Finished reading: Keys to the Deeper Life by A. W. Tozer

Before there can be fullness there must be emptiness. Before God can fill us with Himself we must first be emptied of ourselves. It is this emptying that brings the painful disappointment and despair of self of which so many persons have complained just prior to their new and radiant experience. There must come a total of self-disvaluation, a death to all things without us and within us, or there can never be a real filling with the Holy Spirit. The dearest idol I have known,
Whate’er that idol be,
Help me to tear it from Thy throne,
And worship only Thee. We sing this glibly enough, but we cancel out our prayer by our refusal to surrender the very idol of which we sing. To give up our last idol is to plunge ourselves into a state of inward loneliness which no gospel meeting, no fellowship with other Christians, can ever cure. For this reason most Christians play it safe and settle for a life of compromise. They have some of God, to be sure, but not all; and God has some of them, but not all. And so they live their tepid lives and try to disguise with bright smiles and snappy choruses the deep spiritual destitution within them.

Very sobering.📚