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Tozer Devotional Empty Re: Tozer Devotional

Post  Admin Fri 02 Dec 2016, 10:51 pm

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, November 13, 2016
Love Expressed in Obedience
Our Lord told His disciples that love and obedience were organically united, that the keeping of His sayings would prove that we loved Him and the failure or refusal to keep them would prove that we did not. This is the true test of love, and we will be wise to face up to it. The commandments of Christ occupy in the New Testament a place of importance that they do not have in current evangelical thought. The idea that our relation to Christ is revealed by our attitude to His commandments is now considered legalistic by many influential Bible teachers, and the plain words of our Lord are rejected outright or interpreted in a manner to make them conform to theories ostensibly based upon the epistles of Paul. Thus the Word of God is denied as boldly by evangelicals as by admitted modernists.

Verse
Whover has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.
John 14:21

Thought
The disciples awaited the coming of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. What a difference His indwelling would make in their love and their obedience. The book of Acts records some of that difference.

Prayer
O Lord, I want to lovingly obey You. You are my life. May I be sensitive today to Your Spirit's direction.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, November 14, 2016
Crises of Love
If we lived in a spiritual Utopia where every wind blew toward heaven and every man was a friend of God, we Christians could take everything for granted, counting on the new life within us to cause us to do the will of God without effort and more or less unconsciously. Unfortunately we have opposing us the lusts of the flesh, the attractions of the world and the temptations of the devil. These complicate our lives and require us often to make determined moral decisions on the side of Christ and His commandments. It is the crisis that forces us to take a stand for or against. The patriot may be loyal to his country for half a lifetime without giving much thought to it, but let an unfriendly power solicit him to turn traitor and he will quickly spurn its overtures. His patriotism will be brought out into the open for everyone to see. So it is in the Christian life. When the “south wind blew softly” (Acts 27:13) the ship that carried Paul sailed smoothly enough and no one on board knew who Paul was or how much strength of character lay hidden behind that rather plain exterior. But when the mighty tempest, Euroclydon, burst upon them Paul’s greatness was soon the talk of everyone on the ship. The apostle, though himself a prisoner quite literally took command of the vessel, made decisions and issued orders that meant life or death to the people. And I think the crisis brought to a head something in Paul that had not previously been clear even to him. Beautiful theory was quickly crystallized into hard fact when the tempest struck.

Verse
And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
Romans 5:5

Thought
Since God's love is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, we can love with God's love in those love crises we experience. There is an enabling power to love far beyond our feeble human resources. Let's use it!

Prayer
Grip me, Lord, with Your love. Squeeze Your love through me to You and those around me. For Jesus' sake.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tues 15th November 2016

Tests of Love
The Christian cannot be certain of the reality and depth of his love until he comes face-to-face with the commandments of Christ and is forced to decide what to do about them. Then he will know. “He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings” (John 14:24), said our Lord. “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me" (John 14:21). So the final test of love is obedience. Not sweet emotions, not willingness to sacrifice, not zeal, but obedience to the commandments of Christ. Our Lord drew a line plain and tight for everyone to see. On one side He placed those who keep His commandments and said, “These love Me.” On the other side He put those who keep not His sayings, and said, “These love Me not.”

Verse
This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome.
1 John 5:3

Thought
The commands of the one who so loved us aare not burdensome. If we have experienced His love we can be sure that obedience to His word shows love and also results in our growth as His people.

Prayer
O Christ, You gave Yourself for me. What love! I belong to You. May I show my love in obeying You.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, November 16, 2016
Living Love
Love for Christ is a love of willing as well as a love of feeling, and it is psychologically impossible to love Him adequately unless we will to obey His words. In seeking to learn whether we truly love our Lord we must be careful to apply His own test. False tests can only lead to false conclusions as false signs on the highway lead to wrong destinations. The Lord made it plain enough, but with our genius for getting mixed up we have lost sight of the markers. I think if we would turn for a while from finespun theological speculations about grace and faith and humbly read the New Testament with a mind to obey what we see there, we would easily find ourselves and know for certain the answer to the question that troubled our fathers and should trouble us: Do we love the Lord or no?

Verse
If you love me, you will obey what I command.
John 14:15

Thought
Love obeys what Christ commands. Less than love does not. Is our love emotional bubbles or uncompromising obedience? Our living will express our love.

Prayer
How often my life contradicts my words. Forgive me, Lord. Teach me to love with Your love.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, November 17, 2016
Looking at God
Among Christians of all ages and of varying shades of doctrinal emphasis there has been fairly full agreement on one thing: They all believed that it was important that the Christian with serious spiritual aspirations should learn to meditate long and often on God. Let a Christian insist upon rising above the poor average of current religious experience and he will soon come up against the need to know God Himself as the ultimate goal of all Christian doctrine. Let him seek to explore the sacred wonders of the Triune Godhead and he will discover that sustained and intelligently directed meditation on the Person of God is imperative. To know God well he must think on Him unceasingly. Nothing that man has discovered about himself or God has revealed any shortcut to pure spirituality. It is still free, but tremendously costly. Of course this presupposes at least a fair amount of sound theological knowledge. To seek God apart from His own self-disclosure in the inspired Scriptures is not only futile but dangerous. There must be also a knowledge of and complete trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Redeemer. Christ is not one of many ways to approach God, nor is He the best of several ways; He is the only way. “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). To believe otherwise is to be something less than a Christian.

Verse
May my meditation be pleasing to him, as I rejoice in the LORD.
Psalm 104:34

Thought
Gerhart Tersteegen spoke of prayer as "looking at God, who is ever present, and letting Him look at us." When did you last set aside time just to look at God and let Him look at you?

Prayer
Lord, with Your Word open before me, I just want to spend time in looking at You and letting You look at me.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, November 18, 2016
Waiting for God
I am convinced that the dearth of great saints in these times even among those who truly believe in Christ is due at least in part to our unwillingness to give sufficient time to the cultivation of the knowledge of God. We of the nervous West are victims of the philosophy of activism tragically misunderstood. Getting and spending, going and returning, organizing and promoting, buying and selling, working and playing--this alone constitutes living. If we are not making plans or working to carry out plans already made we feel that we are failures, that we are sterile, unfruitful eunuchs, parasites on the body of society. The gospel of work, as someone has called it, has crowded out the gospel of Christ in many Christian churches. In an effort to get the work of the Lord done we often lose contact with the Lord of the work and quite literally wear our people out as well. I have heard more than one pastor boast that his church was a “live” one, pointing to the printed calendar as a proof--something on every night and several meetings during the day. Of course this proves nothing except that the pastor and the church are being guided by a bad spiritual philosophy. A great many of these time-consuming activities are useless and others plain ridiculous. “But,” say the eager beavers who run the religious squirrel cages, “they provide fellowship and they hold our people together.” To this I reply that what they provide is not fellowship at all, and if that is the best thing the church has to offer to hold the people together it is not a Christian church in the New Testament meaning of that word. The center of attraction in a true church is the Lord Jesus Christ. As for fellowship, let the Holy Spirit define it for us: “And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers” (Acts 2:42).

Verse
Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.
Psalm 27:14

Thought
There is Master Planning and there is the Master's planning. May we not confuse the two. To know His plan requires waiting before Him. Then we can be strong and take heart.

Prayer
Lord, I sometimes substitute activity for waiting. May I patiently wait on You to know Your plan.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, November 19, 2016
Pleasing Meditation
The worldly man can never rest. He must have “somewhere to go’’ and “something to do.” This is a result of the fall, a symptom of a deep-lying disease, yet a blind religious leadership caters to this terrible restlessness instead of trying to cure it by the Word and the Spirit. If the many activities engaged in by the average church led to the salvation of sinners or the perfecting of believers they would justify themselves easily and triumphantly; but they do not. My observations have led me to the belief that many, perhaps most, of the activities engaged in by the average church do not contribute in any way the accomplishing of the true work of Christ on earth. I hope I am wrong, but I am afraid I am right. Our religious activities should be ordered in such a way as to leave plenty of time for the cultivation of the fruits of solitude and silence. It should be remembered, however, that it is possible to waste such quiet periods as we may be able to snatch for ourselves out of the clamorous day. Our meditation must be directed toward God; otherwise we may spend our time of retiral in quiet converse with ourselves. This may quiet our nerves but will not further our spiritual life in any way.

Verse
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.
Psalm 19:14

Thought
Our doing has value only as it expresses our being. Doing is easier than being. Being as God wants us comes from meditating upon Him our God, our Rock. He changes us.

Prayer
Forgive me, O God, from driving myself and other people. May I take time and encourage others to take time for meditation pleasing to You.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, November 20, 2016
Being Still in God's Presence
In coming to God we should place ourselves in His presence with the confidence that He is the aggressor, not we. He has been waiting to manifest Himself to us till such time as our noise and activity have subsided enough for Him to make Himself heard and felt by us. Then we should focus our soul’s powers of attention upon the Triune Godhead. Whether One Person or Another claims our present interest is not important. We can trust the Spirit to bring before our minds the Person that we at the moment need most to behold. One thing more. Do not try to imagine God, or you will have an imaginary God; and certainly do not, as some have done, “set a chair for Him.” God is Spirit. He dwells in your heart, not your house. Brood on the Scriptures and let faith show you God as He is revealed there. Nothing else can equal this glorious sight.

Verse
Be still, and know that I am God; . . .
Psalm 46:10

Thought
Slow down! Be still! How good to be still. The quieter in heart we become the more we know that He is God and He is there.

Prayer
Teach me to be still, Lord. To be still and know that You are God.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, November 21, 2016
Determining to Follow the Lord
That religion lies in the will is an axiom of theology. Not how we feel but what we will determines our spiritual direction. An old poem states it for us: "One ship drives east and another drives west with the selfsame winds that blow; tis the set of the sails and not the gales which tells us the way to go" (Ella Wheeler Wilcox}. Though we do not hear much of it in this age of spineless religion, there is nevertheless much in the Bible about the place of moral determination in the service of the Lord. Jacob vowed a vow, and it was the beginning of a very wonderful life with God. The following years brought a great many vicissitudes, and Jacob did not always acquit himself like a true man of God, but his early determination kept him on course, and he came through victorious at last. Daniel purposed in his heart, and God honored his purpose. Jesus set His face like a flint and walked straight toward the cross. Paul determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified,” and in that determined spirit ignored the learned philosophers, preached a gospel that was accounted foolishness and earned himself a reputation for ignorance, though he was easily the greatest brain of his generation. These are only a few of the many men and women of the Bible who have left us a record of spiritual greatness born out of a will firmly set to do the will of God. They did not try to float to heaven on a perfumed cloud, but cheerfully accepted the fact that with purpose of heart they must cleave unto the Lord.

Verse
Daniel made up his mind to eat and drink only what God had approved for his people to eat . . . (Contemporary English Version).
Daniel 1:8

Thought
Determination alone cannot bring about life transformation. However, appropriation of the Spirit's empowerment cannot be experienced without determination on our part to so live.

Prayer
I choose Thee, blessed will of God! In Thee alone my heart can rest. That, too, is my choice, O Lord. By Your power strengthen my determination to persist in that choice!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, November 22, 2016
Setting Our Sails in the Will of God
In the kingdom of God what we will is accepted as what we are. If any man will, said our Lord, let him. God does not desire to destroy our wills, but to sanctify them. In that terrible, wonderful moment of surrender it may be that we feel that our will has been forever broken, but such is not the case. In His conquest of the soul God does not destroy any of its normal powers. He purges the will and brings it into union with His own, but He never breaks it. In the diaries of some of God's greatest saints will be found vows and solemn pledges made in moments of great grace when the presence of God was so real and so wonderful that the reverent worshiper felt he dared to say anything, to make any promise, with the full assurance that God would enable him to carry out his holy intention. The self-confident and irresponsible boast of a Peter is one thing and is not to be confused with the hushed and trustful vow of a David or a Daniel. Neither should Peter's embarrassing debacle dissuade us from making vows of our own. The heart gives character to our pledges, and God knows the difference between an impulsive promise and a reverent declaration of intention. Let us, then, set our sails in the will of God. If we do this we will certainly find ourselves moving in the right direction, no matter which way the wind blows.

Verse
Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground.
Psalm 143:10

Thought
He will teach us to do His will if we are so committed. Sometimes He teaches us through painful experiences, even failures. Our need is for increased sensitivity to the Spirit's leading with determination to follow by His enablement.

Prayer
Lord, I set my sails in Your will. Lead me. Teach me. Strengthen me. I feel so weak!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, November 23, 2016
God's Gentle Whisper
There are truths that can never be learned except in the noise and confusion of the market place or in the tough brutality of combat. The tumult and the shouting teach their own rough lessons. No man is quite a man who has not been to the school of work and war, who has not heard the cry at birth and the sigh at life's parting. But there is another school where the soul must go to learn its best eternal lessons. It is the school of silence. Be still and know, said the psalmist, and there is a profound philosophy there, of universal application. Prayer among evangelical Christians is always in danger of degenerating into a glorified gold rush. Almost every book on prayer deals with the get element mainly. How to get things we want from God occupies most of the space. Now, we gladly admit that we may ask for and receive specific gifts and benefits in answer to prayer, but we must never forget that the highest kind of prayer is never the making of requests. Prayer at its holiest moment is the entering into God to a place of such blessed union as makes miracles seem tame and remarkable answers to prayer appear something very far short of wonderful by comparison.

Verse
After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
1 Kings 19:12-13

Thought
We have so much to learn about heart stillness. To be calm and quiet smacks of inactivity, doing nothing. But cultivating heart stillness may be our most valuable activity because then we can hear God's gentle whisper.

Prayer
Lord, help me to be quiet enough to hear Your gentle whisper. I look for You in the spectacular--the earthquakes and explosive fires. But You speak in the quiet, the calm. May I hear Your gentle whisper.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, November 24, 2016
Listening to God before We Speak for Him
Holy men of soberer and quieter times than ours knew well the power of silence. David said, I was dumb with silence, I held my peace, even from good; and my sorrow was stirred. My heart was hot within me; while I was musing the fire burned: then spake I with my tongue. There is a tip here for God's modern prophets. The heart seldom gets hot while the mouth is open. A closed mouth before God and a silent heart are indispensable for the reception of certain kinds of truth. No man is qualified to speak who has not first listened. It might well be a wonderful revelation to some Christians if they were to get completely quiet for a short time, long enough, let us say, to get acquainted with their own souls, and to listen in the silence for the deep voice of the Eternal God. The experience, if repeated often enough, would do more to cure our ulcers than all the pills that ever rolled across a desk.

Verse
My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.
John 10:27

Thought
The Good Shepherd speaks and His sheep listen to His voice. Some of us sheep are too busy "baaing" to listen to the Great Shepherd.

Prayer
Father, may I be a friend to stillness. May I be a listener to You before daring to speak for You. In Jesus' name.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, November 25, 2016
The Power of Godly Living
The most effective argument for Christianity is still the good lives of those who profess it. A company of pure-living and cheerful Christians in the community is a stronger proof that Christ is risen than any learned treatise could ever be. And a further advantage is that, while the average person could not be hired to read a theological work, no one can evade the practical argument presented by the presence of holy men and women. To the sons and daughters of this tense and highly mechanized age a holy life may seem unpardonably dull and altogether lacking in interest, but among all the fancy, interest-catching toys of the world a holy life stands apart as the only thing slated to endure. The stars make no noise, says the Italian proverb; yet they have outlived all man's civilizations and in their unassuming silence have shone on through the centuries, preaching their simple doctrine of God and enduring things. Francis of Assisi composed some sublime hymns and preached some quaint sermons, but for none of these is he known and by none of these has he captured the moral imagination of mankind. The utter purity of his life it is which has won him a lasting place in the hearts of every seeker after God.

Verse
For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life.
1 Thessalonians 4:7

Thought
Holy living gives authenticity to verbal witness. The impact of Christlike living opens the ears of those who otherwise would never listen. But it's easier to talk than to walk, isn't it?

Prayer
Change me, O Lord. Make me more and more like Jesus even if I whine and complain with the pain of change.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, November 26, 2016
The Holy are Humble
The Church in America suffered a greater loss than she has since discovered when she rejected the example of good men and chose for her pattern the celebrity of the hour. Human greatness cannot be determined by popularity polls nor by the number of lines any man rates in the public press. It is altogether unlikely that we know who our greatest men are. One thing is sure, however--the greatest man alive today is the best man alive today. That is not open to debate. To discover the good great man (granted that it would be to our profit to do so) would require more than human wisdom. For the holy man is also the humble man and the humble man will not advertise himself nor allow others to do it for him. Spiritual virtues run deep and silent. Like the tide or the pull of gravitation or the shining of the sun, they work without noise, but their gracious ministrations are felt around the whole earth. The Christian who is zealous to promote the cause of Christ can begin by living in the power of the Spirit and so reproducing the life of Christ in the sight of men. In deep humility and without ostentation he can let his light shine. The world may pretend not to see, but it will see, nevertheless, and more than likely it will get into serious trouble with its conscience over what it sees.

Verse
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death--even death on a cross!
Philippians 2:8

Thought
Andrew Murray wrote: "Pride is the likeness of Satan, humility that of Jesus." Of the aspects of Christlikeness it is probably humility that is most foreign to contemporary American culture.

Prayer
Lord, You humbled Yourself in degree I can never know. Yet the more I gaze upon You the more reason I have to be humble.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, November 27, 2016
Gospel Corollaries
To allow the gospel only its etymological meaning of good news is to restrict it so radically as actually to make it something it is not. That Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures is good news indeed. That He, having by Himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens from which exalted position He mediates grace to all believers, is wonderful, heartening news for the sin burdened race. But to limit the Christian message to this one truth alone is to rob it of much of its meaning and create a bad misunderstanding among those who hear the resultant preaching. The fact is that the New Testament message embraces a great deal more than an offer of free pardon. It is a message of pardon, and for that may God be praised; but it is also a message of repentance. It is a message of atonement, but it is also a message of temperance and righteousness and godliness in this present world. It tells us that we must accept a Savior, but it tells us also that we must deny ungodliness and worldly lusts. The gospel message includes the idea of amendment, of separation from the world, of cross carrying and loyalty to the kingdom of God even unto death. To be strictly technical, these latter truths are corollaries of the gospel, and not the gospel itself; but they are part and parcel of the total message which we are commissioned to declare. No man has authority to divide the truth and preach only a part of it. To do so is to weaken it and render it without effect.

Verse
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
2 Timothy 3:16-17

Thought
Accurate exegesis, interpretation, with close attention to textual and cultural context, all under the Spirit's guidance avoids erroneous teaching and misplaced emphasis.

Prayer
Make me a Berean, Lord, who receives Your Word with eagerness and examines the Scriptures daily to see if what I hear and teach is true.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, November 28, 2016
Forgiveness for the Past and Provision for the Present
. . . To offer a sinner the gift of salvation based upon the work of Christ, while at the same time allowing him to retain the idea that the gift carries with it no moral implications, is to do him untold injury where it hurts him worst. Many evangelical teachers insist so strongly upon free, unconditional grace as to create the impression that sin is not a serious matter and that God cares very little about it. He is concerned only with our escaping the consequences. The gospel then in practical application means little more than a way to escape the fruits of our past. The heart that has felt the weight of its own sin and along with this has seen the dread whiteness of the Most High God will never believe that a message of forgiveness without transformation is a message of good news. To remit a man's past without transforming his present is to violate the moral sincerity of his own heart. To that kind of thing God will be no party. We must have courage to preach the whole message. By so doing we shall undoubtedly lose a few friends and make a number of enemies. But the true Christian will not grieve too much about that. He has enough to do to please his Lord and Savior and to be true to the souls of all men. That may well occupy him too completely to leave much time for regrets over the displeasure of misguided men.

Verse
For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God.
Acts 20:27

Thought
Forgiveness for sins of the past and solid hope for the future are ours in Christ. Provision for the present is ours as well in the proclamation of the whole will of God. That will mean dealing with areas of life we have long tolerated but which displease God.

Prayer
Thank You for your patience and grace, Lord. Thank You, too, for the Spirit's insistent conviction. O God, continue to change me!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, November 29, 2016
The Church: the Body of Christ
The universal Church is the body of Christ, the bride of the Lamb, the habitation of God through the Spirit, the pillar and ground of the truth. The local church is a community of ransomed men, a minority group, a colony of heavenly souls dwelling apart on the earth, a division of soldiers on a foreign soil, a band of reapers, working under the direction of the Lord of the harvest, a flock of sheep following the Good Shepherd, a brotherhood of like-minded men, a visible representative of the Invisible God. It is most undesirable to conceive of our churches as Works, or Projects. If such words must be used, then let them be understood as referring to the earthly and legal aspect of things only. A true church is something supernatural and divine, and is in direct lineal descent from that first church at Jerusalem. Insofar as it is a church it is spiritual; its social aspect is secondary and may be imitated by any group regardless of its religious qualities or lack of them. The spiritual essence of a true church cannot be reproduced anywhere but in a company of renewed and inwardly united believers.

Verse
And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.
Ephesians 1:22-23

Thought
That local church of which you are a part is one expression of the Church, the body of Christ. You cannot demand of other believers levels of Christlikeness and spiritual maturity that you yourself are not modeling. You are as much Church as are they.

Prayer
Father, thank You for the Church. Weak as I am and as my brothers and sisters are, we are members of the body of Christ. Your Spirit lives in us!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, November 30, 2016
We Need Church Family
The Christian life begins with the individual; a soul has a saving encounter with God and the new life is born. Not all the pooled efforts of any church can make a Christian out of a lost man. But once the great transaction's done the communion of believers will be found to be the best environment for the new life. Men are made for each other, and this is never more apparent than in the church. All else being equal, the individual Christian will find in the communion of a local church the most perfect atmosphere for the fullest development of his spiritual life. There also he will find the best arena for the largest exercise of those gifts and powers with which God may have endowed him. The religious solitary may gain on a few points, and he may escape some of the irritations of the crowd, but he is a half-man, nevertheless, and worse, he is a half-Christian. Every solitary experience, if we would realize its beneficial effects, should be followed immediately by a return to our own company. There will be found the faith of Christ in its most perfect present manifestation. But one thing must be kept in mind: these things are true only where the local church is a church indeed, where the communion of saints is more than a phrase from the Creed but is realized and practiced in faith and love. Those religio-social institutions, with which we are all too familiar, where worship is a form, the sermon an essay and the prayer an embarrassed address to someone who isn't there, certainly do not qualify as churches under any scriptural terms with which we are acquainted.

Verse
Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.
First Corinthians 12:27

Thought
As believers we are interrelated and interdependent. Christ ministers to us through other believers and to other believers through us. He has gifted each of us to that end. We are members of Christ's body, the Church.

Prayer
Amazing, Lord, that I am part of Your body, the Church! Thank You for ministering to me through other body members. May You minister to others through me. In Jesus' name.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, December 01, 2016
The Church is Our Spiritual Family
The elements of a true church are few and easy to possess. They are a company of believers, the Lord, the Spirit and the Word of the Living God. Let the Lord be worshiped, the Spirit be obeyed, the Word be expounded and followed as the only rule for faith and conduct, and the power of God will begin to show itself as it did to Samson in the camp of Dan. The church will produce a spiritual culture all its own, wholly unlike anything created by the mind of man and superior to any culture known on earth, ancient or modern. God is getting His people ready for another world, and He uses the local church as a workshop in which to carry on His blessed work. That Christian is a happy one who has found a company of true believers in whose heavenly fellowship he can live and love and labor. And nothing else on earth should be as dear to him nor command from him such a degree of loyalty and devotion.

Verse
Treat everyone you meet with dignity. Love your spiritual family. Revere God. Respect the government (The Message).
First Peter 2:17

Thought
Have we made the church just another social club? Do we sample selected ministries without submerging ourselves in the whole? Easy to do in a large church. But the church is our spiritual family.

Prayer
Forgive me, Lord, for judging my local church on the basis of what it contributes to me rather becoming fully a part. It is my spiritual family.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, December 02, 2016
Avoiding Deception
These are times of moral and religious confusion and it is sometimes hard to distinguish the false from the true. Our faithful Lord has tried to save us from the consequences of our own blindness by repeated warnings and many careful instructions. It will pay us to give close attention to His words. Toward the end of the age, we are told, there shall be a time of stepped-up religious activity and frenzied expectation, growing out of the turbulent conditions prevailing among nations. The language is familiar to most Christians: Wars and rumors of wars . . . nation shall rise against nation . . famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. . . . Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations . . and then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. Concurrent with this state of affairs will be a great increase in religious excitement and supernatural happenings generally. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. . . . And many false prophets shall rise. . . . Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.

