonder upon the beauties and mysteries of things holy and eternal”….. The brokenness that allows you to see the sin that has been refined instead of removed… A realization of the wretchedness that continues to reside in the flesh…. To feel the groanings of the Holy Spirit on your behalf…. The overwhelming realization of a Holy God……. Then, the overflowing mercy of a redeeming Savior….that urges me to “press on to perfection” and to allow God to “sanctify the ordinary in my life” that I may live it for His sake.
Tozer describes the times in which we live as being a state of emergency or crisis. Christianity or religion has been so distorted, softened and compromised so as “to play down the difficulties and play up the peace of mind and worldly success enjoyed by those who accept Christ”. The error in the approach of modern day evangelicals, is “it begins with man and his needs and then looks around for God”. As a result of the erotic nature of the world, “Christ is courted with a familiarity that reveals a total ignorance of who He is. It is not the reverent intimacy of the adoring saint but the impudent familiarity of the carnal lover”.
Christ’s work in redemption “is to restore men to the position from which they fell and bring them around again to be admirers and lovers of the Triune God. God saves men to make them worshippers”. The theological approach, to which the sanctification process is related, takes the believer from a state of independent salvation to one of a corporate fellowship of faith. The Holy Spirit continues to sanctify us in the “fellowship of the brethren”. “Next to God Himself we need each other most. We are His sheep and it is our nature to live with the flock….it might be well to remember that should we for a moment lose sight of the Shepherd we only have to go where His flock is to find Him again. The Shepherd always stays with His flock”.