"When tragedy strikes, we don't need more intelligence. We don't need a great number of skills. We need depth, the kind of depth Job had. When the bottom dropped out of his life, Job had the wisdom to say: 

But He knows the way I take;

When He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.

My foot has held fast to His path;

I have kept His way and not turned aside.

I have not departed from the command of His lips;

I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food. 

-Job 23:10-12

The modern age is an age of revolution- revolution motivated by insight into the appalling vastness of human suffering and need. Pleas for holiness and attacks on sin and Satan were used for centuries as the guide and the cure for the human situation. Today such pleas have been replaced with a new agenda. On the communal level, political and social critiques yield recipes for revolutions meant to liberate humankind from its many bondages. And on the individual level various self-fulfillment techniques promise personal revolutions bringing "freedom in an unfree world" and passage into the good life. Such are modern answers to humanity's woes.

Against this background a few voices have continued to emphasize that the cause of the distressed human condition, individual and social- and its only possible cure- is a spiritual one. But what these voices are saying is not clear. They point out that social and political revolutions have shown no tendency to transform the heart of darkness that lies deep in the breast of every human being. That is evidently true. And amid a flood of techniques for self-fulfillment there is an epidemic of depression, suicide, personal emptiness, and escapism through drugs and alcohol, cultic obsession, consumerism, and sex and violence- all combined with an inability to sustain deep and enduring personal relationships.

So obviously the problem is a spiritual one. And so must be the cure. 

But if the cure is spiritual, how does modern Christianity fit into the answer? Very poorly, it seems, for Christians are among those caught up in the sorrowful epidemic just referred to. And that fact is so prominent that modern thinking has come to view the Christian faith as powerless, even somehow archaic, at the very least irrelevant...

There is a deep longing among Christians and non-Christians alike for the personal purity and power to live as our hearts tell us we should. What we need is a deeper insight into our practical relationship with God in redemption. We need an understanding that can guide us into constant interaction with the Kingdom of God as a real part of our daily lives.

"...for God to have our full attention so that intimacy with Him glows from within and can be seen by others as a passion that is authentic. He wants no mere show of religion but a passionate spirituality, where God still does miraculous things through His people- often in spite of us- where God reveals His will in ways that are full of mystery and surprise and wonder. A humble spirituality that leaves us, the clay, willingly soft and malleable in the hands of the Potter, our sovereign God." 

"...I want depth; I don't want heights. I want substance; I don't want speed. I want fulfillment in my walk with Christ, not just talk about fulfillment. I want to be able to think theologically and biblically, not be entertained with theological theories and biblical stories."