Verse
. . . remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold. They said to you, 'In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires.' These are the men who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not hav
Jude 17-19

Thought
Our best defense against false teaching is the personal, systematic study of Scripture. We have access to the Word of God and the ministry of the indwelling Spirit. Let's exercise our privileges.

Prayer
O Lord, teach me from Your Word in these days of erroneous interpretation, mistaken contextualization and misapplication.
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Tozer Devotional Empty Re: Tozer Devotional

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TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, October 24, 2016
Inescapable Choices
When the rich young ruler learned the cost of discipleship he went away sorrowing. He could not give up the sunny side of the brae. But thanks be to God, there are some in every age who refuse to go back. The Acts of the Apostles is the story of men and women who turned their faces into the stiff wind of persecution and loss and followed the Lamb whithersoever He went. They knew that the world hated Christ without a cause and hated them for His sake; but for the glory that was set before them they continued steadfastly on the way. Perhaps the whole thing can be reduced to a simple matter of faith or unbelief. Faith sees afar the triumph of Christ and is willing to endure any hardship to share in it. Unbelief is not sure of anything except that it hates the wind and loves the sunny side of the brae. Every man will have to decide for himself whether or not he can afford the terrible luxury of unbelief.

Verse
When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.
Matthew 19:22

Thought
The rich young ruler sounds like one of the new millionaires of Silicon Valley. Most of us won't have the option of millions. We just choose the relative wealth of this world, living for the few years of our lifetime. It is that or eternal life which can. . .

Prayer
Forgive me, Lord, for sometimes complaining about the wind in my face. I have chosen You. Thank You for the wind!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, October 25, 2016
Image Restoration
The idea of the divine-human friendship originated with God. Had not God said first “Ye are my friends” (John 15:14) it would be inexcusably brash for any man to say “I am a friend of God.” But since He claims us for His friends it is an act of unbelief to ignore or deny the relationship. . . . Even though radically different from each other, two persons may enjoy the closest friendship for a lifetime; for it is not a requisite of friendship that the participants be alike in all things; it is enough that they be alike at the points where their personalities touch. Harmony is likeness at points of contact, and friendship is likeness where hearts merge. For this reason the whole idea of the divine-human friendship is logical enough and entirely credible. The infinite God and the finite man can merge their personalities in the tenderest, most satisfying friendship. In such relationship there is no idea of equality; only of likeness where the heart of man meets the heart of God. This likeness is possible because God at the first made man in His own image and because He is now remaking men in the image that was lost by sin.

Verse
You are my friends if you do what I command.
John 15:24

Thought
That we are created in God's image is mind-blowing. Granted, sin has marred and distorted that image but it has not been destroyed. What immense possibilities are open to us through image restoration--not least of which is friendship with God.

Prayer
Lord, show me something of what it can mean to be in friendship with You!


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, October 26, 2016
Being a Friend of God
The image of God in man cannot extend to every part of man’s being, for God has attributes which He cannot impart to any of His creatures, however favored. God is uncreated, self-existent, infinite, sovereign, eternal; these attributes are His alone and by their very definition cannot be shared with another. But there are other attributes which He can impart to His creatures and in some measure share with His redeemed children. Intellect, self-consciousness, love, goodness, holiness, pity, faithfulness--these and certain other attributes are the points where likeness between God and man may be achieved. It is here that the divine-human friendship is experienced.

Verse
And the scripture was fulfilled that says, "Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness," and he was called God's friend.
James 2:23

Thought
Abraham, despite weakness and failure, was called God's friend. Abraham believed God. He just believed God. Are we friends of God?

Prayer
Lord, help us to discern and revere your attributes, while willfully exercising those which You have imparted to us for Your glory and our sanctification. Expand our faith beyond human limitations and weaknesses, that we may experience true intimacy with You.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, October 27, 2016
Growing in Experiential Union
God, being perfect, has capacity for perfect friendship. Man, being imperfect, can never quite know perfection in anything, least of all in his relation to the incomprehensible Godhead. Perfection lies on God’s side, but on man’s side there are weakness of purpose, lack of desire, small faith and numerous other impediments. These make for a friendship which, though it is the most wonder-filled experience possible to man, is yet short of that completeness we would enjoy if these impediments were removed or even reduced appreciably. Though the truth compels us to admit these imperfections on our side of the divine-human friendship, yet there is no reason to despair. In spite of our human frailties we can grow in grace and move progressively toward a more perfect experiential union with God. This we can do by firm self-discipline, quick obedience, unceasing prayer, utter detachment from the world and the exercise of robust faith in the truths revealed in the Holy Scriptures.

Verse
I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
John 15:15

Thought
Seeing Jesus with His disciples reveals something of the experiential union we can know with God. Christ the God-Man in His deity shows us what God is like and in His humanity what we can become. He calls us to deepening friendship.

Prayer
Lord, what You have learned from the Father You are making known to me. You call me "friend," too!


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, October 28, 2016
Friendship Trust
It should be pointed out that no revealed truth becomes automatically effective. The effect any truth has upon us depends upon our attitude toward it. First it must be accepted in active faith and received into our minds as completely trustworthy and beyond dispute. It must become a kind of dye to give color to all of our thinking and praying. The more perfect our friendship with God becomes the simpler will our lives be. Those formalities that are so necessary to keep a casual friendship alive may be dispensed with when true friends sit in each other’s presence. True friends trust each other.

Verse
Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.
John 14:1

Thought
True friendship is based on mutual trust. If we can trust Christ for salvation, why can't we trust God in all areas of life? There is no alternative.

Prayer
Lord, how often my heart is troubled because I don't trust You. I am letting go and trustfully sinking into Your arms. 

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, October 29, 2016
Friends or Just Acquaintances?
There is a great difference between having “company” and having a friend in the house. The friend we can treat as a member of the family, but company must be entertained. God is not satisfied until there exists between Him and His people a relaxed informality that requires no artificial stimulation. The true friend of God may sit in His presence for long periods in silence. Complete trust needs no words of assurance. Such words have long ago been spoken and the adoring heart can safely be still before God. Unquestionably the highest privilege granted to man on earth is to be admitted into the circle of the friends of God. Nothing is important enough to be allowed to stand in the way of our relation to God. Nothing in heaven or earth or hell can separate us from the love of God; we should see to it that nothing on earth shall separate us from God’s friendship.

Verse
A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother.
Proverbs 18:23

Thought
Have we entered the circle of God's friends? Some of us remain acquaintances. We have not yet become friends. His invitation to warm friendship is extended to us.

Prayer
Lord, it staggers the mind that I can enter into friendship with You, the eternal God.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, October 30, 2016
Dross Removal
If God sets out to make you an unusual Christian He is not likely to be as gentle as He is usually pictured by the popular teachers. A sculptor does not use a manicure set to reduce the rude, unshapely marble to a thing of beauty. The saw, the hammer and the chisel are cruel tools, but without them the rough stone must remain forever formless and unbeautiful. To do His supreme work of grace within you He will take from your heart everything you love most. Everything you trust in will go from you. Piles of ashes will lie where your most precious treasures used to be. This is not to teach the sanctifying power of poverty. If to be poor made men holy every tramp on park bench would be a saint. But God knows the secret of removing things from our hearts while they still remain to us. What He does is to restrain us from enjoying them. He lets us have them but makes us psychologically unable to let our hearts go out to them. Thus they are useful without being harmful.

Verse
For our God is a consuming fire.
Hebrews 12:29

Thought
The old hymn put it well: "When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie, my grace all sufficient shall be thy supply. The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine."

Prayer
Remove the dross, O Lord, even though I whimper and moan. Purify me. In it all I know Your grace will be sufficient.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, October 31, 2016
Living by Faith in the Night
To do His supreme work of grace within you He will take from your heart everything you love most. Everything you trust in will go from you. Piles of ashes will lie where your most precious treasures used to be. . . . All this God will accomplish at the expense of the common pleasures that have up to that time supported your life and made it zestful. Now under the careful treatment of the Holy Spirit your life may become dry, tasteless and to some degree a burden to you. While in this state you will exist by a kind of blind will to live; you will find none of the inward sweetness you had enjoyed before. The smile of God will be for the time withdrawn, or at least hidden from your eyes. Then you will learn what faith is; you will find out the hard way, but the only way open to you, that true faith lies in the will, that the joy unspeakable of which the apostle speaks is not itself faith but a slow-ripening fruit of faith; and you will learn that present spiritual joys may come and go as they will without altering your spiritual status or in any way affecting your position as a true child of the Heavenly Father. And you will also learn, probably to your astonishment, that it is possible to live in all good conscience before God and men and still feel nothing of the “peace and joy” you hear talked about so much by immature Christians.

Verse
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.
Psalm 42:11

Thought
When the sense of His presense is withdrawn and your life seems to shatter; when you feel cold and dull spiritually, keep praying. Keep feeding on His Word. Keep walking by faith--naked faith. He is there. Trust Him.

Prayer
Lord, I find it difficult to walk by faith in the night. But You are teaching me. I can't see You but Your Spirit assures me You are there. Thank You.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, November 01, 2016
Trusting in His Unfailing Love
How long you continue in this night of the soul will depend upon a number of factors, some of which you may be able later to identify, while others will remain with God, completely hidden from you. The words “The day is thine, the night also is thine” will now be interpreted for you by the best of all teachers, the Holy Spirit; and you will know by personal experience what a blessed thing is the ministry of the night. But there is a limit to man’s ability to live without joy. Even Christ could endure the cross only because of the joy set before Him. The strongest steel breaks if kept too long under unrelieved tension. God knows exactly how much pressure each one of us can take. He knows how long we can endure the night, so He gives the soul relief, first by welcome glimpses of the morning star and then by the fuller light that harbingers the morning.

Verse
How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? . . . But I trust in your unfailing love; . . .
Psalm 13:1,5a

Thought
There are times when we pray by faith with no sense of His presence; witness and there is no response; serve without joy or recognition. In those times our prayer, witness and service are more precious in God's sight because they are done for Him alone.

Prayer
Forgive me, Lord, for trying to flee the night as if You were not as much there as in the blazing sunlight. You are with me and it is you I serve.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, November 02, 2016
Refiner's Fire
Slowly you will discover God’s love in your suffering. Your heart will begin to approve the whole thing. You will learn from yourself what all the schools in the world could not teach you--the healing action of faith without supporting pleasure. You will feel and understand the ministry of the night; its power to purify, to detach, to humble, to destroy the fear of death and, what is more important to you at the moment, the fear of life. And you will learn that sometimes pain can do what even joy cannot, such as exposing the vanity of earth’s trifles and filling your heart with longing for the peace of heaven. What I write here is in no way original. This has been discovered anew by each generation of Christian seekers and is almost a cliché of the deeper life. Yet it needs to be said to this generation of believers often and with emphasis, for the type of Christianity now in vogue does not include anything as serious and as difficult as this. The quest of the modern Christian is likely to be for peace of mind and spiritual joy, with a good degree of material prosperity thrown in as an external proof of the divine favor. Some will understand this, however, even if the number is relatively small, and they will constitute the hard core of practicing saints so badly needed at this serious hour if New Testament Christianity is to survive to the next generation.

Verse
But if I go to the east, he is not here; if I go to the west, I do not find him. When he is at work in the north, I do not see him; when he turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of him. But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will com
Job 23:8-10

Thought
Wrote Marcus Rainsford: "It is not when we are enjoying Christ most that we glorify him best; It is when . . . our hearts are consciously cold and dead, when our feelings are all distressing . . . when we walk in darkness and have no light . . . then to

Prayer
You know the way I take and why. Refine me, O God, refine me.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, November 03, 2016
Created for God's Glory
Philosophers have noted the vast difference between men and beasts and have tried to find that difference in one or another distinguishing characteristic. They have said, for instance, that man is the thinking animal, or that he is the laughing animal, or that he is the only animal with a conscience. The one mark, however, which forever distinguishes man from all other forms of life on earth is that he is a worshiper; he has a bent toward and a capacity for worship. Apart from his position as a worshiper of God, man has no sure key to his own being; he is but a higher animal, being born much as any other animal, going through the cycle of his life here on earth and dying at last without knowing what the whole thing is about. If that is all for him, if he has no more reason than the beast for living, then it is an odd thing indeed that he is the only one of the animals that worries about himself, that wonders, that asks questions of the universe. The very fact that he does these things tells the wise man that somewhere there is One to whom he owes allegiance, One before whom he should kneel and do homage. The Christian revelation tells us that that One is God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, who is to be worshiped in the Spirit in the name of Jesus Christ Our Lord. That is enough for us. Without trying to reason it out we may proceed from there. All our doubts we meet with faith’s wondering affirmation: “O Lord God, thou knowest,” an utterance which Samuel Taylor Coleridge declared to be the profoundest in human speech.

Verse
. . . Bring back my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth--everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.
Isaiah 43:6b-7

Thought
Unique among creation, we are made to worship God to His glory. The more we come to experientially know God the more we shall worship Him We shall increasingly know who He is and , in heart, bow before Him.

Prayer
Triune God, I want to glorify You, to worship You. You have created me for Your glory.  


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, November 04, 2016
Worshiping God with All We Are
In worship several elements may be distinguished, among them love, admiration, wonder and adoration. Though they may not be experienced in that order, a little thought will reveal those elements as being present wherever true worship is found. Both the Old and the New Testament teach that the essence of true worship is the love of God. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.” Our Lord declared this to be the sum of the Law and the Prophets. Now, love is both a principle and an emotion; it is something both felt and willed. It is capable of almost infinite degrees. Love in the human heart may begin so modestly as to be hardly perceptible and go on to become a raging torrent that sweeps its possessor before it in total helplessness. Something like this must have been the experience of the apostle Paul, for he felt it necessary to explain to his critics that his apparent madness was actually the love of God ravishing his willing heart. It is quite impossible to worship God without loving Him. Scripture and reason agree to declare this. And God is never satisfied with anything less than all: “all thy heart . . . all thy soul . . . all thy might.” This may not at first be possible, but deeper experience with God will prepare us for it, and the inward operations of the Holy Spirit will enable us after a while to offer Him such a poured-out fullness of love.

Verse
'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.
Mark 12:30-31

Thought
God has designed us to be loving worshipers--to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. Only by His Spirit within can we grow to love Him and people with all we are.

Prayer
O God, fill me with Your love. My love is so superficial. Teach me to love with all I am.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, November 05, 2016
Worshiping the Giver
In the love which any intelligent creature feels for God there must always be a measure of mystery. It is even possible that it is almost wholly mystery, and that our attempt to find reasons is merely a rationalizing of a love already mysteriously present in the heart as a result of some secret operation of the Spirit within us, "working like a miner, toiling unseen in the depths of the earth” (Fenelon). But so far as reasons can be given, they would seem to be two: gratitude and excellence. To love God because He has been good to us is one of the most reasonable things possible. The love which arises from the consideration of His kindness to us is valid and altogether acceptable to Him. It is nevertheless a lower degree of love, being less selfless than that love which springs from an appreciation of what God is in Himself apart from His gifts. Thus the simple love which arises from gratitude, when expressed in any act or conscious utterance, is undoubtedly worship. But the quality of our worship is stepped up as we move away from the thought of what God has done for us and nearer the thought of the excellence of His holy nature. This leads us to admiration.

Verse
Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker;
Psalm 95:6

Thought
What do we know of worship--worship true and pure? We give God thanks for what He does and what He gives but seldom for who He is.

Prayer
Thank You, Lord, for the gifts I receive from You. But I want to worship You, the Giver. Apart from any gifts You give, You are worthy to be worshiped.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, November 06, 2016
Admiring God
The dictionary says that to admire is “to regard with wondering esteem accompanied by pleasure and delight; to look at or upon with an elevated feeling of pleasure.” According to this definition, God has few admirers among Christians today. Many are they who are grateful for His goodness in providing salvation. At Thanksgiving time the churches ring with songs of gratitude that “all is safely gathered in.” Testimony meetings are mostly devoted to recitations of incidents where someone got into trouble and got out again in answer to prayer. To decry this would be uncharitable and unscriptural for there is much of the same thing in the Book of Psalms. It is good and right to render unto God thanksgiving for all His mercies to us. But God’s admirers, where are they? The simple truth is that worship is elementary until it begins to take on the quality of admiration. Just as long as the worshiper is engrossed with himself and his good fortune, he is a babe. We begin to grow up when our worship passes from thanksgiving to admiration. As our hearts rise to God in lofty esteem for that which He is (“I AM THAT I AM”), we begin to share a little of the selfless pleasure which is the portion of the blessed in heaven.

Verse
Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom.
Psalm 145:3

Thought
Great is Yahweh! His greatness is humanly unfathomable. His greatness is in who He is. So little time do we devote to just reflecting upon His greatness. It is that reflection that generates heart worship.

Prayer
O God, You are great, great beyond my ability to grasp but I worship You, O Lord!


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, November 07, 2016
Wondering Worship
The third stage of true worship is wonder. Here the mind ceases to understand and goes over to a kind of delightful astonishment. Carlyle said that worship is “transcendent wonder,” a degree of wonder without limit and beyond expression. That kind of worship is found throughout the Bible (though it is only fair to say that the lesser degrees of worship are found there also). Abraham fell on his face in holy wonderment as God spoke to him. Moses hid his face before the presence of God in the burning bush. Paul could hardly tell whether he was in or out of the body when he was allowed to see the unspeakable glories of the third heaven. When John saw Jesus walking among His churches, he fell at His feet as dead. We cite these as a examples; the list is long in the Biblical record. It may be said that such experiences as these are highly unusual and can be no criterion for the plain Christian today. This is true, but only of the external circumstances; the spiritual content of the experiences is unchanging and is found alike wherever true believers are found. it is always true that an encounter with God brings wonderment and awe. The pages of Christian biography are sweet with the testimonies of enraptured worshipers who met God in intimate experience and could find no words to express all they felt and saw and heard. Christian hymnody takes us where the efforts of common prose break down, and brings the wings of poetic feeling to the aid of the wondering saint. Open an old hymnal and turn to the sections on worship and the divine perfections and you will see the part that wonder has played in worship through the centuries. But wonder is not yet the last nor highest element in worship. The soaring saint has one more mountain peak to clear before he has reached the rarefied air of purest worship. He must adore.

Verse
. . . O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with all who love him and obey his commands.
Daniel 9:4

Thought
Frederick Faber was one of those enraptured worshipers. He prayed: "Father of Jesus, love's reward. What rapture will it be prostrate before Thy throne to lie, and gaze and gaze on Thee!" When is the last time you so gazed?

Prayer
O Lord, what delight to pause from asking and just to gaze, to gaze upon You."

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, November 08, 2016
Adoring Worship
Neither the word adoration nor any of its forms is found in our familiar King James Bible, but the idea is there in full bloom. The great Bible saints were, above all, enraptured lovers of God. The psalms celebrate the love which David (and a few others) felt for the person of God. As suggested above, Paul admitted that the love of God was in his breast a kind of madness: “For whether we be beside ourselves, it is of God: or whether we be sober, it is for your cause. For the love of Christ constraineth us” (2 Cor. 5:13-14). In Weymouth’s translation the passage reads, “For the love of Christ overmasters us.” The idea appears to be that Paul’s love for Christ carried him beyond himself and made him do extravagant things which to a mind untouched with the delights of such love might seem quite irrational. Perhaps the most serious charge that can be brought against modern Christians is that we are not sufficiently in love with Christ. The Christ of Fundamentalism is strong but hardly beautiful. It is rarely that we find anyone aglow with personal love for Christ. I trust it is not uncharitable to say that in my opinion a great deal of praise in conservative circles is perfunctory and forced, where it is not downright insincere.

Verse
If we are out of our mind, it is for you. For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.
2 Corinthians 5:13-14

Thought
Adoring worship is an expression of compelling love.

Prayer
O Father, may I grow as an adorer of You!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, November 09, 2016
Reverent Worship
Many of our popular songs and choruses in praise of Christ are hollow and unconvincing. Some are even shocking in their amorous endearments, and strike a reverent soul as being a kind of flattery offered to One with whom neither composer nor singer is acquainted. The whole thing is in the mood of the love ditty, the only difference being the substitution of the name of Christ for that of the earthly lover. How different and how utterly wonderful are the emotions aroused by a true and Spirit-incited love for Christ. Such a love may rise to a degree of adoration almost beyond the power of the heart to endure, yet at the same time it will be serious, elevated, chaste and reverent. Christ can never be known without a sense of awe and fear accompanying the knowledge. He is the fairest among ten thousand, but He is also the Lord high and mighty. He is meek and lowly in heart, but He is also Lord and Christ who will surely come to be the judge of all men. No one who knows Him intimately can ever be flippant in His presence.

Verse
Suddenly Jesus met them. 'Greetings,' he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him.
Matthew 28:9

Thought
Our 'worship services' are sometimes more flippant than contemplative, more entertaining than nourishing. Historically the Church has gone through periods when there seemed to be little joy in worship. The problem in evangelical culture today may be the

Prayer
O Risen Christ, in heart I would fall at Your feet and worship You

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, November 10, 2016
Loving Worship
The love of Christ both wounds and heals, it fascinates and frightens, it kills and makes alive, it draws and repulses, it sobers and enraptures. There can be nothing more terrible or more wonderful than to be stricken with love for Christ so deeply that the whole being goes out in a pained adoration of His person, an adoration that disturbs and disconcerts while it purges and satisfies and relaxes the deep inner heart. This love as a kind of moral fragrance is ever detected upon the garments of the saints. In the writings of Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, for instance, this fragrance is so strong as to be very nearly intoxicating. There are passages in his Confessions so passionately sweet as to be unbearable, yet so respectful and self-effacing as to excite pity for the man who thus kneels in adoring wonder, caught between holy love and an equally holy fear. The list of fragrant saints is long. It includes men and women of every shade of theological thought within the bounds of the orthodox Christian faith. It embraces persons of every social level, every degree of education, every race and color. This radiant love for Christ is to my mind the true test of catholicity, the one sure proof of membership in the Church universal.

Verse
Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: 'To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!' The four lving creatures
Revelation 5:13-14

Thought
Prayed Augustine: "You are the life of lives, the life of souls. You are livingness itself, and You will not change, O Light of my soul" (F. J. Sheed translation). The prayer of an adorer!

Prayer
O God, I'm but a beginner in the worship of You. Teach me, Lord, in Jesus' name.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, November 11, 2016
Wanted: Worshipers
It remains only to be said that worship as we have described it here is almost (though, thank God, not quite) a forgotten art in our day. For whatever we can say of modern Bible-believing Christians, it can hardly be denied that we are not remarkable for our spirit of worship. The gospel as preached by good men in our times may save souls, but it does not create worshipers. Our meetings are characterized by cordiality, humor, affability, zeal and high animal spirits; but hardly anywhere do we find gatherings marked by the overshadowing presence of God. We manage to get along on correct doctrine, fast tunes, pleasing personalities and religious amusements. How few, how pitifully few are the enraptured souls who languish for love of Christ. The sweet “madness” that visited such men as Bernard and St. Francis and Richard Rolle and Jonathan Edwards and Samuel Rutherford is scarcely known today. The passionate adorations of Teresa and Madame Guyon are a thing of the past. Christianity has fallen into the hands of leaders who knew not Joseph. The very memory of better days is slowly passing from us and a new type of religious person is emerging. How is the gold tarnished and the silver become lead! If Bible Christianity is to survive the present world upheaval, we shall need to recapture the spirit of worship. We shall need to have a fresh revelation of the greatness of God and the beauty of Jesus. We shall need to put away our phobias and our prejudices against the deeper life and seek again to be filled with the Holy Spirit. He alone can raise our cold hearts to rapture and restore again the art of true worship.

Verse
'Woe to me!' I cried, 'I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.'
Isaiah 6:5

Thought
Have we learned to worship? We have worship leaders, worship teams, worship choruses. We have folksy sermons and pleasant humor. Is there worship? Are we ever struck speechless by the awesome presence of God?

Prayer
Lord, make me a worshiper of You.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, November 12, 2016
"Do You Love Me?"
A century ago a hymn was often sung in the churches, the first stanza of which ran like this:‘Tis a point I long to know, Oft it causes anxious thought, Do I love the Lord, or no! Am I His, or am I not? Those who thus confessed their spiritual anxiety were serious-minded, honest men and women who could open their hearts to each other in this manner without self-consciousness or loss of face. It is an evidence of the essential frivolity of the modern religious mind that this hymn is never sung today, and if mentioned from the pulpit at all it is quoted humorously as proof that those who once sang it were not up on the doctrine of grace. Why ask, “Do I love the Lord, or no?” when any number of personal workers stand by to quote convenient texts from the New Testament to prove that we do? But we had better not be too cocksure. The gravest question any of us face is whether we do or do not love the Lord. Too much hinges on the answer to pass the matter off lightly. And it is a question that no one can answer for another. Not even the Bible can tell the individual man that he loves the Lord; it can only tell him how he can know whether or not he does. It can and does tell us how to test our hearts for love as a man might test ore for the presence of uranium, but we must do the testing.

Verse
When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, 'Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?' 'Yes, Lord,' he said, 'You know that I love you.’ Jesus said, 'Feed my lambs.'
John 21:15

Thought
Vehemently Peter had declared that though all others fall away he would never disown his Lord even if it meant his death (Mark 14:27-31). In the intervening hours the test came and Peter failed. He recognizes the weakness of his love and the Lord begins

Prayer
Easy enough, Lord, to sing hymns and choruses declaring my love for You. But do I love You with agape love? Perfect my love.
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Tozer Devotional Empty Re: Tozer Devotional

Post  Admin Sun 23 Oct 2016, 9:31 pm

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, October 15, 2016
Living With Eternity's Values In View
7. The spiritual man habitually makes eternity-judgments instead of time-judgments. By faith he rises above the tug of earth and the flow of time and learns to think and feel as one who has already left the world and gone to join the innumerable company of angels and the general assembly and Church of the First-born which are written in heaven. Such a man would rather be useful than famous and would rather serve than be served. And all this must be by the operation of the Holy Spirit within him. No man can become spiritual by himself. Only the free Spirit can make a man spiritual.

Verse
For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
2 Corinthians 4:17

Thought
Living with eternity's values in view lightens our momentary troubles. It equips us to live our todays in the perspective of the eternal tomorrow.

Prayer
Thank You, Father, for the privilege of experiencing inner renewal even when the external wastes away.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, October 16, 2016
The Rod and the Cross
For the Christian cross carrying and chastisement are alike but not identical. They differ in a number of important ways. The two ideas are usually considered to be the same and the words embodying the ideas are used interchangeably. There is, however, a sharp distinction between them. When we confuse them we are not thinking accurately; and when we do not think accurately about truth we lose some benefit that we might otherwise enjoy. The cross and the rod occur close together in the Holy Scriptures, but they are not the same thing. The rod is imposed without the consent of the one who suffers it. The cross cannot be imposed by another. Even Christ bore the cross by His own free choice. He said of the life He poured out on the cross, “No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself” (John 10:18). He had every opportunity to escape the cross but He set His face like a flint to go to Jerusalem to die. The only compulsion He knew was the compulsion of love.

Verse
And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
Luke 14:27

Thought
The rod is an instrument of discipline, correction wielded by the loving Father. The cross is the instrument of self-discipline, dying to self in order to live fully for Christ.

Prayer
Lord, if I sometimes drop my cross along the way, show me, so that I pick it up again and carry it all the way.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, October 17, 2016
Fatherly Chastisement
Chastisement is an act of God; cross carrying an act of the Christian. When God in love lays the rod to the back of His children He does not ask permission. Chastisement for the believer is not voluntary except in the sense that he chooses the will of God with the knowledge that the will of God includes chastisement. “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?” (Heb. 12:6-7). The cross never comes unsolicited; the rod always does. “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matt. 16:24). Here is clear, intelligent choice, a choice that must be made by the individual with determination and forethought. In the kingdom of God no one ever stumbled onto a cross. But what is the cross for the Christian? Obviously it is not the wooden instrument the Romans used to execute the sentence of death upon persons guilty of capital crimes. The cross is the suffering the Christian endures as a consequence of his following Christ in perfect obedience. Christ chose the cross by choosing the path that led to it; and it is so with His followers. In the way of obedience stands the cross, and we take the cross when we enter that way.

Verse
And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons: "My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts."
Hebrews 12:5-6

Thought
Henry Lyte wrote: "In Thy service pain is pleasure; with Thy favor loss is gain." It is that way when we follow Christ carrying our cross. When we drop it, there is discipline in love.

Prayer
Thank You, Father, that You don't abandon me when I fail You. You lovingly discipline me.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, October 18, 2016
Chastening is an Expression of God's Love
As the cross stands in the way of obedience, so chastisement is found in the way of disobedience. God never chastens a perfectly obedient child. Consider the fathers of our flesh; they never punished us for obedience, only for disobedience. When we feel the sting of the rod we may be sure we are temporarily out of the right way. Conversely, the pain of the cross means that we are in the way. But the Father’s love is not more or less, wherever we may be. God chastens us not that He may love us but because He loves us. In a well-ordered house a disobedient child may expect punishment; in the household of God no careless Christian can hope to escape it.

Verse
Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness.
Hebrews 12:10

Thought
God disciplines us for our good that we may share in His holiness. It is the only way we shall ever share in that holiness. To that end He chastens us in love.

Prayer
O thank You, Lord, for Your persistent, consistent discipline. I don't learn easily and I often have to relearn but You are patiently loving in chastening me.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, October 19, 2016
Determining the Cause of Pain
But how can we tell in a given situation whether our pain is from the cross or the rod? Pain is pain from whatever source it comes. Jonah in flight from the will of God suffered no worse storm than did Paul in the center of God’s will; the same wild sea threatened the life of both. And Daniel in the lion’s den was in trouble as deep as was Jonah in the whale’s belly. The nails bit as deep into the hands of Christ dying for the sins of the world as into the hands of the two thieves dying for their own sins. How then may we distinguish the cross from the rod? I think the answer is plain. When tribulation comes we have but to note whether it is imposed or chosen. "Blessed are ye," said our Lord, “when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you” (Matt. 5:11). But that is not all. Four other words He added: they are “falsely, for my sake.” These words show that the suffering must come voluntarily, that it must be chosen in the larger choice of Christ and righteousness. If the accusation men cry against us is true, no blessedness follows.

Verse
No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
Hebrews 12:11

Thought
C. S. Lewis wrote of God shouting to us in our pains, using pain as a megaphone to rouse a deaf world. Pain is a loud summons to self-examination. Are we suffering for the cause of Christ or because of personal sin?

Prayer
Father, when I am experiencing pain due to my sin, help me to recognize it. When it is for other reasons may I accept it as fromYou.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, October 20, 2016
That Questionable Suffering
We delude ourselves when we try to turn our just punishments into a cross and rejoice over that for which we should rather repent. “For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God” (1 Pet. 2:20) . The cross is always in the way of righteousness. We feel the pain of the cross only when we suffer for Christ’s sake by our own willing choice. I think that there is also another kind of suffering, one that does not fall into either of the categories considered above. It comes neither from the rod nor from the cross, not being imposed as a moral corrective nor suffered as a result of our Christian life and testimony. It comes in the course of nature and arises from the many ills flesh is heir to. It visits all alike in a greater or lesser degree and would appear to have no clear spiritual significance. Its source may be fire, flood, bereavement, injuries, accidents, illness, old age, weariness or the upset conditions of the world generally. What are we to do about this? Well, some great souls have managed to turn even these neutral afflictions to good. By prayer and self-abasement they wooed adversity to become their friend and made rough distress a teacher to instruct them in the heavenly arts. May we not emulate them?

Verse
But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.
Job 23:10

Thought
Pain pushes us into the arms of God. There are times when we cannot discern whether it is our cross or chastisement. We can only cling to Him and we find in our hurting His arms tightly around us.

Prayer
You know the way I take, Father, the purpose in my hurting. Show me or, if not, hold me close in Your arms.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, October 21, 2016
With the Wind in Your Face
Are You Feeling the Wind? “God hath called you to Christ’s side,” wrote the saintly Rutherford, “and the wind is now in Christ’s face in this land; and seeing ye are with Him, ye cannot expect the leeside or the sunny side of the brae.” With that beautiful feeling for words that characterized Samuel Rutherford’s most casual utterance he here crystallizes for us one of the great radical facts of the Christian life. The wind is in Christ’s face, and because we go with Him we too shall have the wind in our face. We should not expect less. The yearning for the sunny side of the brae is natural enough, and for such sensitive creatures as we are it is, I suppose, quite excusable. No one enjoys walking into a cold wind. Yet the Church has had to march with the wind in her face through the long centuries.

Verse
He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8

Thought
Our desire is to be accepted, to blend in. Yet to walk with Christ means to stay at His side and inevitably that will mean facing the cold and bitter wind. Are you feeling the wind?

Prayer
Lord, I want to walk with You even into the wind!


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, October 22, 2016
Costly Discipleship
In our eagerness to make converts I am afraid we have lately been guilty of using the technique of modern salesmanship, which is of course to present only the desirable qualities in a product and ignore the rest. We go to men and offer them a cozy home on the sunny side of the brae. If they will but accept Christ He will give them peace of mind, solve their problems, prosper their business, protect their families and keep them happy all day long. They believe us and come, and the first cold wind sends them shivering to some counselor to find out what has gone wrong; and that is the last we hear of many of them. The teachings of Christ reveal Him to be a realist in the finest meaning of that word. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find anything visionary or overoptimistic. He told His hearers the whole truth and let them make up their minds. He might grieve over the retreating form of an inquirer who could not face up to the truth, but He never ran after him to try to win him with rosy promises. He would have men follow Him, knowing the cost, or He would let them go their ways. All this is but to say that Christ is honest. We can trust Him. He knows that He will never be popular among the sons of Adam and He knows that His followers need not expect to be. The wind that blows in His face will be felt by all who travel with Him, and we are not intellectually honest when we try to hide that fact from them.

Verse
From this time on many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
John 6:66

Thought
Following Christ is costly in many ways. For some it means physical suffering, even death. For others rejection, ostracism, extreme prejudice. The greatest cost of all is to the old nature, ego, self. Yet consider the cost of not following Christ.

Prayer
Lord, if I turn from following You, to whom do I go? Eternal life is in knowing You.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, October 23, 2016
Worth Suffering For
What has Christ to offer to us that is sound, genuine and desirable? He offers forgiveness of sins, inward cleansing, peace with God, eternal life, the gift of the Holy Spirit, victory over temptation, resurrection from the dead, a glorified body, immortality and a dwelling place in the house of the Lord forever. These are a few benefits that come to us as a result of faith in Christ and total committal to Him. Add to these the expanding wonders and increasing glories that shall be ours through the long, long reaches of eternity, and we get an imperfect idea of what Paul called, "the unsearchable riches of Christ.” To accept the call of Christ changes the returning sinner indeed, but it does not change the world. The wind still blows toward hell and the man who is walking in the opposite direction will have the wind in his face. And we had better take this into account when we ponder on spiritual things. If the unsearchable riches of Christ are not worth suffering for, then we should know it now and cease to play at religion.

Verse
What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ . . .
Philippians 3:8

Thought
If we are not now in some measure experiencing the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ, then indeed we may be tightly clinging to some things fearing their loss.

Prayer
Father, help me to clearly distinguish between what is eternal gain and what is ultimate rubbish.
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Tozer Devotional Empty Re: Tozer Devotional

Post  Admin Fri 14 Oct 2016, 9:17 pm

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, October 09, 2016
Resisting Monotony By Means of Variety
Some of the purest souls have written of the dangers of continuous spiritual exercises uninterrupted by lowlier considerations. Von Hugel speaks of the “neutral cost” of prayer and advises that we should sometimes break off thoughts of heavenly things and go for a walk or dig in the garden. We have all known the disappointment felt when returning to a passage of Scripture that had been so fresh and fragrant the day before only to find the sweetness gone out of it. It is the Spirit’s way of urging us on to new vistas. I notice that in the wilderness God kept Israel moving. One may wonder what would have happened if they had camped in one place for forty years. The lives of the great Christians show that they differed not only from each other but from themselves at different periods of their lives. Spiritual exercises that helped them at one stage of their development later became useless and had to be changed for others.

Verse
He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. . . .
Psalm 40:3a

Thought
Better to pray as we walk than to fall asleep on our knees. Better to struggle in prayer expression than to mouth beautiful phrases that have lost their meaning. Variety in spiritual exercises aids in avoiding a dull and sometimes empty habit.

Prayer
Thank You, Lord, for the variety and creativity You give to counter monotony and the overly familiar. Help me to stay fresh!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, October 10, 2016
Keeping Fresh
To stay free from religious ennui we should be careful not to get into a rut, not even a good rut. Our Lord warned against vain repetition. There is repetition that is not vain, but oft-repeated prayers become vain when they have lost their urgency. We should examine our prayers every now and again to discover how much sincerity and spontaneity they possess. We should insist on keeping them simple, candid, fresh and original. And above all we should never seek to induce holy emotions. When we feel dry it is wise either to ignore it or to tell God about it without any sense of guilt. If we are dry because of some wrong on our part the Spirit through the Word will show us the fault. In short, we can keep from going stale by getting proper rest, by practicing complete candor in prayer, by introducing variety into our lives, by heeding God’s call to move onward and by exercising quiet faith always.

Verse
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.
Psalm 19:14

Thought
Repetition of prayer in the same verbal form may leak meaning and eventually degenerate into empty religious formula. Periodic rephrasing contributes to fresh expression of worship, praise and prayer.

Prayer
Breath of God, blow upon me. Refresh, renew. In Jesus' name.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, October 11, 2016
Concepts of Spirituality
The concept of spirituality varies among different Christian groups. In some circles the highly vocal person who talks religion continually is thought to be very spiritual; others accept noisy exuberance as a mark of spirituality, and in some churches the man who prays first, longest and loudest gets a reputation for being the most spiritual man in the assembly. Now a vigorous testimony, frequent prayers and loud praise may be entirely consistent with spirituality, but it is important that we understand that they do not in themselves constitute it nor prove that it is present. True spirituality manifests itself in certain dominant desires. These are ever-present, deep-settled wants sufficiently powerful to motivate and control the life. . . .

Verse
Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly--mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it.
1 Corinthians 3:1-2

Thought
It is submission to the control of the Spirit that makes me spiritual. Changes in daily living result as do dominant desires.

Prayer
Deliver me, Lord, from assuming a form of spirituality that fits people expectations. You know the real me and that is what needs changing.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, October 12, 2016
Gasping for the Glory of God
True spirituality manifests itself in certain dominant desires. These are ever-present, deep-settled wants sufficiently powerful to motivate and control the life. For convenience let me number them, though I make no effort to decide the order of their importance. 1. First is the desire to be holy rather than happy. The yearning after happiness found so widely among Christians professing a superior degree of sanctity is sufficient proof that such sanctity is not indeed present. The truly spiritual man knows that God will give abundance of joy after we have become able to receive it without injury to our souls, but he does not demand it at once. John Wesley said of the members of one of the earliest Methodist societies that he doubted that they had been made perfect in love because they came to church to enjoy religion instead of to learn how they could become holy. 2. A man may be considered spiritual when he wants to see the honor of God advanced through his life even if it means that he himself must suffer temporary dishonor or loss. Such a man prays “Hallowed be Thy name,” and silently adds, “at any cost to me, Lord.” He lives for God’s honor by a kind of spiritual reflex. Every choice involving the glory of God is for him already made before it presents itself. He does not need to debate the matter with his own heart; there is nothing to debate. The glory of God is necessary to him; he gasps for it as a suffocating man gasps for air.

Verse
Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? "Father, save me from this hour"? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!
John 12:27-28

Thought
God's glory at any cost, even my own. Too often "our glory" gets in the way. Self intrudes. It is God's glory that matters!

Prayer
Father, glorify Your name through me. Bring me to that place where I can pray with all my heart "Your glory at any cost to me."

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, October 13, 2016
Cross-Carrying
3. The spiritual man wants to carry his cross. Many Christians accept adversity or tribulation with a sigh and call it their cross, forgetting that such things come alike to saint and sinner. The cross is that extra adversity that comes to us as a result of our obedience to Christ. This cross is not forced upon us; we voluntarily take it up with full knowledge of the consequences. We choose to obey Christ and by so doing choose to carry the cross. Carrying a cross means to be attached to the Person of Christ, committed to the Lordship of Christ and obedient to the commandments of Christ. The man who is so attached, so committed, so obedient is a spiritual man. 4. Again, a Christian is spiritual when he sees everything from God’s viewpoint. The ability to weigh all things in the divine scale and place the same value upon them as God does is the mark of a Spirit-filled life. God looks at and through at the same time. His gaze does not rest on the surface but penetrates to the true meaning of things. The carnal Christian looks at an object or a situation, but because he does not see through it he is elated or cast down by what he sees. The spiritual man is able to look through things as God looks and think of them as God thinks. He insists on seeing all things as God sees them even if it humbles him and exposes his ignorance to the point of real pain.

Verse
Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."
Matthew 16:24

Thought
Today crosses are placed on church steeples or made of gold and used as necklaces or lapel pins. The cross of which Jesus spoke is an instrument of death--ours.

Prayer
Forgive me, Lord, for storing my cross in the basement. You want me to carry it daily.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, October 14, 2016
Honoring Others Above Ourselves
5. Another desire of the spiritual man is to die right rather than to live wrong. A sure mark of the mature man of God is his nonchalance about living. The earth-loving, body-conscious Christian looks upon death with numb terror in his heart; but as he goes on to live in the Spirit he becomes increasingly indifferent to the number of his years here below, and at the same time increasingly careful of the kind of life he lives while he is here. He will not purchase a few extra days of life at the cost of compromise or failure. He wants most of all to be right, and he is happy to let God decide how long he shall live. He knows that he can afford to die now that he is in Christ, but he knows that he cannot afford to do wrong, and this knowledge becomes a gyroscope to stabilize his thinking and his acting. 6. The desire to see others advance at his expense is another mark of the spiritual man. He wants to see other Christians above him and is happy when they are promoted and he is overlooked. There is no envy in his heart; when his brethren are honored he is pleased because such is the will of God and that will is his earthly heaven. If God is pleased, he is pleased for that reason, and if it pleases God to exalt another above him he is content to have it so.

Verse
Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.
Romans 12:10

Thought
Love for others promotes them above ourselves, even at our expense. It makes us encouragers, developers of people.

Prayer
Thank You, Father, for those whom You have used to develop me. Use me in honoring and encouraging others. For Jesus' sake.
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Post  Admin Sat 08 Oct 2016, 4:18 pm

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, October 08, 2016
Taking Time to Rest
Sometimes our trouble is not moral but physical. As long as we are in these mortal bodies our spiritual lives will be to some degree affected by our bodies. Here we should notice that there is a difference between our mortal bodies and the “flesh” of Pauline theology. When Paul speaks of the flesh he refers to our fallen human nature, not to our physical bodies, which are the temples of the Holy Spirit. Through the power of the Spirit there is deliverance from the propensities of the flesh, but while we live there is no relief from the weaknesses and imperfections of the body. One often-unsuspected cause of staleness is fatigue. Shakespeare said something to the effect that no man could be a philosopher when he had a toothache, and while it is possible to be a weary saint, it is scarcely possible to be weary and feel saintly; and it is our want of feeling that we are considering here. The Christian who gets tired in the work of the Lord and stays tired without relief beyond a reasonable time will go stale. The fact that he grew weary by toiling in the Lord’s vineyard will not make his weariness any less real. Our Lord knew this and occasionally took His disciples aside for a rest.

Verse
Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, "Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest."
Mark 6:31

Thought
Jesus recognized the need of rest for His disciples. He still does! Rest is not an excuse for laziness. It is an essential for effective service.

Prayer
Father, may I have the good sense to schedule time for rest. Forgive me for sometimes taking on too much and, as a consequence, failing to serve You well.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, October 07, 2016
The Faith Walk
Periods of staleness in the life are not inevitable but they are common. He is a rare Christian who has not experienced times of spiritual dullness when the relish has gone out of his heart and the enjoyment of living has diminished greatly or departed altogether. Since there is no single cause of this condition there is no one simple remedy for it. Sometimes we are to blame, as for instance when we do a wrong act without immediately seeking forgiveness and cleansing; or when we permit worldly interests to grow up and choke the tender plants of the inner life. When the cause is known, and particularly when it is as uncomplex as this, the remedy is the old-fashioned one of repentance. But if after careful and candid examination of the life by prayer and the Word no real evil is discovered, we gain nothing by putting the worst construction on things and lying facedown in the dust. To say that we have not sinned when we have is to be false to the fact; to insist that we have sinned when we have not is to be false to ourselves. There comes a time when the most spiritual thing we can do is to accept cleansing from all sin as an accomplished fact and stop calling that unclean which God has called clean.

Verse
We live by faith, not by sight.
2 Corinthians 5:7

Thought
There are times when the Christian life is reduced to what it essentially is--a walk by faith. By faith, not by sight or good feelings. God sometimes leads us through a period of dark clouds and we know that He is there only by faith.

Prayer
Thank You, Lord. I am saved by faith, not by feeling saved. I live, by faith not by feelings. May I clearly distinguish between feelings which can deceive and faith fixed on You.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, October 06, 2016
Emergency Living
Before there can be acceptable service there must be an acceptable life. Before we can know how much we owe we must learn how great is the need. Men are caught in a disaster worse than earthquake or flood, and the redeemed of the Lord are to work for their rescue. In considering these things we must not go on the defensive. The Lord loves the artless, the candid, the childlike. He cannot work with those who argue or bargain or plead or excuse themselves. He hides His profoundest mysteries from the wise and the prudent and reveals them unto babes. The poor in spirit always receive the kingdom, the meek inherit the earth, the mourner is comforted and the pure in heart see God. My old friend Tom Haire, the praying plumber, after several months of ministry in the United States, told me one day that he was going back home for a rest. In the thickest of Irish brogues he explained how it was with him. “I’m preached out,” he said, “and I am going back to spend three months waiting on God. There are some spiritual matters that I want to get straightened out. I want to appear before the judgment seat now while I can do something about it.”

Verse
Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
Matthew 20:28

Thought
A vital ingredient of serving is living. Christlike living will determine how we serve and why. Emergency living gives quality to emergency serving.

Prayer
Lord, You came to serve, not to be served. May I serve You in serving others.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, October 05, 2016
Utilizing Our Spiritual Resources
I think that most Christians would be better pleased if the Lord did not inquire into their personal affairs too closely. They want Him to save them, keep them happy and take them to heaven at last, but not to be too inquisitive about their conduct or service. But He has searched us and knows us; He knows our downsitting and our uprising and understands our thoughts afar off. There is no place to hide from those eyes that are as a flame of fire and there is no way to escape from the judgment of those feet that are like fine brass. It is the part of wisdom to live with these things in mind. God is love and His kindness is unbounded, but He has no sympathy with the carnal mind. He remembers that we are dust, indeed, but He refuses to tolerate the doings of the flesh. He has given us His word; He has promised that we would never be tempted above what we were able to bear; He has placed Himself at our disposal in response to believing prayer; He has made available to us the infinite moral power of His Holy Spirit to enable us to do His will here on earth. There is no excuse for our acting like timid weaklings.

Verse
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in all the church and in Christ Jesus thoughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
Ephesians 3:20-21

Thought
Are we using the spiritual resources God has placed at our disposal? We are enabled believers. But that enablement of the Spirit must be appropriated in daily life.

Prayer
How I have grieved You, Lord, in failing to utilize the spiritual dynamic You have made available to me. Teach me, Spirit of God!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, October 04, 2016
When Our Giving Expresses a Given Heart
Not by its size is my gift judged, but by how much of me there is in it. No man gives at all until he has given all. No man gives anything acceptable to God until he has first given himself in love and sacrifice. The hero is cited by his country not for the number of persons he has saved only, but for the degree of danger to himself present in his act. Service that can be done without peril, that carries no loss, no sacrifice, does not rate high in the sight of men or God. In the work of the Church the amount one man must do to accomplish a given task is determined by how much or how little the rest of the company is willing to do. It is a rare church whose members all put their shoulder to the wheel. The typical church is composed of the few whose shoulders are bruised by their faithful labors and the many who are unwilling to raise a blister in the service of God and their fellow men. There may be a bit of wry humor in all this, but it is quite certain that there will be no laughter when each of us gives account to God of the deeds done in the body.

Verse
. . . Entirely on their own, they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the saints. And they did not do as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then to us in keeping with God's will.
2 Corinthians 8:3c-5

Thought
Those Macedonian believers gave out of severe trial and extreme poverty. They gave joyously and generously, pleading for the privilege of giving to the saints in need. They gave as they did because they first gave themselves to the Lord.

Prayer
Lord, in giving myself to You did I remember to include my billfold?

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, October 03, 2016
Being God's People in this World
. . . The needs of the people, not our own convenience, decide how far we shall go and how much we shall do. Had there been no disaster there would have been no need for the Eternal Son to empty Himself and descend to Bethlehem’s manger. Had there been no Fall there would have been no incarnation, no thorns, no cross. These resulted when the divine goodness confronted the human emergency. While Christ was the perfect example of the healthy normal man, He yet did not live a normal life. He sacrificed many pure enjoyments to give Himself to the holy work of moral rescue. His conduct was determined not by what was legitimate or innocent, but by our human need. He pleased not Himself but lived for the emergency; and as He was so are we in this world. Before the judgment seat of Christ my service will be judged not by how much I have done but by how much I could have done. In God’s sight my giving is measured not by how much I have given but by how much I could have given and how much I had left after I made my gift. The needs of the world and my total ability to minister to those needs decide the worth of my service.

Verse
Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.
1 Corinthians 12:27

Thought
Some of us are much more alert than others to the major reason for our presence in this world. We are those through whom Christ seeks to reach out to people. He desires to express His love through us to people all around us.

Prayer
Whom would You reach through me today, Lord? May I be Your instrument through whom You touch others.
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Post  Admin Sun 02 Oct 2016, 5:41 pm

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, October 01, 2016
The Misuse of Humor
. . . We may be known by the following: 7. What we laugh at. No one with a due regard for the wisdom of God would argue that there is anything wrong with laughter, since humor is a legitimate component of our complex nature. Lacking a sense of humor we fall that much short of healthy humanity. But the test we are running here is not whether we laugh or not, but what we laugh at. Some things lie outside the field of pure humor. No reverent Christian, for instance, finds death funny, nor birth nor love. No Spirit-filled man can bring himself to laugh at the Holy Scriptures, or the Church which Christ purchased with His own blood, or prayer or righteousness or human grief or pain. And surely no one who has been even for a brief moment in the presence of God could ever laugh at a story involving the Deity. These are a few tests. The wise Christian will find others.

Verse
Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving.
Ephesians 5:4

Thought
God gives us grace to laugh at ourselves and there is much to laugh at. Other targets of humor are subject to restriction because humor can degenerate into mockery of other people and the things of God.

Prayer
Thank You for the gift of humor, Lord. Make me sensitive to its misuse and misdirection. For Jesus' sake.


 
TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, October 02, 2016
Fulfilling Our Commission
One mighty fact there is which for us men overwhelms all other considerations and gives significance to everything we do. It is that the human race has left its first estate and is morally and spiritually fallen. Since the fall of man the earth has been a disaster area and everyone lives with a critical emergency. Nothing is normal. Everything is wrong and everyone is wrong until made right by the redeeming work of Christ and the effective operation of the Holy Spirit. The universal disaster of the Fall compels us to think differently about our obligation to our fellow men. What would be entirely permissible under normal conditions becomes wrong in the present situation, and many things not otherwise required are necessary because of abnormal conditions.

Verse
Again Jesus said, "Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you."
John 20:21

Thought
Our Lord Jesus Christ has sent us into the world as the Father sent Him. We do not come as redeemers but as the Lord's "EMS" Sent Ones, witnessing of Him by life and word.

Prayer
Lord, so easily I fall into tedium as if all were well in the world. Shock me into seeing the emergency!
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Post  Admin Fri 30 Sep 2016, 8:24 pm

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, September 27, 2016
Self-Discovery
Hardly anything else reveals so well the fear and uncertainty among men as the length to which they will go to hide their true selves from each other and even from their own eyes. Almost all men live from childhood to death behind a semiopaque curtain, coming out briefly only when forced by some emotional shock and then retreating as quickly as possible into hiding again. The result of this lifelong dissimulation is that people rarely know their neighbors for what they really are, and worse than that, the camouflage is so successful that mostly they do not quite know themselves either. Self-knowledge is so critically important to us in our pursuit of God and His righteousness that we lie under heavy obligation to do immediately whatever is necessary to remove the disguise and permit our real selves to be known. It is one of the supreme tragedies in religion that so many of us think so highly of ourselves when the evidence lies all on the other side; and our self-admiration effectively blocks out any possible effort to discover a remedy for our condition. Only the man who knows he is sick will go to a physician.

Verse
. . . All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because 'God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.'
1 Peter 5:5

Thought
Do I know the real me? Our tendency is to refuse to admit what God shows us to be. Yet accurate self-identification is necessary if we are to escape the enemy's deception and to grow in Christ.

Prayer
Father, deliver me from religious pretense and self-deception. You know the real me. Help me to know also that I may trust You for inner healing.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, September 28, 2016
Discovering Who I Am and Who I Can Be
Now, our true moral and spiritual state can be disclosed only by the Spirit and the Word. The final judgment of the heart is God’s. There is a sense in which we dare not judge each other (Matt. 7:1-5), and in which we should not even try to judge ourselves ( 1 Cor. 4:3). The ultimate judgment belongs to the One whose eyes are like a flame of fire and who sees quite through the deeds and thoughts of men. I for one am glad to leave the final word with Him. There is, nevertheless, a place for self-judgment and a real need that we exercise it (1 Cor. 11:31-32). While our self-discovery is not likely to be complete and our self-judgment is almost certain to be biased and imperfect, there is yet every good reason for us to work along with the Holy Spirit in His benign effort to locate us spiritually in order that we may make such amendments as the circumstances demand. That God already knows us thoroughly is certain (Psa. 139:1-6). It remains for us to know ourselves as accurately as possible. For this reason I offer some rules for self-discovery; and if the results are not all we could desire they may be at least better than none at all. . . .

Verse
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
Psalm 139:23-24

Thought
In discovering who I am I will also be finding whom I am not and whom I can be through Christ. Revealed will be those areas where I most need to submit to the Spirit's transforming power.

Prayer
Only by Your power, O Lord, can I be changed into what You desire me to be.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, September 29, 2016
Revelators of Who We Are
. . . We may be known by the following: 1. What we want most. We have but to get quiet, recollect our thoughts, wait for the mild excitement within us to subside, and then listen closely for the faint cry of desire. Ask your heart, What would you rather have than anything else in the world? Reject the conventional answer. Insist on the true one, and when you have heard it you will know the kind of person you are. 2. What we think about most. The necessities of life compel us to think about many things, but the true test is what we think about voluntarily. It is more than likely that our thoughts will cluster about our secret heart treasure, and whatever that is will reveal what we are. “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matt. 6:21). 3. How we use our money. Again we must ignore those matters about which we are not altogether free. We must pay taxes and provide the necessities of life for ourselves and family, if any. That is routine, merely, and tells us little about ourselves. But whatever money is left to do with as we please--that will tell us a great deal indeed. Better listen to it.

Verse
But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. . . .
1 Peter 3:15a

Thought
Those secret desires, what we think about when free to think what we will, our use of finances--revelators of who we are. Well, who are we?

Prayer
O God, there is so much of me yet to be changed into what You want me to be. Increase my sensitivity to Your Spirit's promptings in those areas of life that I may surrender them to Christ's Lordship.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, September 30, 2016
More Clues to Self-Discovery
. . . We may be known by the following: 4. What we do with our leisure time. A large share of our time is already spoken for by the exigencies of civilized living, but we do have some free time. What we do with it is vital. Most people waste it staring at the television, listening to the radio, reading the cheap output of the press or engaging in idle chatter. What I do with mine reveals the kind of man I am. 5. The company we enjoy. There is a law of moral attraction that draws every man to the society most like himself. “Being let go, they went to their own company” (Acts 4:23). Where we go when we are free to go where we will is a near-infallible index of character. 6. Whom and what we admire. I have long suspected that the great majority of evangelical Christians, while kept somewhat in line by the pressure of group opinion, nevertheless have a boundless, if perforce secret, admiration for the world. We can learn the true state of our minds by examining our unexpressed admirations. Israel often admired, even envied, the pagan nations around them, and so forgot the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the law and the promises and the fathers. Instead of blaming Israel let us look to ourselves.

Verse
And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Colossians 3:17

Thought
Our use of leisure, the company we enjoy and our secret objects of admiration disclose much about who we are. Have we subjected those areas to the Spirit's review?

Prayer
Can I engage in these things in the name of the Lord Jesus giving thanks to You? O God, show me.
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Post  Admin Mon 26 Sep 2016, 3:45 pm

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, September 06, 2016
In the World But Not of It
The Church lives in a hostile world. Within and around her are enemies that not only could destroy her, but are meant to and will unless she resists force with yet greater force. The Christian would collapse from sheer external pressure were there not within him a counterpressure sufficiently great to prevent it. The power of the Holy Spirit is, therefore, not optional but necessary. Without it the children of God simply cannot live the life of heaven on earth. The hindrances are too many and too effective. A Church is a living organism and is subject to attack from such enemies as prey on living things. Yet the figure of the human body to stand for the Church is not adequate, for the life of the body is nonintelligent, whereas the Church is composed of moral beings having intelligence to recognize their enemies and a will to enable them to resist. The human body can fight its enemies even while it is asleep, but the Church cannot. She must be awake and determined or she cannot win.

Verse
I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.
John 17:14-15

Thought
Increasing is the pressure not only to be in the world but of it. The blurring of truth in the name of tolerance and cultural acceptance is lulling the North American church to sleep. It is time to wake up and stand up in the power of the Spirit.

Prayer
Lord, help me to be lovingly different in this world. Only by Your Spirit's enablement can I live in it without being of it.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, September 07, 2016
Faith Living and Faith Believing
One enemy we must resist is unbelief. The temptation is strong to reject what we cannot explain, or at least to withhold belief till we have investigated further. This attitude is proper, even commendable, for the scientist, but wholly wrong for the Christian. Here is the reason: The faith of the Christian rests down squarely upon the man Christ Jesus who declares that He is both God and Lord. This claim must be received by pure faith or rejected outright; it can never be proved by investigation. That is why Christ’s appeal is directed to faith alone. The believer thinks, it is true; but he thinks because he believes, not in order that he may. Faith secures from the indwelling Spirit confirmation exquisitely perfect, but only after it is there without other support than Christ Himself.

Verse
We live by faith, not by sight.
2 Corinthians 5:7

Thought
It is only by faith we can see the unseen that is the anchor of our belief. We live by faith. But it is faith in Christ!

Prayer
O Christ, it is because of who I have found You to be that I walk by faith into the unseen.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, September 08, 2016
Looking Back While Pressing On
Another enemy is complacency.“ Woe to them that are at ease in Zion” (Amos 6:1). The contended Christian is not in danger of attack, he has already been attacked. He is sick and does not know it. To escape this we must stir up the gift of God which is in us. We must declare war on contentment and press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Again there is self-righteousness. The temptation to feel morally pleased with ourselves will be all the greater as our lives become better. The only sure defense against this is to cultivate a quiet state of continual penitence. A sweet but sobering memory of our past guilt and a knowledge of our present imperfections are not incompatible with the joy of the Lord; and they are of inestimable aid in resisting the enemy.

Verse
Woe to you who are complacent in Zion, and to you who feel secure on Mount Samaria, you notable men of the foremost nation, to whom the people of Israel come!"
Amos 6:1

Thought
Distorted perspective fuels pride. We have come a long way. Thanks be to God! We have a long way to go in becoming what God intends us to be. Let's press on!

Prayer
Thank You, Lord, for the changes You have brought in me. Yet the closer I come to You the more exposed is my sinfulness and old-nature living. Gracious Lord, please keep growing me.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, September 09, 2016
Daring to be Different
The fear of man brings a snare, said the prophet, and this enemy, too, must be defeated. Our whole modern world is geared to destroy individual independence and bring all of us into conformity to all the rest of us. Any deviation from the pattern, whatever that pattern may be at the time, will not be forgiven by society, and since the Christian must deviate radically from the world he naturally comes in for the world’s displeasure. If he surrenders to fear he has been conquered, and he dare not let this happen. Other enemies may be identified, such as love of luxury, secret sympathy with the world, self-confidence, pride and unholy thoughts. These we must resist with every power within us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.

Verse
Hear me, you who know what is right, you people who have my law in your hearts: Do not fear the reproach of men or be terrified by their insults.
Isaiah 51:7

Thought
How easily concern for what people think pushes aside our awesome reverence for what God thinks. As people of God in this world we are different. But it is sometimes embarassing, even fearful, when others note the difference. It can even be costly. Is it

Prayer
O Father, give me courage to be lovingly different for Christ's sake.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, September 10, 2016
Distinguishing the Spiritual from the Natural
They who think on heavenly things are forced by their psychological structure to use mental raw material borrowed from the earth. And this is certain to show up in their thinking. Even the Bible, to be understood by its readers, must condescend to tell of eternal things in the language of time. It must explain the celestial by means of the mundane. So we find in the Scriptures birds and kings and sheep and soldiers acting as interpreters for Almighty God. Grapes and lilies, gold and stubble, corn and cattle, rain and stars all are used by the Holy Spirit to carry our minds across the vast chasm that separates the spiritual from the material. Doubtless the constant use of figures drawn from our familiar world to express religious ideas leaves a residuum at the bottom of our minds which in some measure gives color, if not form, to our theology. We struggle to understand spiritual things by comparing them to natural ones; then little by little those natural things become identified with the spiritual completely and the spiritual suffers greatly as a consequence.

Verse
Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
1 Corinthians 13:12

Thought
At best we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror because God reveals to us reality of which we have no experience. He speaks of the unknown in the context of the familiar so that we may grasp truth even imperfectly.

Prayer
O Holy Spirit, help me to move beyond the natural to the spiritual to undersstand what for me is the newly revealed.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, September 11, 2016
Heart Worship
One task of the illuminated Christian teacher is to internalize worship and raise the religious concepts of church people above the figures and allegories that enabled them to grasp those concepts in the first place. The figure is the box in which the shining jewel is carried; but it is surprisingly easy to mistake the box for the jewel and look for nothing more. Christianity is the religion of the heart. It searches for and finds the man under his wrappings. The gospel reaches the man under his wrappings. The gospel reaches the man far in where there is nothing to distinguish him from any other man. Whether he is dark or red or white matters not at all; whether he is a Stone Age aborigine in a grass hut or a civilized white man in an air-conditioned office he is the same man underneath, and it is for that man that the Spirit keeps up His persistent search.

Verse
Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker; for he is our God . . .
Psalm 95:6-7a

Thought
Worship. Heart worship. When our spirit is caught up in awesome wonder in the majesty of God's presence. More than emotional uplift more than intellectual loftiness. Rather, recognition that He is God and bowing in spirit before Him. We don't know much o

Prayer
Teach me to worship, to worship in heart. And use me to help others to so worship You. You are God.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, September 12, 2016
Beyond the Shepherd Image
It would appear obvious enough once we think of it that the image of natural objects treasured in the mind tends to impede the flight of our souls upward into God. Illustrations which, by their very definition, should let in light, if used often and objectified by the artist’s brush, become opaque at last and actually shut out the light they were intended to admit. A familiar example may help me to make my point. The psalmist David, in the most beautiful hymn in the world, teaches us to think of Christ as our Shepherd. The Lord Jesus carried the idea further and talked tenderly of His sheep and of Himself as the Shepherd who should lay down His life for them. The artists took up the idea and depicted Christ as a real shepherd and their work has become so fixed in the minds of Christians that when our Lord returns many of them will be secretly disappointed if He is not carrying a crook in His hand and a woolly lamb under His arm. In this instance what is intended to assist our understanding, to lift our imagination, to put poetry and music into our hearts, has by our blindness become instead a positive hindrance to our knowledge of Christ. Worse, it has given us not only an inadequate but an erroneous picture of Him. We try to visualize Him and the only image that projects onto the screen is that of an idealized shepherd of the Near East, an image which I am certain Paul and John would never recognize. Paul declared that he knew Christ after the flesh no more, and the same John who had recorded the words of Christ concerning the sheep and the shepherd, when he saw Him as He now is fell at His feet as dead.

Verse
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place . . . that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:9-11

Thought
He is our shepherd in all the biblical meaning of that metaphor. But He is the risen Christ, King of kings, Lord of lords at whose name one day every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord, to the glory of the Father!

Prayer
Open my eyes, Lord, to behold You as You are, within human ability to do so.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, September 13, 2016
The Soaring Spirit
Always the Church has been tempted to think of God by the use of images and forms, and always when she has so done she has fallen into externalism and spiritual decay. Some of the greatest books apart from the inspired Scriptures have been written to call the Church back to a purer view of God. Miguel de Molinos, in his Spiritual Guide, insists that prayer is “an ascent or elevation of the mind to God.” “God is above all creatures,” he says further, “and the soul cannot see Him nor converse with Him if she raise not herself above them all.” . . . I think it may be said with a fair degree of accuracy that all the great devotional theologians of the centuries taught the futility of trying to visualize the Godhead. Molinos warned against every effort of the intellect to image God forth. “She ought to go forward with her love,” he says of the Christian’s soul, “leaving all her understanding behind. Let her love God as He is and not as her understanding says He is, and pictures Him.” The teaching of the New Testament is that God and spiritual things can be known finally only by a direct work of God within the soul. However theological knowledge may be aided by figures and analogies, the true understanding of God must be by personal spiritual awareness. The Holy Spirit is indispensable. (See John 14--16:33 and I Corinthians 1:18--2:16.)

Verse
God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.
John 4:24

Thought
Intellectual concentration on scripture is necessary to understand truth, to apply it and to communicate it to others. There is also necessary the soaring of the spirit beyond intellectual exercise where our spirit communes with God.

Prayer
Teach me more of spirit worship, Lord, that in truth and spirit I may worship You.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, September 14, 2016
Living the Truth
For a long time I have believed that truth, to be understood, must be lived; that Bible doctrine is wholly ineffective until it has been digested and assimilated by the total life. I have held this to be an important element in the preaching of the Old Testament prophets, and I have felt it to be near to the heart of the moral teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ. I admit that this belief has made me a little lonely, for not many of my Christian brethren share it with me. While I have not heard anyone deny the truth outright, few have seen fit to teach it with anything approaching emphasis. And by silence a man will reveal his beliefs as surely as by argument. This is one of those truths which at first may appear dull and colorless, but far from being tame or weak, this truth is of tremendous importance to all of us. While not to my knowledge formulated as a tenet in the creed of any church or school of religious thought, it nevertheless stands as a great divide to separate those who think rightly about the faith of Christ from those who think carelessly about it.

Verse
'Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?' The expert in the law replied, 'The one who had mercy on him.' Jesus told him, 'Go and do likewise.'
Luke 10:36-37

Thought
If you know the truth, live it. Head knowledge is not enough. Living the truth enhances our understanding of it. Even more, living the truth changes us and opens us to receive more truth.

Prayer
Forgive me, Lord, for stowing Your truth away in theological cupboards rather than integrating it into my daily living. Your truth liberates!


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, September 15, 2016
Transforming Truth
The essence of my belief is that there is a difference, a vast difference, between fact and truth. Truth in the Scriptures is more than a fact. A fact may be detached, impersonal, cold and totally disassociated from life. Truth on the other hand, is warm, living and spiritual. A theological fact may be held in the mind for a lifetime without its having any positive effect upon the moral character; but truth is creative, saving, transforming, and it always changes the one who receives it into a humbler and holier man. At what point, then, does a theological fact become for the one who holds it a life-giving truth? At the point where obedience begins. When faith gains the consent of the will to make an irrevocable committal to Christ as Lord, truth begins its saving, illuminating work; and not one moment before.

Verse
To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, 'If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.'
John 8:31-32

Thought
Truth sets free! Truth embraced, clung to, integrated into everyday living. Truth changes the heart not just the mind.

Prayer
Father, forgive me for sometimes holding Your truth at arm's length--examining it, analyzing it, exegeting it--but failing to fully live it. Your truth sets free.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, September 16, 2016
Experientially Knowing Truth
In His conflict with the religious textualists of His day our Lord often uttered short statements that serve as keys to unlock vast and precious storehouses of truth. In the Gospel according to John these may be found in something amounting to profusion. One such is found in John 7: “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself” (7:17). A. T. Robertson, in his Word Pictures in the New Testament, explains “he shall know” as being “experimental knowledge from willingness to do God’s will.” Then he quotes Westcott: “if there be no sympathy there can be no understanding.” Obviously these words of Christ were understood by the great British biblical scholar Westcott and the brilliant American expositor Robertson as teaching that truth can be understood only by the mind that has surrendered to it. The average evangelical Bible teacher today finds such a radical interpretation too revolutionary to be comfortable and so just ignores it.

Verse
I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.
Ephesians 1:17

Thought
How is it that the Great God deigns to allow you and me, out of the billions on earth, to know Him in measure and to know His truth? I dont't know why but He does.

Prayer
I want to know You, Lord, experientially know You, know You better than I know You now. Open my eyes!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, September 17, 2016
Surrendering to Truth
We must be willing to obey if we would know the true inner meaning of the teachings of Christ and the apostles. I believe this view prevailed in every revival that ever came to the Church during her long history. Indeed a revived Church may be distinguished from a dead one by the attitude of its members toward the truth. The dead church holds to the shell of truth without surrendering the will to it, while the church that wills to do God’s will is immediately blessed with a visitation of spiritual powers. Theological facts are like the altar of Elijah on Carmel before the fire came, correct, properly laid out, but altogether cold. When the heart makes the ultimate surrender, the fire falls and true facts are transmuted into spiritual truth that transforms, enlightens, sanctifies. The church or the individual that is Bible taught without being Spirit taught (and there are many of them) has simply failed to see that truth lies deeper than the theological statement of it.

Verse
Teach me your way, O LORD, and I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.
Psalm 86:11

Thought
God does teach us His way. Are we walking in His truth? Unless we do our heart is divided and our faith reduced to intellectual affirmations without full heart commitment.

Prayer
Show me, Lord, those areas of Your truth to which I have not yet surrendered. I want to walk in Your truth with an undivided heart.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, September 18, 2016
Being Participants in Truth
Truth cannot aid us until we become participators in it. We only possess what we experience. St. Gregory of Sinai, who lived in the fourteenth century, taught that understanding and participation were inseparable in the spiritual life. “He who seeks to understand commandments without fulfilling commandments, and to acquire such understanding through learning and reading, is like a man who takes a shadow for truth. For the understanding of truth is given to those who have become participants in truth (who have tasted it through living). Those who are not participants in truth and are not initiated therein, when they seek this understanding, draw it from a distorted wisdom. Of such men the apostle says ‘the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit,’ even though they boast of their knowledge of truth.” Here is a simple but neglected doctrine that should be restored to its rightful place in the thinking and teaching of the Church. It would work wonders.

Verse
The Lord says: 'These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship is made up only of rules taught by men.'
Isaiah 29:13

Thought
Some of us measure our commitment to Christ by the truth we mouth and the rules we keep--rules which may be man-made and not from God. But truth must be tasted through living if we are to be participants in it.

Prayer
Lord, teach me what it means to participate in Your truth that through it I may be free.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, September 19, 2016
Thinking is a Kind of Living
Thinking is a kind of living. To think and to be aware that we think is to be conscious; life without consciousness is but a shadow of life, having no meaning and being of no value to the individual. Our thoughts are the product of our thinking, and since these are of such vast importance to us it is imperative that we learn how to think rightly. I am not concerned here with that kind of profound cerebration known as “heavy thinking.” Few of us have the intellectual equipment to enable us, or the will power to compel us, to engage in such heroic mental exercise. I am dealing here with that kind of thinking done by every normal person every waking moment from birth to death. After all, it is not our heavy thinking that shapes our characters, but the quiet attention of the mind to the surrounding world day after day throughout our lives. Men are influenced more by their common, everyday thinking than by any rare intellectual feat such as writing a great poem or painting a famous picture. Feats of thinking may create reputation, but habits of thinking create character The incredible mental accomplishments of an Einstein, for instance, had almost nothing to do with the kind of human being he was; the constant, undramatic, moment-by-moment interplay of his mind with his environment, on the other hand, had almost everything to do with it. We all live in two environments, the one being the world around us, the other our thoughts about that world. The larger world cannot affect us directly; it must be mediated to us by our thoughts, and will be to us at last only what we allow it to be.

Verse
Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking.
2 Peter 3:1

Thought
We all think. All day long we think. What we think has so much to do with what we are and what we are becoming. It strongly influences our living. Are we disciplining ourselves in wholesome thinking?

Prayer
Holy Spirit, guide me in my thinking. How I perceive and interpret the world around me, the words and actions of people. Stimulate me to wholsome thinking. In Jesus' name.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, September 20, 2016
Reacting to Circumstances
. . . External things and events are the raw material only; the finished product is whatever the mind makes of these. Judas Iscariot and John the Beloved lived in the same world, but how differently they interpreted it. The same may be said of Cain and Abel, Esau and Jacob, Saul and David. From these we learn that circumstances do not make men; it is their reaction to circumstances that determines what kind of men they will be. What then can we Christians do? The answer is, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Phpns. 2:5). “Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?” (2 Cor. 13:5). The mental stuff of the Christian can be and should be modified and conditioned by the Spirit of Christ which indwells his nature. God wills that we think His thoughts after Him. The Spirit-filled, prayerful Christian actually possesses the mind of Christ, so that his reactions to the external world are the same as Christ’s. He thinks about people and things just as Christ does. All life becomes to him the raw nectar which the Spirit within him turns into the honey of paradise. Yet this is not automatic. To do His gracious work God must have the intelligent cooperation of His people. If we would think God’s thoughts we must learn to think continually of God. “God thinks continuously of each one of us as if He had no one but ourselves,” said Francois Malaval; “it is therefore no more than just if we think continuously of Him, as if we had no one but Himself.”

Verse
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus.
Philippians 2:5

Thought
As Kate Wilkinson put it: "May the mind of Christ, my Savior, live in me from day to day, by His love and power controlling all I do and say. May the love of Jesus fill me as the waters fill the sea; Him exalting, self abasing--this is victory."

Prayer
Change my thinking, Lord, then shall I be changed.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, September 21, 2016
What Are You Thinking?
We must think of the surrounding world of people and things against the background of our thoughts of God. The experienced Christian will never think of anything directly; his thoughts go first to God and from God out to His creation. His thoughts, like the angels of Jacob’s ladder, ascend and descend, but ever God stands above them presiding over all. To be heavenly-minded we must think heavenly thoughts. “So let us return to ourselves, brothers, . . . for it is impossible for us to be reconciled and united with God if we do not first return to ourselves . . . striving constantly to keep attention on the kingdom of heaven which is within us.” So wrote Nicephorus, a father of the Greek Orthodox Church, in the fourteenth century, and nothing since has changed. God must have all our thoughts it we would experience the sanctification of our minds.

Verse
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
Psalm 139:23

Thought
What are my thoughts toward God, myself, other people, circumstances and situations? Is my thinking faith-focused or mired in doubt? Do I see other people as God sees them? For many of us, basic changes are needed in our thinking.

Prayer
Father, purify my thinking. Increase my sensitivity to what I think. Transform my mind. For Christ's sake.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, September 22, 2016
That Amazing Grace!
The human heart is heretical by nature. Popular religious beliefs should be checked carefully against the Word of God, for they are almost certain to be wrong. Legalism, for instance, is natural to the human heart. Grace in its true New Testament meaning is foreign to human reason, not because it is contrary to reason but because it lies beyond it. The doctrine of grace had to be revealed; it could not have been discovered. The essence of legalism is self-atonement. The seeker tries to make himself acceptable to God by some act of restitution, or by self-punishment or the feeling of regret. The desire to be pleasing to God is commendable certainly, but the effort to please God by self-effort is not, for it assumes that sin once done may be undone, an assumption wholly false.

Verse
Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the LORD does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit.
Psalm 32:1-2

Thought
O the blessedness of sins forgiven, knowing that God no longer counts them against us. The amazing grace of God!

Prayer
O Christ, I could never atone for my sins. You have done it. I receive the forgiveness You give. I glory in Your grace.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, September 23, 2016
The Vain Penance of Perpetual Regret
Long after we have learned from the Scriptures that we cannot, by fasting or the wearing of a hair shirt or the making of many prayers, atone for the sins of the soul, we still tend by a kind of pernicious natural heresy to feel that we can please God and purify our souls by the penance of perpetual regret. This latter is the Protestant’s unacknowledged penance. Though he claims to believe in the doctrine of justification by faith he still secretly feels that what he calls “godly sorrow” will make him dear to God. Though he may know better he is caught in the web of a wrong religious feeling and betrayed.

Verse
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved.
Ephesians 2:4-5

Thought
It seems that when we have repeatedly been forgiven for a particular sin and then fall again that asking forgiveness does not seem enough. We feel that we have to do something for God. What we have to do is to ask forgiveness, receive it and then walk by

Prayer
Thank You for forgiveness and cleansing, Lord. I trust You for enablement to live for You as I walk by Your Spirit day by day.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, September 24, 2016
Godly Sorrow that Leaves No Regret
There is indeed a godly sorrow that worketh repentance (2 Cor. 7:10), and it must be acknowledged that among us Christians this feeling is often not present in sufficient strength to work real repentance; but the persistence of this sorrow till it becomes chronic regret is neither right nor good. Regret is a kind of frustrated repentance that has not been quite consummated. Once the soul has turned from all sin and committed itself wholly to God there is no longer any legitimate place for regret. When moral innocence has been restored by the forgiving love of God the guilt may be remembered, but the sting is gone from the memory. The forgiven man knows that he has sinned, but he no longer feels it. The effort to be forgiven by works is one that can never be completed because no one knows or can know how much is enough to cancel out the offense; so the seeker must go on year after year paying on his moral debt, here a little, there a little, knowing that he sometimes adds to his bill much more than he pays. The task of keeping books on such a transaction can never end, and the seeker can only hope that when the last entry is made he may be ahead and the account fully paid. This is quite the popular belief, this forgiveness by self-effort, but it is a natural heresy and can at last only betray those who depend upon it.

Verse
Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.
2 Corinthians 7:10

Thought
Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation. Godly sorrow leaves no regret because genuine repentance has occurred. Perpetual regret is not from God. It only leads to endless effort to earn God's grace.

Prayer
I know, Lord, that I can never earn Your forgiveness or merit Your grace. Forgive me for trying.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, September 25, 2016
Cleansing Destroys Regret
It may be argued that the absence of regret indicates a low and inadequate view of sin, but the exact opposite is true. Sin is so frightful, so destructive to the soul that no human thought or act can in any degree diminish its lethal effects. Only God can deal with it successfully; only the blood of Christ can cleanse it from the pores of the spirit. The heart that has been delivered from this dread enemy feels not regret but wondrous relief and unceasing gratitude. The returned prodigal honors his father more by rejoicing than by repining. Had the young man in the story had less faith in his father he might have mourned in a corner instead of joining in the festivities. His confidence in the lovingkindness of his father gave him the courage to forget his checkered past.

Verse
How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God.
Hebrews 9:14

Thought
Christ's death for us removes our sin and scrubs clean our consciences. It is time to bury regret and serve the living God!

Prayer
Lord, I turn from that regret that refuses to accept Your Word and Your promise. May praise to You fill my heart as I serve You.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, September 26, 2016
Penitence or Self-Love?
Regret frets the soul as tension frets the nerves and anxiety the mind. I believe that the chronic unhappiness of most Christians may be attributed to a gnawing uneasiness lest God has not fully forgiven them, or the fear that He expects as the price of His forgiveness some sort of emotional penance which they have not furnished. As our confidence in the goodness of God mounts, our anxieties will diminish and our moral happiness rise in inverse proportion. Regret may be no more than a form of self-love. A man may have such a high regard for himself that any failure to live up to his own image of himself disappoints him deeply. He feels that he has betrayed his better self by his act of wrongdoing, and even if God is willing to forgive him he will not forgive himself. Sin brings to such a man a painful loss of face that is not soon forgotten. He becomes permanently angry with himself and tries to punish himself by going to God frequently with petulant self-accusations. This state of mind crystallizes finally into a feeling of chronic regret which appears to be a proof of deep penitence but is actually proof of deep self-love. Regret for a sinful past will remain until we truly believe that for us in Christ that sinful past no longer exists. The man in Christ has only Christ’s past and that is perfect and acceptable to God. In Christ he died. In Christ he rose, and in Christ he is seated within the circle of God’s favored ones. He is no longer angry with himself because he is no longer self-regarding, but Christ-regarding; hence there is no place for regret.

Verse
For Christ died for our sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit.
1 Peter 3:18

Thought
We don't have to tell God how bad we are. He knows. He also knows that He has provided for us new life in Christ. Let's live in His grace today, not in our sinful past.

Prayer
There is grace with You to cover all my sin. I turn from regret and self-love. Into Your healing stream I plunge.
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Post  Admin Mon 05 Sep 2016, 11:24 pm

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, September 04, 2016
Setting Sights on the Highest Goals
“Thou art to know that thy soul is the center, habitation, and kingdom of God,” says Miguel de Molinos. “That therefore, to the end the sovereign King may rest on that throne, thou oughtest to take pains to keep thy soul pure, quiet, void and peaceable; pure from guilt and defects; quiet from fears; void of affections, desires and thoughts; and peaceable in temptation and tribulation. Thou oughtest always then to keep thine heart in peace, that thou mayest keep pure that temple of God, and with a right and pure intention thou art to work, pray, obey, and suffer, without being in the least disturbed, whatever it pleases the Lord to send unto thee.” To enjoy this growing knowledge of God will require that we go beyond the goals so casually set by modern evangelicals. We must fix our hearts on God and purposefully aim to rise above the dead level and average of current Christianity. If we do this Satan will surely tempt us by accusing us of spiritual pride and our friends will warn us to beware of being “holier than thou.” But as the land of promise had to be taken by storm against the determined opposition of the enemy, so we must capture new spiritual heights over the sour and violent protests of the devil. As we move farther up into the knowledge of Christ we open new areas of our beings to attack, but what of it? Remember that spiritual complacency is more deadly than anything the devil can bring against us in our upward struggle. If we sit still to escape temptation, then we are being tempted worse than before and gaining nothing by it. “Ye have dwelt long enough in this mount . . . Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land” (Deut. 1:6, 8).

Verse
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect,but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
Philippians 3:12

Thought
Christ Jesus took hold of us for what? Are we pressing on for it? Are our goals set high enough?

Prayer
Father, I am fearful to pray 'to know You whatever it pleases You to send me.’ But You are my Father and You love me, You LOVE me. I can trust You. Through Christ my Lord. Amen


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, September 05, 2016
That Bent to Backsliding
Someday the church can relax her guard, call her watchmen down from the wall and live in safety and peace; but not yet, not yet. All that is good in the world stands as a target for all that is evil and manages to stay alive only by constant watchfulness and the providential protection of Almighty God. As a man or a nation may be in deepest trouble when unaware of any trouble at all and in gravest danger when ignorant that any danger exists, so the church may be in greatest peril by not recognizing the presence of peril or the source from which it comes. The church at Laodicea has stood for nineteen hundred years as a serious warning to the whole church of Christ to be most watchful when no enemy is in sight and to remain poor in spirit when earthly wealth increases, yet we appear to have learned nothing from her. We expound the seven letters to the churches of Asia and then return to our own company to live like the Laodicean church. There is in us a bent to backsliding that is all but impossible to cure.

Verse
You say, 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.
Revelation 3:17

Thought
How tragic to think that we are spiritually rich, morally strong and saintly when God sees us as pitiful, poor and blind. Complacency makes us prime targets of the enemy. In love, the Lord will discipline.

Prayer
Lord, give me an ear to hear what You are saying and the good sense to bow to Your will.
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Post  Admin Sat 03 Sep 2016, 9:03 pm

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, September 01, 2016
Rejecting Our Option to Experience God
That first picture of God and man at the time of the creation shows them in close and openhearted communion. Adam listens while God explains how it is to be with him in his Eden home and lays down a few easy rules for his life on the earth. The whole scene is restful, relaxed and altogether beautiful. But the communion did not last. Adam’s very likeness to God, viz., his freedom to choose, permitted him, though it did not compel him, to make a choice contrary to the will of God. So sin entered and the wondrous fellowship was broken. Seen from our human standpoint redemption must rank first among all the acts of God. No other achievement of the Godhead required such vast and precise knowledge, such perfection of wisdom or such fullness of moral power. To bring man into communion with Himself God must deal effectively with the whole matter of justice and righteousness; He must dispose of sin, reconcile an enemy and make a rebel willingly obedient. And this He must do without compromising His holiness or coercing the race He would save.

Verse
Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
Genesis 3:8

Thought
Adam and Eve rejected their option to experience God. They exercised their God-given freedom to turn away from God. We have all inherited their "spiritual DNA." We choose sin and darkness. In Christ God calls us to come to Him, to know Him.

Prayer
O God, how often have I exercised the freedom You have given me to turn away from You to sin. That freedom I now use to flee to You and life in Christ!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, September 02, 2016
Christ Our Mediator
How two wills set in opposition to each other, and both free, could be harmonized was God’s problem and His alone; and with infinite wisdom and power He solved it through the redemptive work of Jesus Christ our Lord. Because Christ is God and man He can properly represent each before the other. He is the Daysman who can stand between the alienated man and the offended God and lay His hand upon them both. “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5) . All this is such a familiar part of evangelical theology that it may safely be assumed that the majority of my readers know it already. That is, they know it theoretically, but the experiential aspect of the truth is not so well known. Indeed large numbers of supposedly sound Christian believers know nothing at all about personal communion with God; and there lies one of the greatest weaknesses of present-day Christianity.

Verse
For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men--the testimony given in its proper time.
1 Timothy 2:5

Thought
Christ mediates between God and us. He draws us to God who wants all to be saved. Christ has done this by giving Himself as our ransom. You and I may know God! Are we presently knowing Him?

Prayer
O Great Mediator, You have scrubbed clean my heart and mind. You have paid my sin-debt in full. I want to know You, intimately know You!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, September 03, 2016
Determining to Know God
The experiential knowledge of God is eternal life (John 17:3), and increased knowledge results in a correspondingly larger and fuller life. So rich a treasure is this inward knowledge of God that every other treasure is as nothing compared with it. We may count all things of no value and sacrifice them freely if we may thereby gain a more perfect knowledge of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. This was Paul’s testimony (Phil. 3:7-14) and it has been the testimony of all great Christian souls who have followed Christ from Paul’s day to ours. To know God it is necessary that we be like God to some degree, for things wholly dissimilar cannot agree and beings wholly unlike can never have communion with each other. It is necessary therefore that we use every means of grace to bring our souls into harmony with the character of God.

Verse
But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.
2 Peter 3:18

Thought
Growing in the grace and knowledge of Christ is not automatic. We must make it the foremost life priority. To know Him!

Prayer
Lord, today may I grow in knowing You. As I go through the day's routines I want to recognize Your presence and walk close to You.
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Post  Admin Wed 31 Aug 2016, 8:22 pm

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, August 30, 2016
The Secret of Life is Theological
Whatever keeps me from the Bible is my enemy, however harmless it may appear to be. Whatever engages my attention when I should be meditating on God and things eternal does injury to my soul. Let the cares of life crowd out the Scriptures from my mind and I have suffered loss where I can least afford it. Let me accept anything else instead of the Scriptures and I have been cheated and robbed to my eternal confusion. The secret of life is theological and the key to heaven as well. We learn with difficulty, forget easily and suffer many distractions. Therefore we should set our hearts to study theology. We should preach it from our pulpits, sing it in our hymns, teach it to our children and make it the subject of conversation when we meet with Christian friends.

Verse
Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
John 17:3

Thought
The secret of life is not only knowing about God but knowing Him. Life in its fullest is knowing Him! That is life today and life eternal.

Prayer
Thank You, Father, for the Bible in my language. Through it I hear Your voice and know Your will because of Your Spirit who illumines me.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, August 31, 2016
Exercising Our Option to Experience God
Without doubt the greatest need of the human personality is to experience God Himself. This is because of who God is and who and what man is. God is the essence of intelligent, self-conscious life and man is created in His image. God is love, and man is made for God. God and man exist for each other and neither is satisfied without the other. Though God is self-sufficient He has sovereignly willed to have communion with the being He made in honor next to Himself, and He takes every means to secure this communion short of coercion, which would be a violation of man’s free will. Were God to override our wills He would be forcing Himself upon us and by so doing would make us a little less than human and so a little less than the being He made for Himself.

Verse
. . . As God has said: 'I will be their God and they shall be my people.'
2 Corinthians 6:16c

Thought
By creating us in His image, God has opened to us the possibility of communion with Him. Through Christ we may experience God. It is an option we exercise, reject or just neglect.

Prayer
Lord, You have made me so that I may experience You. Teach me to walk with You.
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Post  Admin Mon 29 Aug 2016, 7:13 pm

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, August 24, 2016
Unlimited Resources but Limited Receptacles
Since God is infinite, whatever He is must be infinite also; that is, it must be without any actual or conceivable limits. The moment we allow ourselves to think of God as having limits, the one of whom we are thinking is not God but someone or something less than and different from Him. To think rightly of God we must conceive of Him as being altogether boundless in His goodness, mercy, love, grace and in whatever else we may properly attribute to the Deity. It is not enough that we acknowledge God's infinite resources; we must believe also that He is infinitely generous to bestow them. The first is not too great a strain on our faith. Even the deist will admit that the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth, must be rich beyond the power of man to conceive. But to believe that God is a giver as well as a possessor takes an advanced faith and presupposes that there has been a divine revelation to that effect which gives validity to our expectations. Which indeed there has been. We call this revelation the Bible. Believing all this, why are we Christians so poverty stricken? I think it is because we have not learned that God's gifts are meted out according to the taker, not according to the giver. Though almighty and all-wise, God yet cannot pour a great gift into a small receptacle.

Verse
Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
Luke 6:38-39

Thought
God gives and gives and gives. No matter how much we receive there is still more to be received. If we would only give and empty ourselves of the junk that clutters, we may reach out to take more from Him.

Prayer
Oh to be an empty vessel to aggressively receive all that You, O Lord, give.

Growing Faith and Increasing Capacity
To receive in a measure more in keeping with God's liberality five things are necessary. The first is faith. We must be convinced that God is kind, generous, goodhearted and ready to bestow His blessings upon His people with the bounty of a king. To have faith we must immerse ourselves in the Scriptures. And faith must be exercised if it is to be effective. Faith, like a muscle, grows by stretching. The second is capacity. That we differ from each other in spiritual capacity is too evident to need proof; but the reason is a great mystery and lies too deep for our understanding, certainly too deep for discussion here. It is enough to say that whatever his capacity each man can increase it if he will. The human soul is not a hard-baked vessel with a fixed size; it is a living thing capable of growth and expansion as it interacts with the gracious actions of the Holy Spirit.

Verse
The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!"
Luke 17:5

Thought
Exercising faith increases it. Exercising faith opens our soul's door to receive from God and increases our capacity to receive.

Prayer
Lord, I can't ask You to increase my faith until I am ready to exercise what faith I already have.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, August 26, 2016
Thankfully Receiving and Responsibly Using
To receive in a measure more in keeping with God's liberality five things are necessary. The third is receptivity, and one factor always present in receptivity is interest. It is virtually impossible to receive into our minds anything in which we have no interest. A man of ordinary mind may go on to do marvels in a given field if he has keen enough interest in it, and leave behind many men of finer minds who lack the necessary interest. Sometimes one interest may crowd out another. I wonder how many potential Rubensteins or Heifetzes may have gotten lost in obscurity simply because they could not as boys bring themselves to practice when a ball game was in progress on a corner lot nearby. So worldly interests often crowd out heavenly ones and spiritual receptivity is destroyed as a result. The fourth is responsibility. The gifts of God are given to us to use. When they are not used they atrophy. The story of the ten talents should be a warning to all of us. When writing about the gifts of the Spirit the apostle Paul explained that these manifestations of the Spirit were given to everyone for the profit of all. Selfish attitudes toward the blessings of God can destroy their usefulness. We have a serious responsibility in this matter. The fifth is gratitude. It is impossible to be too thankful to God, but it might be good to try it. Our wise Father does not usually give a second gift until we properly praise Him for the first.

Verse
He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all--how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
Romans 8:32

Thought
He gives abundantly. Let's receive with thanksgiving and use what He gives for His glory.

Prayer
"Forgive me, Father, for my frequent thanklessness. I want to receive all that You graciously give. And I want to use it for Your glory!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, August 27, 2016
If God Is
We being what we are and all things else being what they are, the most important and profitable study any of us can engage in is without question the study of theology. That theology probably receives less attention than any other subject tells us nothing about its importance or lack of it. It indicates rather that men are still hiding from the presence of God among the trees of the garden and feel acutely uncomfortable when the matter of their relation to God is brought up. They sense their deep alienation from God and only manage to live at peace with themselves by forgetting that they are not at peace with God. If there were no God, things would be quite otherwise with us. Were there no one to whom we must finally render up account, at least one big load would be gone from our minds. We would only need to live within the law, not too hard a task in most countries, and there would be nothing to fear. But if God indeed created the earth and placed man upon it in a state of moral probation, then the heavy obligation lies upon us to learn the will of God and do it.

Verse
I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.
John 17:26

Thought
If God is, who is He? What is He like? How do I relate to Him? What is His will? Foollish questions if God isn't. But if He is I must know all I can about Him--that becomes my theology.

Prayer
Lord, without You there is no reason for me to be and nothing for me beyond death. But You are! Through Your Son, You and Your love are made known. Thank You!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, August 28, 2016
No Morality Without God
It has always seemed to me completely inconsistent that existentialism should deny the existence of God and then proceed to use the language of theism to persuade men to live right. The French writer, Jean-Paul Sartre, for instance, states frankly that he represents atheistic existentialism. “If God does not exist,” he says, “we find no values or commands to turn to which legitimize our conduct. So in the bright realm of values, we have no excuse behind us, nor justification before us. We are all alone, with no excuses.” Yet in the next paragraph he states bluntly, “Man is responsible for his passion,” and further on, “A coward is responsible for his cowardice.” And such considerations as these, he says, fill the existentialist with “anguish, forlornness and despair.” It seems to me that such reasoning must assume the truth of everything it seeks to deny. If there were no God there would be no such words as “responsible.” No criminal need fear a judge who does not exist; nor would he need to worry about breaking a law that had not been passed. It is the knowledge that the law and the judge do in fact exist that strikes fear to the lawbreaker’s heart. There is someone to whom he is accountable; otherwise the concept of responsibility could have no meaning.

Verse
The fool says in his heart, 'there is no God.' . . .
Psalm 14:1

Thought
Without God there is no right or wrong, good or bad. Somehow we have evolved from something causeless. Why are we here and for what purpose? There is no answer for the one who has said in his or her heart "There is no God."

Prayer
O God, You are! Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I worship You and give thanks to You.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, August 29, 2016
The Study of God
It is precisely because God is, and because man is made in His image and is accountable to Him, that theology is so critically important. Christian revelation alone has the answer to life’s unanswered questions about God and human destiny. To let these authoritative answers lie neglected while we search everywhere else for answers and find none is, it seems to me, nothing less than folly. No motorist would be excused if he neglected to consult his road map and tried instead to find his way across the country by looking for moss on logs, or by observing the flight of wild bees or watching the movements of the heavenly bodies. If there were no map a man might find his way by the stars; but for a traveler trying to get home the stars would be a poor substitute for a map. Without a map the Greeks did an admirable piece of navigating; but the Hebrews possessed the map and so had no need of human philosophy. As one not wholly unacquainted with Greek thought I state it is my belief that but one of Isaiah’s eloquent chapters or David’s inspired psalms contains more real help for mankind than all the output of the finest minds of Greece during the centuries of her glory.

Verse
Set your minds on thing above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.
Colossians 3:2-3

Thought
Theology is the study of God. It reveals who I am and who I can become because of who God is, what He had done and what He continues to do..

Prayer
Open my eyes, Lord, open my mind to grasp more of who You are and who I am in You. In Jesus' name.
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Tozer Devotional Empty Re: Tozer Devotional

Post  Admin Tue 23 Aug 2016, 10:41 pm

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, August 15, 2016
"I am with You Always"
It is hardly possible to overstress the importance of unceasing inward prayer on the part of the one who would live the God-conscious life. Prayer at stated times is good and right; we will never outgrow the need of it while we remain on earth. But this kind of prayer must be supported and perfected by the habit of constant, unspoken prayer. But someone may question whether in a world like this it is possible to think of God constantly. Would it not be too great a burden to try to keep God constantly in the focus of our minds while carrying on our normal activities in this noisy and highly complex civilization? Francois Malaval had the answer to this: "The wings of the dove do not weigh it down," he said. "They carry and support it. And so the thought of God is never a burden; it is a gentle breeze which bears us up, a hand which supports us and raises us, a light which guides us, and a spirit which vivifies us though we do not feel its working." We all know how the presence of someone we deeply love lifts our spirits and suffuses us with a radiant sense of peace and well-being. So the one who loves God supremely is lifted into rapture by His conscious Presence. "Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord" (John 20:20). If only we would stop lamenting and look up. God is here. Christ is risen. The Spirit has been poured out from on high. All this we know as theological truth. It remains for us to turn it into joyous spiritual experience. And how is this accomplished? There is no new technique; if it is new it is false. The old, old method still works. Conscious fellowship with Christ is by faith, love and obedience. And the humblest believer need not be without these.

Verse
And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.
Matthew 28:20b

Thought
He is always with us! As He has been with His people through the ages. As He promised to be wherever two or three gather in His name. He is with us. It remains for us to recognize His presence.

Prayer
Today, Lord, I consciously recognize Your presence. You are here with me. Hallelujah!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, August 16, 2016
Believing the "Unvisualizable"
Unbelief is so prevalent that I do not wish to say anything that might be interpreted as excusing it, but for all our being so slow to believe I still think that sometimes we blame ourselves for unbelief when our trouble is nothing more than inability to visualize. There are some truths set forth in the Scriptures that place a great strain upon our minds. Divine revelation assures us that certain things are true which imagination will simply not grasp. We believe them but we cannot see them in the mind's eye. It may be pointed out here that the ease with which we grasp a truth is sure to be in exact proportion to its externality as distinguished from its internality. Biblical history, for instance, because it is all objective and external, is no problem to belief. We are sure we believe whatever is written about Moses or David or Peter because we have no trouble "seeing" it taking place, while such truths as regeneration or the divine indwelling cannot be visualized and so are more difficult for us to handle. This we should recognize as psychological, not spiritual, and stop chiding ourselves for something we have not done.

Verse
Immediately the boy's father exclaimed, "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief.!"
Mark 9:24

Thought
Alexander Whyte considered imagination "the noblest intellectual attribute of the human mind." By it we may identify with Christ, with the heroes and failures of the biblical record. By it we may sympathize, even empathize with those for whom we pray. Bu

Prayer
I have difficulty, Lord, believing the inconceivable, the seemingly impossible. But You are the omniscient, omnipotent One. I believe You!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, August 17, 2016
The Object of True Faith
True faith is not the intellectual ability to visualize unseen things to the satisfaction of our imperfect minds; it is rather the moral power to trust Christ. To be contented and unafraid when going on a journey with his father the child need not be able to imagine events; he need but know the father. Our earthly lives are one shining web of golden mystery which we experience without understanding, how much more our life in the Spirit. Jesus Christ is our all in all. We need but trust Him and He will take care of the rest. Possibly it is because of my own innate dullness that I have found such deep satisfaction in these words of the prophet: "I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them" (Isa. 42:16). God has not failed me in this world; I can trust Him for the world to come.

Verse
We live by faith, not by sight.
2 Corinthians 5:7

Thought
As we learn to trust God during these days on earth we shall find it less difficult to trust Him concerning the life to come. It is the person of God we trust.

Prayer
Lord, I look back over the years and marvel at how You have been with me, provided for me, lifted me up when I have fallen. Because of who You are I can trust You for the future.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, August 18, 2016
Why Satan Hates the Child of God
As we move farther on and mount higher up in the Christian life we may expect to encounter greater difficulties in the way and meet increased hostility from the enemy of our souls. Though this is seldom presented to Christians as a fact of life it is a very solid fact indeed as every experienced Christian knows, and one we shall learn how to handle or stumble over to our own undoing. Satan hates the true Christian for several reasons. One is that God loves him, and whatever is loved by God is sure to be hated by the devil. Another is that the Christian, being a child of God, bears a family resemblance to the Father and to the household of faith. Satan's ancient jealousy has not abated nor his hatred for God diminished in the slightest. Whatever reminds him of God is without other reason the object of his malignant hate. A third reason is that a true Christian is a former slave who has escaped from the galley, and Satan cannot forgive him for this affront. A fourth reason is that a praying Christian is a constant threat to the stability of Satan's government. The Christian is a holy rebel loose in the world with access to the throne of God. Satan never knows from what direction the danger will come. Who knows when another Elijah will arise, or another Daniel? or a Luther or a Booth? Who knows when an Edwards or a Finney may go in and liberate a whole town or countryside by the preaching of the Word and prayer? Such a danger is too great to tolerate, so Satan gets to the new convert as early as possible to prevent his becoming too formidable a foe.

Verse
Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith.
1 Peter 5:8-9

Thought
In case you haven't noticed, you are not popular with Satan! Why? You are an object of God's love; part of God's family; an escaped prisoner of the evil one and a danger to him.

Prayer
In You I stand, Lord. In myself I am easy prey for Satan. In You I am strong. Praise Your name!"


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, August 19, 2016
Those Museum Pieces
Now I do not think that Satan much cares to destroy us Christians physically. The soldier dead in battle who died performing some deed of heroism is not a great loss to the army but may rather be an object of pride to his country. On the other hand the soldier who cannot or will not fight but runs away at the sound of the first enemy gun is a shame to his family and a disgrace to his nation. So a Christian who dies in the faith represents no irreparable loss to the forces of righteousness on earth and certainly no victory for the devil. But when whole regiments of professed believers are too timid to fight and too smug to be ashamed, surely it must bring an astringent smile to the face of the enemy; and it should bring a blush to the cheeks of the whole Church of Christ. The devil's master strategy for us Christians then is not to kill us physically (though there may be some special situations where physical death fits into his plan better), but to destroy our power to wage spiritual warfare. And how well he has succeeded. The average Christian these days is a harmless enough thing. God knows. He is a child wearing with considerable self-consciousness the harness of the warrior; he is a sick eaglet that can never mount up with wings; he is a spent pilgrim who has given up the journey and sits with a waxy smile trying to get what pleasure he can from sniffing the wilted flowers he has plucked by the way. Such as these have been reached. Satan has gotten to them early. By means of false teaching or inadequate teaching, or the huge discouragement that comes from the example of a decadent church, he has succeeded in weakening their resolution, neutralizing their convictions and taming their original urge to do exploits; now they are little more than statistics that contribute financially to the upkeep of the religious institution. And how many a pastor is content to act as a patient, smiling curator of a church full (or a quarter full) of such blessed spiritual museum pieces.

Verse
Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be men of courage; be strong.
1 Corinthians 16:13

Thought
We are warriors not spectators. We are on active duty not on furlough. Some of us seem to be singing: "backward Christian soldiers, fleeing from all war; drop the cross of Jesus, live just as before."

Prayer
Father, in myself I am careless, fearful and weak. I don't want to be a museum piece. Only in Christ can I be strong and stand firm. Only in Him.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, August 20, 2016
Victors or Victims
If Satan opposes the new convert he opposes still more bitterly the Christian who is pressing on toward a higher life in Christ. The Spirit-filled life is not, as many suppose, a life of peace and quiet pleasure. It is likely to be something quite the opposite. Viewed one way it is a pilgrimage through a robber-infested forest; viewed another, it is a grim warfare with the devil. Always there is struggle, and sometimes there is a pitched battle with our own nature where the lines are so confused that it is all but impossible to locate the enemy or to tell which impulse is of the Spirit and which of the flesh. There is complete victory for us if we will but take the way of the triumphant Christ, but that is not what we are considering now. My point here is that if we want to escape the struggle we have but to draw back and accept the currently accepted low-keyed Christian life as the normal one. That is all Satan wants. That will ground our power, stunt our growth and render us harmless to the kingdom of darkness. Compromise will take the pressure off. Satan will not bother a man who has quit fighting. But the cost of quitting will be a life of peaceful stagnation. We sons of eternity just cannot afford such a thing.

Verse
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes.
Ephesians 6:10-11

Thought
Unmistakably clear from scripture is the fact that as believers we are in warfare. God has provided armor, weaponry and strength for the battle (Eph. 6:10-18). It remains for us to use it! Otherwise we are in danger of becoming POWs.

Prayer
O Lord, I want to be strong in You. Thank You for the armor and weaponry with which You have equipped me. I go today in Your strength.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, August 21, 2016
Accepting Christ Means Rejecting All Else
The notion that we enter the Christian life by an act of acceptance is true, but that is not all the truth. There is much more to it than that. Christianity involves an acceptance and a repudiation, an affirmation and a denial. And this not only at the moment of conversion but continually thereafter day by day in all the battle of life till the great conflict is over and the Christian is home from the wars. To live a life wholly positive is, fortunately, impossible. Were any man able to do such a thing it could be only for a moment. Living positively would be like inhaling continuously without exhaling. Aside from its being impossible, it would be fatal. Exhalation is as necessary to life as inhalation. To accept Christ it is necessary that we reject whatever is contrary to Him. This is a fact often overlooked by eager evangelists bent on getting results. Like the salesman who talks up the good points of his product and conceals its disadvantages, the badly informed soulwinner stresses the positive side of things at the expense of the negative.

Verse
No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.
Luke 16:13

Thought
To accept Christ as Lord is to reject all else. We cannot accept His Saviorhood and deny His Lordship. It is Christ the Lord who is Savior.

Prayer
In turning to You there is inevitably that from which I turn. Show me, Lord, that baggage and stuff I am trying to drag along in following You. For Jesus' sake.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, August 22, 2016
Unseen Realities
Let us not be shocked by the suggestion that there are disadvantages to the life in Christ. There most certainly are. Abel was murdered. Joseph was sold into slavery, Daniel was thrown into the den of lions, Stephen was stoned to death, Paul was beheaded, and a noble army of martyrs was put to death by various painful methods down the long centuries. And where the hostility did not lead to such violence (and mostly it did not and does not) the sons of this world nevertheless managed to make it tough for the children of God in a thousand cruel ways. Everyone who has lived for Christ in a Christless world has suffered some losses and endured some pains that he could have avoided by the simple expedient of laying down his cross. However, the pains are short and the losses inconsequential compared with the glory that will follow, "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory" (2 Cor. 4:17). But while we are here among men with our sensitive hearts exposed to the chilly blasts of the unbelieving and uncomprehending world it is imperative that we take a realistic view of things and learn how to deal with disadvantages. And it is important that we tell the whole truth to those we are endeavoring to win.

Verse
For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:17-18

Thought
Our present troubles are light and temporary when compared to the glory eternal and as yet unseen. In the momentary in which we are now living let's fix our eyes on the unseen. It is the unseen that is far more real than that which is now seen.

Prayer
Lord, help me develop the discipline to look up from present pain and suffering which shall pass to the coming glory which is eternal.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, August 23, 2016
Daily Cross-carrying
Our Lord called men to follow Him but He never made the way look easy. Indeed one gets the distinct impression that He made it appear extremely hard. Sometimes He said things to disciples or prospective disciples that we today discreetly avoid repeating when we are trying to win men to Him. What present-day evangelist would have the courage to tell an inquirer, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it" (Matt. 16:24-25)? And do not we do some tall explaining when someone asks us what Jesus meant when He said, "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law" (Matt. 10:34-35)? That kind of rugged, sinewy Christianity is left for an occasional missionary or for some believer behind one of the various curtains in the world. The masses of professed Christians simply do not have the moral muscle to enable them to take a path so downright and final as this. When will Christians learn that to love righteousness it is necessary to hate sin? that to accept Christ it is necessary to reject self? that to follow the good way we must flee from evil? that a friend of the world is an enemy of God? that God allows no twilight zone between two altogethers where the fearful and the doubting may take refuge at once from hell to come and the rigors of present discipline?

Verse
If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
Luke 9:23

Thought
Ever wonder why we experience such difficulty in trying to follow Christ? Perhaps we have neglected to take up our cross daily--that cross which is the instrument of death to self.

Prayer
By Your Spirit, Lord, remind me to carry my cross today. I want to follow Christ.
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Tozer Devotional Empty Re: Tozer Devotional

Post  Admin Sun 14 Aug 2016, 10:29 pm

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, August 01, 2016
Spirit Illumination
Hard, serious thought and the illumination of the Holy Spirit. 6. Then we must think. Human thought has its limitations, but where there is no thinking there is not likely to be any large deposit of truth in the mind. Evangelicals at the moment appear to be divided into two camps--those who trust the human intellect to the point of sheer rationalism, and those who are shy of everything intellectual and are convinced that thinking is a waste of the Christian's time. Surely both are wrong. Self-conscious intellectualism is offensive to man and, I am convinced, to God also, but it is significant that every major revelation in the Scriptures was made to a man of superior intellect. It would be easy to marshal an imposing list of Biblical quotations exhorting us to think, but a more convincing argument is the whole drift of the Bible itself. The Scriptures simply take for granted that the saints of the Most High will be serious-minded, thoughtful persons. They never leave the impression that it is sinful to think. 7. But thinking apart from the inward illumination of the Holy Spirit is not only futile, it is likely to be dangerous as well. The human intellect is fallen and can no more find its way through the broad expanse of truth, half-truth and downright error than a ship can find its way over the ocean alone. God has given us the Holy Spirit to illuminate our minds. He is eyes and understanding to us. We dare not try to get on without Him.

Verse
Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law.
Psalm 119:18

Thought
Illumination of the inspired scriptures is a continuing ministry of the Holy Spirit. So, too, is His teaching, His convicting and His opening of our minds to understand God's truth and His will. It is for us to immerse ourselves in the Word and listen fo

Prayer
Open my mind, illumine me, Holy Spirit divine!


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, August 02, 2016
Spiritual Balance
It is a thin and rather smooth coin of common knowledge that the human race has lost its symmetry and tends to be lopsided in almost everything it is and does. Religious philosophers have recognized this asymmetry and have sought to correct it by preaching in one form or another the doctrine of the "golden mean." Confucius taught the "middle way"; Buddha would have his followers avoid both asceticism and bodily ease; Aristotle believed that the virtuous life is the one perfectly balanced between excess and defect. Christianity, being in full accord with all the facts of existence, takes into account this moral imbalance in human life, and the remedy it offers is not a new philosophy but a new life. The ideal to which the Christian aspires is not to walk in the perfect way but to be transformed by the renewing of his mind and conformed to the likeness of Christ. The regenerate man often has a more difficult time of it than the unregenerate, for he is not one man but two. He feels within him a power that tends toward holiness and God, while at the same time he is still a child of Adam's flesh and a son of the red clay. This moral dualism is to him a source of distress and struggle wholly unknown to the once-born man. Of course the classic critique upon this is Paul's testimony in the seventh chapter of his Roman epistle.

Verse
So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.
Romans 7:21

Thought
God has given the Holy Spirit to believers not just to be our moral compass but our spiritual power. Submitting to the Spirit's control in daily life enables us to overcome the evil nature and live consistent with the new.

Prayer
In Your strength, O Holy Spirit, I dare to battle foes within and foes without. Only in Your strength.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, August 03, 2016
Growing Up in Christ
The true Christian is a saint in embryo. The heavenly genes are in him and the Holy Spirit is working to bring him on into a spiritual development that accords with the nature of the heavenly Father from whom he received the deposit of divine life. Yet he is here in this mortal body subject to weakness and temptation, and his warfare with the flesh sometimes leads him to do extreme things. "For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would" (Gal. 5:17). The work of the Spirit in the human heart is not an unconscious or automatic thing. Human will and intelligence must yield to and cooperate with the benign intentions of God. I think it is here that many of us go astray. Either we try to make ourselves holy and fail miserably, as we certainly must; or we seek to achieve a state of spiritual passivity and wait for God to perfect our natures in holiness as one might sit down and wait for a robin egg to hatch or a rose to burst into bloom. So we work feverishly to do the impossible or we do not work at all; and there lies the asymmetry about which I write. The New Testament knows nothing of the working of the Spirit in us apart from our own moral responses. Watchfulness, prayer, self-discipline and intelligent acquiescence in the purposes of God are indispensable to any real progress in holiness.

Verse
So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.
Galatians 5:16

Thought
Growing up in Christ is not automatic. God provides full enablement. Our part is to consciously appropriate that enablement--living day by day by the Spirit.

Prayer
Today, Lord, I want to live for You; to walk by Your Spirit; to do Your will. I freely confess that only by Your enablement can I so live.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, August 05, 2016
Living in Joy and Peace
There are areas in our lives where in our effort to be right we may go wrong, so wrong as to lead to spiritual deformity. To be specific let me name a few: 4. When we seek to be serious and become somber. The saints have always been serious, but gloominess is a defect of character and should never be equated with godliness. Religious melancholy may indicate the presence of unbelief or sin and if long continued may lead to serious mental disturbance. Joy is a great therapeutic for the mind. "Rejoice in the Lord alway" (Phil. 4:4). 5. When we mean to be conscientious and become overscrupulous. If the devil cannot succeed in destroying the conscience he will settle for making it sick. I know Christians who live in a state of constant distress, fearing that they may displease God. Their world of permitted acts becomes narrower year by year till at last they fear to engage in the common pursuits of life. They believe this self-torture to be a proof of godliness, but how wrong they are. These are but a few examples of serious imbalance in the Christian life. I trust the remedy has been suggested as we went along.

Verse
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
Galatians 5:22

Thought
There is a freedom of spirit we may experience as believers. Joy and peace are part of the fruit of the Spirit. Gloom and inner turmoil are not!

Prayer
Lord, may Your joy and peace spill out of me and splash those around me. For Jesus' sake.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, August 06, 2016
Spiritual Truth Is Spiritually Discerned
Surely God has that to say to the pure in heart which He cannot say to the man of sinful life. But what He has to say is not theological, it is spiritual; and right there lies the weight of my argument. Spiritual truths cannot be received in the ordinary way of nature. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. 2:14). So wrote the apostle Paul to the believers at Corinth. Our Lord referred to this kind of Spirit-enlightened knowledge many times. To Him it was the fruit of a divine illumination, not contrary to but altogether beyond mere intellectual light. The fourth Gospel is full of this idea; indeed the idea is so important to the understanding of John's Gospel that anyone who denies it might as well give up trying to grasp our Lord's teachings as given by the apostle John. And the same idea is found in John's first epistle, making that epistle extremely difficult to understand but also making it one of the most beautiful and rewarding of all the epistles of the New Testament when its teachings are spiritually discerned. The necessity for spiritual illumination before we can grasp spiritual truths is taught throughout the entire New Testament and is altogether in accord with the teachings of the Psalms, the Proverbs and the Prophets. The Old Testament Apocrypha agrees with the Scriptures here, and while the Apocryphal books are not to be received as divinely inspired, they are useful as showing how the best minds of ancient Israel thought about this matter of divine truth and how it is received into the human heart.

Verse
Whoever does not have the Spirit cannot receive the gifts that come from God's Spirit. Such a person really does not understand them; they are nonsense to him, because their value can be judged only on a spiritual basis (TEV).
1 Corinthians 2:14

Thought
Those outside of Christ are unable to grasp spiritual truth. Only by means of the Holy Spirit is spiritual truth discerned. If we better understood this we would give far greater priority to prayer than to clever presentations.

Prayer
Father, often I am satisfied with an intellectual grasp of Your Word when it is the spiritual understanding of it that matters. And You have given Your Spirit to enlighten me.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, August 07, 2016
The Great Illuminator
The New Testament draws a sharp line between the natural mind and the mind that has been touched by divine fire. When Peter made his good confession, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matt. 16:16), our Lord replied, "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven" (16:17). And Paul expresses much the same thing when he says, "No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost" (1 Cor. 12:3). The sum of what I am saying is that there is an illumination, divinely bestowed, without which theological truth is information and nothing more. While this illumination is never given apart from theology, it is entirely possible to have theology without the illumination. This results in what has been called "dead orthodoxy," and while there may be some who deny that it is possible to be both orthodox and dead at the same time I am afraid experience proves that it is. Revivals, as they have appeared at various times among the churches of the past, have been essentially a quickening of the spiritual life of persons already orthodox. The revivalist, as long as he exercised his ministry as a revivalist, did not try to teach doctrine. His one object was to bring about a quickening of the churches which while orthodox in creed were devoid of spiritual life. When he went beyond this he was something else than a revivalist. Revival can come only to those who know truth. When the inner meaning of familiar doctrines suddenly flashes in upon the heart of a Christian the revival for him has already begun. It may go on to be much more than this but it can never be less.

Verse
Then he [Jesus] opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.
Luke 24:45

Thought
As Jesus opened the minds of His disciples in order that they might understand the scriptures so the Holy Spirit does today, illuminating spiritual truth. We don't have to stumble in darkness!

Prayer
You, Holy Spirit, are the Divine Illuminator. Open my heart and mind to see and then obey.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, August 08, 2016
Unused Truth
Lack of balance in the Christian life is often the direct consequence of overemphasis on certain favorite texts, with a corresponding underemphasis on other related ones. For it is not denial only that makes a truth void; failure to emphasize it will in the long run be equally damaging. And this puts us in the odd position of holding a truth theoretically while we make it of no effect by neglecting it in practice. Unused truth becomes as useless as an unused muscle. Sometimes our dogmatic insistence upon "It is written" and our refusal to hear "Again it is written" makes heretics of us, our heresy being the noncreedal variety which does not rouse the opposition of the theologians. One example of this is the teaching that crops up now and again having to do with confession of sin. It goes like this: Christ died for our sins, not only for all we have committed but for all we may yet commit for the remainder of our lives. When we accept Christ we receive the benefit of everything He did for us in His dying and rising again. In Christ all our current sins are forgiven beforehand. It is therefore unnecessary for us to confess our sins. In Christ they are already forgiven. Now, this is completely wrong, and it is all the more wrong because it is half right. It is true that Christ died for all our sins, but it is not true that because Christ died for all our sins we need not confess that we have sinned when we have. This conclusion does not follow from that premise.

Verse
Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my inquity. I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the LORD"--and you forgave the guilt of my sin.
Psalm 32:5

Thought
Confessing sin is openly and explicitly acknowledging it before God. No denying or redefining or otherwise trying to hide sin. Confession expresses repentance. When we confess, because of Christ's sin-debt payment on our behalf, God forgives!

Prayer
Oh thank You, Lord, for forgiving and cleansing me as I confess my sin to You. Now, strengthen me to continue to turn from it.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, August 09, 2016
Prevailing Prayer
It is written that Christ died for our sins, and again it is written that "if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins" (1 John 1:9). These two texts are written of the same company of persons, namely Christians. We dare not compel the first text to invalidate the second. Both are true and one completes the other. The meaning of the two is that since Christ died for our sins if we confess our sins they will be forgiven. To teach otherwise is to attempt to fly on one wing. I have met some who claim that it is wrong to pray for the same thing twice, the reason being that if we truly believe when we pray we have the answer the first time; any second prayer betrays the unbelief of the first; ergo, let there be no second prayer. There are three things wrong with this teaching. One is that it ignores a large body of Scripture; the second is that it rarely works in practice, even for the saintliest soul; and the third is that, if persisted in, it robs the praying man of two of his mightiest weapons in his warfare with the flesh and the devil, viz., intercession and petition. For let it be said without qualification that the effective intercessor is never a one-prayer man, neither does the successful petitioner win his mighty victories in his first attempt. Had David subscribed to the one-prayer creed he could have reduced his psalms to about one-third their present length. Elijah would not have prayed seven times for rain (and incidentally, there would have been no rain, either), our Lord would not have prayed the third time saying the same words, nor would Paul have "besought the Lord thrice" (2 Cor. 12:8) for the removal of his thorn. In fact, if this teaching were true, much wonderful Biblical narrative would have to be rewritten, for the Bible has much to say about continued and persistent prayer.

Verse
Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.
Luke 18:1

Thought
Wrote George Mueller: "It is not enough to begin to pray, nor to pray aright; nor is it enough to continue for a time to pray; but we must patiently, believingly, continue in prayer until we obtain an answer."

Prayer
Teach me to pray, Lord. Teach me to faithfully keep on prevailingly praying in faith. Deliver me from seeking quick, easy answers.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, August 10, 2016
Using Both Wings
Truth is like a bird; it cannot fly on one wing. Yet we are forever trying to take off with one wing flapping furiously and the other tucked neatly out of sight. Many of the doctrinal divisions among the churches are the result of a blind and stubborn insistence that truth has but one wing. Each side holds tenaciously to one text, refusing grimly to acknowledge the validity of the other. This error is an evil among churches, but it is a real tragedy when it gets into the hearts of individual Christians and begins to affect their devotional lives. One thing hidden in such teachings as have been mentioned above is unconscious spiritual pride. The Christian who refuses to confess sin on the ground that it is already forgiven is setting himself above prophet and psalmist and all the saints who have left anything on record about themselves from Paul to the present time. These did not hide their sins behind a syllogism, but eagerly and fully confessed them. Perhaps that is why they were such great souls and those who claim to have found a better way are so small. And one has but to note the smug smile of superiority on the face of the one-prayer Christian to sense that there is a lot of pride behind the smile. While other Christians wrestle with God in an agony of intercession they sit back in humble pride waiting it out. They do not pray because they have already prayed. The devil has no fear of such Christians. He has already won over them, and his technique has been false logic. Let's use both wings. We'll get further that way.

Verse
Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.
1 Timothy 4:16

Thought
Emphasis on certain aspects of truth to the neglect of others causes unbalanced living and teaching. We can see it through the history of the Church and even today. Are we using both wings?

Prayer
Father, give me breadth as well as depth of understanding of Your truth. Particularly do I need this in relating to other members of Your family who come from traditions other than mine.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, August 11, 2016
Claiming All That Is Ours in Christ
Those spiritual blessings in heavenly places which are ours in Christ may be divided into three classes: The first is those which come to us immediately upon our believing unto salvation, such as forgiveness, justification, regeneration, sonship to God and baptism into the Body of Christ. In Christ we possess these even before we know that they are ours, such knowledge coming to us later through the study of the Holy Scriptures. The second class is those riches which are ours by inheritance but which we cannot enjoy in actuality until our Lord returns. These include ultimate mental and moral perfection, the glorification of our bodies, the completion of the restoration of the divine image in our redeemed personalities and the admission into the very presence of God to experience forever the Beatific Vision. These treasures are as surely ours as if we possessed them now, but it would be useless for us to pray for them while we journey here below. God has made it very clear that they are reserved for the time of the manifestation of the sons of God (Rom. 8:18-25). The third class of blessing consists of spiritual treasures which are ours by blood atonement but which will not come to us unless we make a determined effort to possess them. These are deliverance from the sins of the flesh, victory over self, the constant flow of the Holy Spirit through our personalities, fruitfulness in Christian service, awareness of the presence of God, growth in grace, an increasing consciousness of union with God and an unbroken spirit of worship. These do not come to us automatically nor must we wait to claim them at the day of Christ's coming. They are to us what the Promised Land was to Israel, to be entered into as our faith and courage mount.

Verse
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blesising in Christ.
Ephesians 1:3

Thought
What immense spiritual wealth is ours in Christ! Some to experience today and some tomorrow. Some which is ours because of spiritual birth as a child of God. Some to be experienced only by deliberate faith appropriation.

Prayer
Forgive me, Father, for living in spiritual poverty when You have provided such blessings. I want to experience them all that I may be what You desire me to be.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, August 12, 2016
Claiming All That Is Ours in Christ
The third class of blessing consists of spiritual treasures which are ours by blood atonement but which will not come to us unless we make a determined effort to possess them. To make things clearer let me set forth four propositions touching this heritage of joy which God has set before us: 1. You will get nothing unless you go after it. God will not force anything on you. As Joshua fought his way into possession of the Promised Land you also must fight on toward perfection, meeting and defeating whatever enemies would stand in the way to challenge your right of possession. The land will not come to you; you must go to the land and on up into it by the way of self-renunciation and detachment from the world. "Those who travel on this road," says John of the Cross, "will meet many occasions of joys and sufferings, hopes and sorrows, some of which are the result of the spirit of perfection, others of imperfection." 2. You may have as much as you insist upon having. "Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you" (Josh. 1:3) said God to Joshua, and this principle runs throughout the entire Bible. The history of Israel is dotted with stories of those who pressed boldly on to claim their possessions; such, for instance, as Caleb who, after the conquest of Canaan, went to Joshua, demanded the mountain Moses had promised him, and got it. Again, when the daughters of Zelophehad stood before Moses and pleaded, "Give unto us . . . a possession among the brethren of our father" (Num. 27:4) their request was granted. Those women received their inheritance, not by the indulgence of Moses but by the command of God whose promise was involved. When our requests are such as honor God we may ask as largely as we will. The more daring the request the more glory accrues to God when the answer comes.

Verse
Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
Matthew 7:7-8

Thought
We may be asking but are we seeking and knocking? God delights to give to the one who will receive. Ask, seek and knock. There is an intensity, a deep desire to see the door open; to claim all that is ours in Christ.

Prayer
Father, when I ask for bread You will not give me a stone. You delight in opening to me the treasures in Christ when I ask, seek and knock. May my spiritual knuckles bleed!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, August 13, 2016
Wants or Wishes
The third class of blessing consists of spiritual treasures which are ours by blood atonement but which will not come to us unless we make a determined effort to possess them. To make things clearer let me set forth four propositions touching this heritage of joy which God has set before us; 3. You will have as little as you are satisfied with. God giveth to all men liberally, but it would be absurd to think that God's liberality will make a man more godly than he wants to be. The man, for instance, who is satisfied to live a defeated life will never be forced to take victory. The man who is content to follow Christ afar off will never know the radiant wonder of His nearness. The man who is willing to settle for a joyless, barren life will never experience the joy of the Holy Spirit or the deep satisfaction of fruitful living. It is disheartening to those who care, and surely a great grief to the Spirit, to see how many Christians are content to settle for less than the best. Personally I have for years carried a burden of sorrow as I have moved among evangelical Christians who somewhere in their past have managed to strike a base compromise with their heart's holier longings and have settled down to a lukewarm, mediocre kind of Christianity utterly unworthy of themselves and of the Lord they claim to serve. And such are found everywhere. 4. You now have as much as you really want. Every man is as close to God as he wants to be; he is as holy and as full of the Spirit as he wills to be. Our Lord said, "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled" (Matt. 5:6). If there were but one man anywhere on earth who hungered and was not filled the word of Christ would fall to the ground. Yet we must distinguish wanting from wishing. By "want" I mean wholehearted desire. Certainly there are many who wish they were holy or victorious or joyful but are not willing to meet God's conditions to obtain. That God has placed before His redeemed children a vast world of spiritual treasures and that they refuse or neglect to claim it may easily turn out to be the second greatest tragedy in the history of the moral creation, the first and greatest being the fall of man.

Verse
For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light.
Ephesians 5:8

Thought
We are to live as children of light because we are light in the Lord. The "living" is our part. the "enabling" is His. Let's not be satisfied with little when He provides so much.

Prayer
O Lord, give me a consuming discontent with spiritual poverty! I am a child of the King of kings and the Lord of lords and so I may live.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, August 14, 2016
Beholding His Glory
It is true that a select company of Christians through the centuries have testified that they were rapt into a state where for varying lengths of time they were able to experience the Beatific Vision at least to some degree while still here in their natural bodies, seeing the everblessed One not with their physical eyes but with the eye of the Spirit. Being myself extremely cautious and slow to accept the unusual, I have tended to back away from this burning bush; but the holy characters of some of those who made such claims, their salty good sense and their sound basic theology along with their devoted service to mankind, have certainly placed them above the faintest suspicion of being fanatics or impostors. I for one must accept their testimony as valid. I suppose the vast majority of us must wait for the great day of the Lord's coming to realize the full wonder of the vision of God Most High. In the meantime, we are, I believe, missing a great measure of radiant glory that is ours by blood-covenant and available to us in this present world if we would but believe it and press on in the way of holiness. In seeking to know God better we must keep firmly in mind that we need not try to persuade God. He is already persuaded in our favor, not by our prayers but by the generous goodness of His own heart. "It is God's nature to give Himself to every virtuous soul," says Meister Eckhart. "Know then that God is bound to act, to pour Himself out into thee as soon as ever He shall find thee ready." As nature abhors a vacuum, so the Holy Spirit rushes in to fill the nature that has become empty by separating itself from the world and sin. This is not an unnatural act and need not be an unusual one, for it is in perfect accord with the nature of God. He must act as He does because He is God.

Verse
And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
2 Corinthians 3:18

Thought
"Behold" is probably a perferable translation to that of "reflect." This is the only occurrence of the verb in the New Testament. With unveiled faces we may see as in a mirror the Lord's glory. As we do we are being transformed into His likeness. We may

Prayer
I ask for things and, if I remember, thank You for them. I read Your Word. But, O Lord, to behold You, to spend time beholding Your glory. It is a daily discipline missing in my life. Help me to change!
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Tozer Devotional Empty Re: Tozer Devotional

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TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, July 07, 2016
Defining Sin
For an act to be sinful the quality of voluntariness must also be present. Sin is the voluntary commission of an act known to be contrary to the will of God. Where there is no moral knowledge or where there is no voluntary choice, the act is not sinful; it cannot be, for sin is the transgression of the law and transgression must be voluntary. Lucifer became Satan when he made his fateful choice: "I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High" (Isaiah 14:14). Clearly here was a choice made against light. Both knowledge and will were present in the act. Conversely, Christ revealed His holiness when He cried in His agony, "Not my will, but thine, be done" (Luke 22:42). Here was a deliberate choice made with the full knowledge of the consequences. Here two wills were in temporary conflict, the lower will of the Man who was God and the higher will of the God who was Man, and the higher will prevailed. Here also was seen in glaring contrast the enormous difference between Christ and Satan; and that difference divides saint from sinner and heaven from hell. But someone may ask, "When we pray 'Not my will, but Thine be done,' are we not voiding our will and refusing to exercise the very power of choice which is part of the image of God in us?" The answer to that question is a flat No, but the whole thing deserves further explanation.

Verse
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.
Ephesians 6:10

Thought
Voluntary commissions and moral knowledge are necessary for "sinful' acts. We are subject to force and presssure from our sinful nature and the evil one. But the Holy Spirit is ours, too, and in His power we may choose God's will.

Prayer
You know, Father, that I am weak-willed in many areas of life. Yet in all my weakness and failure I reach out to Your strength and mighty power.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, July 08, 2016
Choosing God's Will
No act that is done voluntarily is an abrogation of the freedom of will. If a man chooses the will of God he is not denying but exercising his right of choice. What he is doing is admitting that he is not good enough to desire the highest choice nor is he wise enough to make it, and he is for that reason asking Another who is both wise and good to make his choice for him. And for fallen man this is the ultimate use he should make of his freedom of will. Tennyson saw this and wrote of Christ, Thou seemest human and divine, The highest, holiest manhood, Thou; Our wills are ours, we know not how; Our wills are ours, to make them Thine. There is a lot of sound doctrine in these words--"Our wills are ours, to make them Thine." The secret of saintliness is not the destruction of the will but the submergence of it in the will of God. The true saint is one who acknowledges that he possesses from God the gift of freedom. He knows that he will never be cudgled into obedience nor wheedled like a petulant child into doing the will of God; he knows that these methods are unworthy both of God and of his own soul. He knows he is free to make any choice he will, and with that knowledge he chooses forever the blessed will of God.

Verse
I desire to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.
Psalm 40:8

Thought
Choosing God's will is a personal choice of each of us. Choosing His will as He has already and continues to show it to us is a pattern of daily living. Dramatic life change results!

Prayer
My choices have often been wrong ones, Lord. I freely bow to Your choices for me. Show them to me by Your Spirit.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, July 09, 2016
Priceless Exchange
A great preacher whom I heard a few years ago said that the word "renew" in Isaiah 40:31 really meant "exchange"; so the text should read, "They that wait upon the Lord shall exchange their strength." Oddly enough I do not now remember how he developed his sermon or just how he applied the text, but I have been thinking lately that the man had hit upon a very important idea; namely, that a large part of Christian experience consists of exchanging something worse for something better, a blessed and delightful bargain indeed. At the foundation of the Christian life lies vicarious atonement, which in essence is a transfer of guilt from the sinner to the Saviour. I well know how vigorously this idea is attacked by non-Christians, but I also know that the wise of this world in their pride often miss the treasures which the simple-hearted find on their knees; and I also remember the words of the apostle; "He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him" (2 Cor. 5:21). This is too plain to miss for anyone who is not willfully blind: Christ by His death on the cross made it possible for the sinner to exchange his sin for Christ's righteousness. It's that simple. No one is compelled to accept it, but at least that is what it means. And that is only the beginning. Almost everything thereafter is an exchange of the worse for the better. Next after the exchange of sin for righteousness is that of wrath for acceptance. Today the wrath of God abides upon a sinning and impenitent man; tomorrow God's smile rests upon him. He is the same man, but not quite, for he is now a new man in Christ Jesus. By penitence and faith he has exchanged the place of condemnation for the Father's house. He was rejected in himself but is now accepted in the Beloved, and this not by human means but by an act of divine grace.

Verse
But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles.
Isaiah 40:31

Thought
Those who hope or wait on the LORD renew or exchange their strength for that which is from God. As a result, they soar on wings as eagles. What a priceless exchange!

Prayer
Lord, my feeble weakness I gladly exchange for Your strength; my sin for Christ's righteousness; my condemnation for Your welcome.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, July 10, 2016
Personally Weak but Strong in Him
After the exchange of sin for righteousness is that of wrath for acceptance. Then comes the exchange of death for life. Christ died for dead men that they might rise to be living men. Paul's happy if somewhat involved testimony makes this clear: "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." (Gal. 2:20) . This is mysterious but not incredible. It is one more example of how the ways of God and the ways of man diverge. Man is a born cobbler. When he wants a thing to be better he goes to work to improve it. He improves cattle by careful breeding; cars and planes by streamlining; health by diet, vitamins. and surgery; plants by grafting; people by education. But God will have none of this cobbling. He makes a man better by making him a new man. He imparts a higher order of life and sets to work to destroy the old. Then as suggested in the Isaiah text, the Christian exchanges weakness for strength. I suppose it is not improper to say that God makes His people strong, but we must understand this to mean that they become strong in exact proportion to their weakness, the weakness being their own and the strength God's. "When I am weak, then am I strong" (2 Corinthians 12:10), is the way Paul said it, and in so saying set a pattern for every Christian.

Verse
For to be sure, he was crucified in weakness, yet he lives by God's power. Likewise, we are weak in him, yet by God's power we will live with him to serve you. Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize th
2 Corinthians 13:4-5

Thought
Christ in us! He is our strength, our enablement. We are hopelessly weak in ourselves but powerfully strong in Him!

Prayer
You, O Christ, are in me. How can it be? You are my only hope of glory. You are my strength. Hallelujah! That Incredible Christian

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, July 11, 2016
Live by the Spirit
Actually the purest saint at the moment of his greatest strength is as weak as he was before his conversion. What has happened is that he has switched from his little human battery to the infinite power of God. He has quite literally exchanged weakness for strength, but the strength is not his; it flows into him from God as long as he abides in Christ. One of the heaviest problems in the Christian life is that of sanctification: how to become as pure as we know we ought to be and must be if we are to enjoy intimate communion with a holy God. The classic expression of this problem and its solution is found in Paul's epistle to the Romans, chapters seven and eight. The cry, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (7:24) receives the triumphant answer, "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death" (8:2). No one who has given attention to the facts will deny that it is altogether possible for a man to attain to a high degree of external morality if he sets his heart to it. Marcus Aurelius, the pagan emperor, for instance, lived a life of such exalted morality as to make most of us Christians ashamed, as did also the lowly slave Epictetus; but holiness was something of which they were totally ignorant. And it is holiness that the Christian heart yearns for above all else, and holiness the human heart can never capture by itself.

Verse
So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.
Galatians 5:16

Thought
We can live today by the Spirit. In ourselves we are hopelessly weak failures. In Christ we are strong because of His strength. Let's live today by the Spirit!

Prayer
You know my weakness, Lord, far better than I do. But You give me Your strength. Yours! I breathe it in today as I live this day for You. That Incredible Christian

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, July 12, 2016
We Take, He Undertakes
A. B. Simpson knew by experience the unavailing struggle to be holy, and he knew also the Bible way to holiness. In a little hymn composed to be spoken at the conclusion of one of his sermons he states it this way: I take Him as my holiness, My spirit's spotless, heavenly dress, I take the Lord my righteousness- I take, He undertakes. We have but to abandon the effort to be holy and trust God to do the work within us. He will surely undertake. There are many other happy exchanges we Christians may make if we will, among them being our ignorance for His knowledge, our folly for His wisdom, our demerit for His merit, our sad mortality for His blessed immortality and faith for sight at last.

Verse
I can do everything through him who gives me strength.
Philippians 4:13

Thought
As we give ourselves to Christ, He undertakes for us. We cannot make ourselves holy but He can and will as we rest in Him. The exchanged life is ours by trustful faith in Him.

Prayer
I can do everything You want me to do but only through You, Lord Jesus, who gives me strength.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, July 13, 2016
"Being" Determines "Doing"
To teach that the filling with the Holy Spirit is given to the Christian to provide "power for service" is to teach truth, but not the whole truth. Power for service is but one effect of the experience, and I do not hesitate to say that it is the least of several effects. It is least for the very reason that it touches service, presumably service to mankind; and contrary to the popular belief, "to serve this present age" is not the Christian's first duty nor the chief end of man. As I have stated elsewhere, the two great verbs that dominate the life of man are be and do. What a man is comes first in the sight of God. What he does is determined by what he is, so is is of first importance always. The modern notion that we are "saved to serve," while true, is true only in a wider context, and as understood by busy Christians today it is not true at all. Redemption became necessary not because of what men were doing only, but because of what they were. Not human conduct alone had gone wrong but human nature as well; apart from the moral defect in human nature no evil conduct would have occurred. Fallen men acted in accord with what they were. Their hearts dictated their deeds. "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth" (Gen. 6:54). That much any moral being could have seen. But God saw more; He saw the cause of man's wicked ways, and that "every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (6:5). The stream of human conduct flows out of a fountain polluted by evil thoughts and imaginations. To purge the stream it was necessary to purify the fountain; and to reform human conduct it is necessary to regenerate human nature. The fundamental be must be sanctified if we would have a righteous do, for being and doing are related as cause and effect, as father and son.

Verse
May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through.
1 Thessalonians 5:23

Thought
We emphasize "doing"--getting things done and so making a difference in this world. But in God's order "being" precedes "doing." "Being" effects how and why we do as well as what we do.

Prayer
Sometimes I try to camouflage what I am by what I do. But Father, You know the real me. And it is the me who must be changed. Purify my heart, O God!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, July 14, 2016
Worshipers then Workers
The primary work of the Holy Spirit is to restore the lost soul to intimate fellowship with God through the washing of regeneration. To accomplish this He first reveals Christ to the penitent heart (1 Cor. 12:3). He then goes on to illumine the newborn soul with brighter rays from the face of Christ (John 14:26; 16:13-15) and leads the willing heart into depths and heights of divine knowledge and communion. Remember, we know Christ only as the Spirit enables us and we have only as much of Him as the Holy Spirit imparts. God wants worshipers before workers; indeed the only acceptable workers are those who have learned the lost art of worship. It is inconceivable that a sovereign and holy God should be so hard up for workers that He would press into service anyone who had been empowered regardless of his moral qualifications. The very stones would praise Him if the need arose and a thousand legions of angels would leap to do His will. Gifts and power for service the Spirit surely desires to impart; but holiness and spiritual worship come first.

Verse
He [the Holy Spirit] will bring glory to me by taking what is mine and making it known to you.
John 16:14

Thought
Worshipful workers, that's what God wants us to be. It is by worshiping in spirit and in truth that we become worshipful workers. For most of us it is easier to work than worship. Out of a worshiping heart we can do all things to the glory of God.

Prayer
O Holy Spirit, show me Christ and the things of Christ. Help me to worshipfully gaze on Him and then worshipfully serve Him.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, July 15, 2016
Delighted Wonder!
God always acts like Himself, wherever He may be and whatever He may be doing; in Him there is neither variableness nor shadow of turning. Yet His infinitude places Him so far above our knowing that a lifetime spent in cultivating the knowledge of Him leaves as much yet to learn as if we had never begun. God's limitless knowledge and perfect wisdom enable Him to work rationally beyond the bounds of our rational knowing. For this reason we cannot predict God's actions as we can predict the movements of the heavenly bodies, so He constantly astonishes us as He moves in freedom through His universe. So imperfectly do we know Him that it may be said that one invariable concomitant of a true encounter with God is delighted wonder. No matter how high our expectation may be, when God finally moves into the field of our spiritual awareness we are sure to be astonished by His power to be more wonderful than we anticipate, and more blessed and marvelous than we had imagined He could be. Yet in a measure His actions may be predicted, for, as I have said, He always acts like Himself. Since we know, for instance, that God is love, we may be perfectly sure that love will be present in His every act, whether it be the salvation of a penitent sinner or the destruction of an impenitent world. Similarly we can know that He will always be just, faithful, merciful and true.

Verse
The earth is filled with your love, O LORD.
Psalm 119:64a

Thought
It is for us to discover the delighted wonder of God. As we do, we find as did Frederick Faber: ". . . the love of God is broader than the measures of man's mind; and the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind."

Prayer
Your wonder, O God, is beyond my ability to take in. Your infinite love and kindness is You even when I cannot understand their expression.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, July 16, 2016
As the Son so the Father
It is a rare mind, I suppose, that is much concerned with the conduct of God in those distant realms that lie beyond human experience. But almost everyone has wondered how God would act if He were in our place. And we may have had moments when we felt that God could not possibly understand how hard it is for us to live right in such an evil world as this. And we may have wondered how He would act and what He would do if He were to live among us for a while. To wonder thus may be natural but it is wholly needless. We know how God would act if He were in our place--He has been in our place. It is the mystery of godliness that God was manifest in human flesh. They called His name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is God with us. When Jesus walked on earth He was a man acting like God; but equally wonderful is it that He was also God acting like Himself in man and in a man. We know how God acts in heaven because we saw Him act on earth. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father?" (John 14:9). As glorious as this is, it does not end there. God is still walking in men, and wherever He walks He acts like Himself. This is not poetry but plain, hard fact capable of being tested in the laboratory of life.

Verse
Jesus answered: "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you for such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father."
John 14:9

Thought
Follow Jesus through the four Gospels. See Him as He interacts with people in daily life, all kinds of people. Listen to His words. Consider His actions. In getting to know Jesus Christ we come to know the Father.

Prayer
You walk among us, Lord. You express Yourself through Your people and by Your Spirit. You are here in my highest and lowest moments. Thank You!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, July 17, 2016
Houses of God
That Christ actually inhabits the nature of the regenerate believer is assumed, implied and overtly stated in the Holy Scriptures. All the Persons of the Godhead are said to enter the nature of the one that engages New Testament truth in faith and obedience. "If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him" (John 14:23). And the doctrine of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is too well known to need support here; everyone that is taught even slightly in the Word of God understands this. Whatever God is, the Man Christ Jesus is also. It has been the firm belief of the Church from the days of the apostles that God is not only manifest in Christ but that He is manifest as Christ. In the days of the Arian controversy the church fathers were driven to put the teaching of the New Testament on this subject into a highly condensed "rule" or creed which might be accepted as final by all believers. This they did in the following words: The right faith is that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man. God of the substance of His Father, begotten before all ages: Man of the substance of His mother, born in the world. Perfect God and perfect Man. . . . As the reasonable soul and flesh is one man: so God and man is one Christ.

Verse
Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him."
John 14:23

Thought
God stoops to make His home with us! In us! He is closer than friends, family and loved ones around us. We are His temple.

Prayer
How can it be, O Lord, that You live in me? How can it be? I cannot comprehend it but I open to You all of me.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, July 18, 2016
Tension Between the Old Nature and the New
Christ in a believer's heart will act the same as He acted in Galilee and Judea. His disposition is the same now as then. He was holy, righteous, compassionate, meek and humble then, and He has not changed. He is the same wherever He is found, whether it be at the right hand of God or in the nature of a true disciple. He was friendly, loving, prayerful, kindly, worshipful, self-sacrificing while walking among men; is it not reasonable to expect Him to be the same when walking in men? Why then do true Christians sometimes act in an un-Christlike manner? Some would assume that when a professed Christian fails to show forth the moral beauty of Christ in his life it is a proof that he has been deceived and is actually not a real Christian at all. But the explanation is not so simple as that. The truth is that while Christ dwells in the believer's new nature, He has strong competition from the believer's old nature. The warfare between the old and the new goes on continually in most believers. This is accepted as inevitable, but the New Testament does not so teach. A prayerful study of Romans 6 to 8 points the way to victory. If Christ is allowed complete sway He will live in us as He lived in Galilee.

Verse
Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.
Galatians 5:24-25

Thought
Christ in us does not mean that we no longer are. Our old nature is not ripped out. Christ will change us and live out through us as we daily live under His control.

Prayer
Thank You, Lord, for Your patience with me. I sometimes stumble and miserably fail. But You convict me and forgive me. Live through me!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, July 19, 2016
Divinely Occupied
The doctrine of the divine indwelling is one of the most important in the New Testament, and its meaning for the individual Christian is precious beyond all description. To neglect it is to suffer serious loss. The apostle Paul prayed for the Ephesian Christians that Christ might dwell in their hearts by faith. Surely it takes faith of a more than average vitality to grasp the full implications of this great truth. Two facts join to make the doctrine difficult to accept: the supreme greatness of God and the utter sinfulness of man. Those who think poorly of God and well of themselves may chatter idly of "the deity within," but the man who trembles before the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy, the man who knows the depth of his own sin, will detect a moral incongruity in the teaching that One so holy should dwell in the heart of one so vile. But however incongruous it may appear to be, in the Holy Scriptures it is taught so fully that it cannot be overlooked and so plainly that it can hardly be misunderstood. "If a man love me," said our Lord Jesus Christ, "he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him" (John 14:23). That this abiding is within the man is shown by these words: "At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you" (14: 20). Christ said of the Holy Spirit: "He ... shall be in you" (14: 17), and in His great prayer in John 17 our Lord twice used the words "I in them."

Verse
I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
Ephesians 3:16-17a

Thought
God in us. God in us! But He doesn't take over as would be His right as God. It is for us to turn our heart-house over to Him. As we do He changes us.

Prayer
Thank You, Lord, You don't remodel me. You make me new!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, July 20, 2016
God Lives in People
The truth of the divine indwelling is developed more fully in the epistles of Paul. "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? . . . For the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are" (1 Cor. 3:16-17). And again (1 Cor. 6:19), "What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?" Without question, the teaching of the New Testament is that the very God Himself inhabits the nature of His true children. How this can be I do not know, but neither do I know how my soul inhabits my body. Paul called this wonder of the indwelling God a rich mystery: "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27). And if the doctrine involved a contradiction or even an impossibility we must still believe what the mouth of the Lord has spoken. "Yea, let God be true, but every man a liar" (Rom. 3:4). The spiritual riches lying buried in this truth are so vast that they are worth any care or effort we may give to their recovery. Yet we are not concerned primarily with the theology or metaphysics embodied here. We want to know the reality of it. What does the truth mean to us in practical outworking? What does it have for a serious-minded Christian compelled to live in a dark and godless world? As Paul would say, "Much every way" (3:2).

Verse
Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. Therefore honor God with your body.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20

Thought
From the context and the grammar it is clear that in 1 Cor. 3:16 Paul is referring to the church, the body of believers, as God's temple. In 6:19 it is individual believers whose body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. God does not live in buildings (cf. Ac

Prayer
O God, that You should dwell in a shack, a rat-hole like me! Tear me down and make me Your temple.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, July 21, 2016
Doing God's Will
God does not dwell passively in His people; He wills and works in them (Phil. 2:13); and remember, wherever He is, God always acts like Himself. He will do in us whatever His holy nature moves Him to do; and unless He is hindered by our resistance He will act in us precisely as He acts in heaven. Only an unsanctified human will can prevent Him. Without doubt we hinder God greatly by our willfulness and our unbelief. We fail to cooperate with the holy impulses of the in-living Spirit; we go contrary to His will as it is revealed in the Scriptures, either because we have not taken time to discover what the Bible teaches or because we do not approve it when we do. This contest between the indwelling Deity and our own fallen propensities occupies a large place in New Testament theology. But the warfare need not continue indefinitely. Christ has made full provision for our deliverance from the bondage of the flesh. A frank and realistic presentation of the whole thing is set forth in Romans 6 and 7, and in the 8th chapter a triumphant solution is discovered: it is, briefly, through a spiritual crucifixion with Christ followed by resurrection and an infusion of the Holy Spirit.

Verse
For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.
Philippians 2:13

Thought
God works in us to will to act according to His good purpose. It is for us to acknowledge His will and to do it by His enablement.

Prayer
There are areas in my life, Lord, where I have known Your will but failed to do it. Forgive me for wasted opportunities and hindering Your transforming process in me.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, July 22, 2016
Making God Feel At Home
Once the heart is freed from its contrary impulses, Christ within becomes a wondrous experiential fact. The surrendered heart has no more controversy with God, so He can live in us congenial and uninhibited. Then He thinks His own thoughts in us: thoughts about ourselves, about Himself, about sinners and saints and babes and harlots; thoughts about the Church, about sin and judgment and hell and heaven. And He thinks about us and Himself and His love for us and our love for Him; and He woos us to Himself as a bridegroom woos his bride. Yet there is nothing formal or automatic about His operations within us. We are personalities and we are engaged with personality. We are intelligent and have wills of our own. We can, so to speak, stand outside of ourselves and discipline ourselves into accord with the will of God. We can commune with our own hearts upon our beds and be still. We can talk to our God in the night watches. We can learn what He wants us to be, and pray and work to prepare Him a habitation. And what kind of habitation pleases God? What must our natures be like before He can feel at home within us? He asks nothing but a pure heart and a single mind. He asks no rich paneling, no rugs from the Orient, no art treasures from afar. He desires but sincerity, transparency, humility, and love. He will see to the rest.

Verse
But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord.
1 Peter 3:15a

Thought
Does God feel at home in you and me? Have we confined Him to the "guestroom" or opened all of our heart-house to Him? Is He treated as a guest or the LORD?

Prayer
Be Lord of all my life, O God. Make me what You want me to be so that You will feel at home!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, July 23, 2016
The From's and To's
The evangelical Church today is in the awkward position of being wrong while it is right, and a little preposition makes the difference. One place where we are wrong while we are right is in the relative stress we lay upon the prepositions to and from when they follow the word saved. For a long generation we have been holding the letter of truth while at the same time we have been moving away from it in spirit because we have been preoccupied with what we are saved from rather than what we have been saved to. The right relative importance of the two concepts is set forth by Paul in his first epistle to the Thessalonians: "Ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God; and to wait for his Son from heaven" (1 Thess. 1:9-10). The Christian is saved from his past sins. With these he simply has nothing more to do; they are among the things to be forgotten as the night is forgotten at the dawning of the day. He is also saved from the wrath to come. With this also he has nothing to do. It exists, but not for him. Sin and wrath have a cause-and-effect relationship, and because for the Christian sin is canceled wrath is canceled also. The from's of the Christian life concern negatives, and to be engrossed in them is to live in a state of negation. Yet that is where many earnest believers live most of the time.

Verse
They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead--Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.
Thessalonians 1:9b-10

Thought
There is that from which we turn and that to which we turn. "From" suggests the past. "To" the present and the future. In what direction are we headed?

Prayer
Father, I thank You for that from which You have brought me. Expectantly I gaze on that to which you are leading me.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, July 24, 2016
Pressing toward the Goal Ahead
We are not called to fellowship with nonexistence. We are called to things that exist in truth, to positive things, and it is as we become occupied with these that health comes to the soul. Spiritual life cannot feed on negatives. The man who is constantly reciting the evils of his unconverted days is looking in the wrong direction. He is like a man trying to run a race while looking back over his shoulder. What the Christian used to be is altogether the least important thing about him. What he is yet to be is all that should concern him. He may occasionally, as Paul sometimes did, remember to his own shame the life he once lived; but that should be only a quick glance; it is never to be a fixed gaze. Our long permanent look is on God and the glory that shall be revealed. What we are saved from and what we are saved to bear the same relation to each other as a serious illness and recovered health. The physician should stand between these two opposites to save from one and restore to the other. Once the great sickness is cured the memory of it should be thrust out onto the margin of the mind to grow fainter and weaker as it retreats farther away; and the fortunate man whose health has been restored should go on to use his new strength to accomplish something useful for mankind. Yet many persons permit their sick bodies to condition their mental stuff so that after the body has gotten well they still retain the old feeling of chronic invalidism they had before. They are recovered, true enough, but not to anything. We have but to imagine a group of such persons testifying every Sunday about their late illnesses and singing plaintive songs about them and we have a pretty fair picture of many gatherings among Christians today.

Verse
I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:14

Thought
To remember God's past blessings and deliverances encourages us to walk trustfully in the present. However, to frequently relive our past failures is to lose direction and focus in following God today and tomorrow.

Prayer
O Lord, You have so much more for me to experience in following You. I press forward. toward the goal to which You point me.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, July 25, 2016
No Looking Back
There is an art of forgetting, and every Christian should become skilled in it. Forgetting the things which are behind is a positive necessity if we are to become more than mere babes in Christ. If we cannot trust God to have dealt effectually with our past we may as well throw in the sponge now and have it over with. Fifty years of grieving over our sins cannot blot out their guilt. But if God has indeed pardoned and cleansed us, then we should count it done and waste no more time in sterile lamentations. And thank God this sudden obliteration of our familiar past does not leave us with a vacuum. Far from it. Into the empty world vacated by our sins and failures rushes the blessed Spirit of God, bringing with Him everything new. New life, new hope, new enjoyments, new interests, new purposeful toil, and best of all a new and satisfying object toward which to direct our soul's enraptured gaze. God now fills the recovered garden, and we may without fear walk and commune with Him in the cool of the day. Right here is where the weakness of much current Christianity lies. We have not learned where to lay our emphasis. Particularly we have not understood that we are saved to know God, to enter His wonder-filled Presence through the new and living way and remain in that Presence forever. We are called to an everlasting preoccupation with God. The Triune God with all of His mystery and majesty is ours and we are His, and eternity will not be long enough to experience all that He is of goodness, holiness and truth. In heaven they rest not day or night in their ecstatic worship of the Godhead. We profess to be headed for that place; shall we not begin now to worship on earth as we shall do in heaven?

Verse
Jesus replied, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God."
Luke 9:62

Thought
There are things Satan does not want us to forget. And we assist him by pondering them even though we know that they are confessed, forgiven and cleansed. On those things let's not look back.

Prayer
I lift my eyes from all the past and fix them on You, Lord. Upon You would I gaze in heart worship.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, July 26, 2016
Seeing with Compassion
"Excitement, perturbation, feeling." These are states of mind we are all familiar with. In a world as violent and full of conflict as this these come and go, blaze up and die down in the average man's bosom a hundred times a day. The normal man and woman will in the course of a few months experience every degree of emotion from near ecstasy to mild dejection without apparently being any the better or the worse for it. Of course I have in mind here only the normal man and woman. The psychopathic personality lies outside the field of this study. The emotions are neither to be feared nor despised, for they are a normal part of us as God made us in the first place. Indeed the full human life would be impossible without them. One recoils from the thought of the man who lacked all feeling. He would be either a cold, naked intellect such as inhabits the pages of the science-fiction novel, or a mere vegetable, such as is sometimes found in the incurable wards of our mental hospitals. The right relation of intellect to feeling and feeling to will is disclosed in Matthew 14:14. "And Jesus went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick." Intellectual knowledge of the suffering of the people stirred His pity and His pity moved Him to heal them. This is how it was with the ideal Man whose total organism was perfectly adjusted to itself; and this is the way it is with us in a less perfect measure.

Verse
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
Matthew 9:36

Thought
Jesus looked on the crowds of people. So did the disciples. Jesus saw people harassed and helpless. The disciples saw people. Jesus saw sheep without a shepherd. He saw a harvest to be reaped. The disciples seem to have seen just people. What do we see w

Prayer
Lord Jesus, give me a compassionate heart that I may see and feel and respond as do You.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, July 27, 2016
Those Mental Pictures
A state of emotion always comes between the knowledge and the act. A feeling of pity would never arise in the human breast unless aroused by a mental picture of others' distress, and without the emotional bump to set off the will there would be no act of mercy. That is the way we are constituted. Whether the emotion aroused by a mental picture be pity, love, fear, desire, grief, there can be no act of the will without it. What I am saying here is nothing new. Every mother, every statesman, every leader of men, every preacher of the Word of God knows that a mental picture must be presented to the listener before he can be moved to act, even though it be for his own advantage. God intended that the truth should move us to moral action. The mind receives ideas, mental pictures of things as they are. These excite the feelings and these in turn move the will to act in accordance with the truth. That is the way it should be, and would be had not sin entered and wrought injury to our inner life. Because of sin the simple sequence of truth-feeling-action may break down in any of its three parts. The mind which is created to receive truth is often turned over to falsehood, and the feeling thus aroused may incite the will to evil action. The contemplation of any wrong or forbidden thing cannot but inflame the feelings to sympathy with evil. A regrettable example of this was David's long gaze at the beautiful Bathsheba in the act of bathing. The king was moved by what he saw and acted accordingly, and the bitter and tragic consequences dogged him to the end of this days. He saw, he felt, he acted, precisely as his Lord did centuries later when He healed the sick. The difference in the moral quality of the acts of the two men resulted from the difference in their feelings. David saw a beautiful woman; Christ saw a suffering multitude. One gaze led to sin, the other to an act of mercy; but both followed the simple law of their inner structure.

Verse
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely; whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things.
Philippians 4:8

Thought
A common misperception is that we can think about sinful acts and enjoy them emotionally yet never actually commit them. However, a weakening of the will results which eventually leads to sinful actions.

Prayer
Lord, may I use the freedom You have given me to think on that which is excellent and praiseworthy. Truth, then, will move me to moral, not immoral, action.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, July 28, 2016
The Danger of Heart-hardening
Another breakdown in the truth--feeling--act sequence comes when the heart for selfish reasons deliberately hardens itself against the Word of God. This is the state of all who love darkness rather than light and for that reason either withdraw from the light altogether or when exposed to it stubbornly refuse to obey it. The covetous man looks on human need and sternly refuses to be moved by it. To yield to the impulse of generosity naturally aroused by the sight of poverty would require him to give up some of his cherished hoard, and this he will not do. So the fountain of generosity is frozen at its source. The miser keeps his gold, the poor man suffers on in his poverty and the whole course of nature is upset. Is it any wonder that God hates covetousness? But be sure that human feelings can never be completely stifled. If they are forbidden their normal course, like a river they will cut another channel through the life and flow out to curse and ruin and destroy. The Christian who gazes too long on the carnal pleasures of this world cannot escape a certain feeling of sympathy with them, and that feeling will inevitably lead to behavior that is worldly. And to expose our hearts to truth and consistently refuse or neglect to obey the impulses it arouses is to stymie the motions of life within us and, if persisted in, to grieve the Holy Spirit into silence. The Scriptures and our own human constitution agree to teach us to love truth and to obey the sweet impulses of righteousness it raises within us. If we love our own souls we dare do nothing else.

Verse
Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.
Hebrews 4:7c

Thought
Truth arouses emotion and incites to action. So does error. If we reject the truth and embrace error the consequence is heart-hardening.

Prayer
Forgive me, Father, for those times when I have rejected Your truth and the emotions aroused thus refusing to obey You. Forgive me for grieving Your Spirit and deliver me from heart-hardening. For Jesus' sake.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, July 29, 2016
Distinguishing between Jacob and Esau
There are areas of Christian thought, and because of thought then also of life, where likenesses and differences are so difficult to distinguish that we are often hard put to it to escape complete deception. Throughout the whole world error and truth travel the same highways, work in the same fields and factories, attend the same churches, fly in the same planes and shop in the same stores. So skilled is error at imitating truth that the two are constantly being mistaken for each other. It takes a sharp eye these days to know which brother is Cain and which Abel. We must never take for granted anything that touches our soul's welfare. Isaac felt Jacob's arms and thought they were the arms of Esau. Even the disciples failed to spot the traitor among them; the only one of them who knew who he was was Judas himself. That soft-spoken companion with whom we walk so comfortably and in whose company we take such delight may be an angel of Satan, whereas that rough, plain-spoken man whom we shun may be God's very prophet sent to warn us against danger and eternal loss.

Verse
Then Isaac said to Jacob, "Come near so I can touch you, my son, to know whether you really are my son Esau or not."
Genesis 27:21

Thought
Often we encounter error disguised as truth. Crucial is our relationship to the Holy Spirit who seeks to guide into all truth. It is the Spirit who can unmask the deceiver.

Prayer
O God, I am easily deceived. Thank You for the Holy Spirit to lead and guide through Satan's deceits and disguises.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, July 30, 2016
Prayer and Faith
It is . . . critically important that the Christian take full advantage of every provision God has made to save him from delusion. These are prayer, faith, constant meditation on the Scriptures, obedience, humility, hard, serious thought and the illumination of the Holy Spirit. 1. Prayer is not a sure fire protection against error for the reason that there are many kinds of prayer and some of them are worse than useless. The prophets of Baal leaped upon the altar in a frenzy of prayer, but their cries went unregarded because they prayed to a god that did not exist. The God the Pharisees prayed to did exist, but He refused to listen to them because of their self-righteousness and pride. From them we may well learn a profitable lesson in reverse. In spite of the difficulties we encounter when we pray, prayer is a powerful and effective way to get right, stay right and stay free from error. "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him" (James 1:5). All things else being equal, the praying man is less likely to think wrong than the man who neglects to pray. "Men ought always to pray, and not to faint" (Luke 18:1). 2. The apostle Paul calls faith a shield. The man of faith can walk at ease, protected by his simple confidence in God. God loves to be trusted, and He puts all heaven at the disposal of the trusting soul. But when we talk of faith let us know what we mean. Faith is not optimism, though it may breed optimism; it is not cheerfulness, though the man of faith is likely to be reasonably cheerful; it is not a vague sense of well-being or a tender appreciation for the beauty of human togetherness. Faith is confidence in God's self-revelation as found in the Holy Scriptures.

Verse
In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. . . . And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. "
Ephesians 6:16, 18

Thought
We learn to pray by praying and we learn to believe God by believing Him. There are many kinds of prayers in which to engage. There are all kinds of flaming arrows from the evil one against whom we must use the shield of faith. Are we praying and believi

Prayer
Lord, You have provided so great an arsenal for spiritual defense and offense. May I have the good sense to use what You have provided!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, July 31, 2016
Feeding on God's Word in Obedience and Humility
Faith, constant meditation on the Scriptures, obedience, humility, . . . 3. "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Romans 10:17). The Scriptures purify, instruct, strengthen, enlighten and inform. The blessed man will meditate in them day and night. 4. To be entirely safe from the devil's snares the man of God must be completely obedient to the Word of the Lord. The driver on the highway is safe, not when he reads the signs but when he obeys them. So it is with the Scriptures. To be effective they must be obeyed. 5. Again, there is a close relation between humility and the perception of truth. "The meek will he guide in judgment: and the meek will he teach his way" (Psa. 25:9). In the Scriptures I find no shred of encouragement for the proud. Only the tame sheep can be led; only the humble child need expect the guidance of the Father's hand. When all the evidence is in it may well be found that none but the proud ever strayed from the truth and that self-trust was behind every heresy that ever afflicted the church.

Verse
Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.
Romans 10:17

Thought
Knowing God's Word and obediently applying it in daily life is God's provision for us. Humility before Him is the only reasonable posture of heart. He is Godness. We are creatureliness.

Prayer
Thank You for Your Word in a language I can understand. Thank You for Your enablement to do Your will as Your Spirit reveals it. Thank You, O God, for all of Your provision for me,--little, insignficant, weak me.
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TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, July 06, 2016
The Responsibility of Choice
Our Lord Jesus looked after the rich young ruler as he walked away, but He did not follow him or attempt to coerce him. The dignity of the young man's humanity forbade that his choices should be made for him by another. To remain a man he must make his own moral choices; and Christ knew this and permitted him to go his own chosen way. If his human choice took him at last to hell, at least he went there a man; and it is better for the moral universe that he should do so than that he should be jockeyed to a heaven he did not choose, a soulless, will-less automaton. God will take nine steps toward us, but He will not take the tenth. He will incline us to repent, but He cannot do our repenting for us. It is of the essence of repentance that it can only be done by the one who committed the act to be repented of. God can wait on the sinning man; He can withhold judgment; He can exercise long-suffering to the point where He appears "lax" in His judicial administration; but He cannot force a man to repent. To do this would be to violate the man's freedom and void the gift God originally bestowed upon him. Where there is no freedom of choice there can be neither sin nor righteousness, because it is of the nature of both that they be voluntary. However good an act may be, it is not good if it is imposed from without. The act of imposition destroys the moral content of the act and renders it null and void.

Verse
Jesus looked at him and loved him, "One thing you lack," he said. "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." At this the man's face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.
Mark 10:21-22

Thought
Moving, isn't it. Jesus loved the young man who sadly went away. That rich young ruler made his choice as we make ours. Others cannot choose for us or repent for us. We are personally responsible for our choices.

Prayer
O God, so important are the choices before me. You have given me personal responsibility of choice. Thank You for the revelation of Your will to guide me and the presence of Your Spirit to enable me!
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TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, July 02, 2016
What Is Faith?
Remember that faith is not a noble quality found only in superior men. It is not a virtue attainable by a limited few. It is not the ability to persuade ourselves that black is white or that something we desire will come to pass if we only wish hard enough. Faith is simply the bringing of our minds into accord with the truth. It is adjusting our expectations to the promises of God in complete assurance that the God of the whole earth cannot lie. A man looks at a mountain and affirms, "That is a mountain." There is no particular virtue in the affirmation. It is simply accepting the fact that stands before him and bringing his belief into accord with the fact. The man does not create the mountain by believing, nor could he annihilate it by denying. And so with the truth of God. The believing man accepts a promise of God as a fact as solid as a mountain and vastly more enduring. His faith changes nothing except his own personal relation to the word of promise. God's Word is true whether we believe it or not. Human unbelief cannot alter the character of God. Faith is subjective, but it is sound only when it corresponds with objective reality. The man's faith in the mountain is valid only because the mountain is there; otherwise it would be mere imagination and would need to be sharply corrected to rescue the man from harmful delusion. So God is what He is in Himself. He does not become what we believe. "I AM That I AM." We are on safe ground only when we know what kind of God He is and adjust our entire being to the holy concept.

Verse
Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.
Hebrews 11:1-2

Thought
Faith is trusting God and what He has promised even when we cannot see and may not experience the fulfillment of those promises according to our personal calendar.

Prayer
Father, my faith finds its resting place in You, in You the Eternal God.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, July 03, 2016
God Always Acts Like Himself
Since true faith rests upon what God is, it is of utmost importance that, to the limit of our comprehension, we know what He is. "They that know thy name will put their trust in thee" (Psalm 9:10). The name of God is the verbal expression of His character, and confidence always rises or falls with known character. What the psalmist said was simply that they who know God to be the kind of God He is will put their confidence in Him. This is not a special virtue, I repeat, but the normal direction any mind takes when confronted with the fact. We are so made that we trust good character and distrust its opposite. That is why unbelief is so intensely wicked. "He that believeth not God hath made him a liar" (1 John 5:10). The character of God is the Christian's final ground of assurance and the solution of many, if not most, of his practical religious problems. Some persons, for instance, believe that God answered prayer in Bible times but will not do so today, and others hold that the miracles of olden days can never be repeated. To believe so is to deny or at least to ignore almost everything God has revealed about Himself. We must remember that God always acts like Himself. He has never at any time anywhere in the vast universe acted otherwise than in character with His infinite perfections. This knowledge should be a warning to the enemies of God, and it cannot but be an immense consolation to His friends.

Verse
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Hebrews 13:8

Thought
Horatius Bonar understood it well when he wrote: "I change, He changes not, the Christ can never die; His love, not mine, the resting place; His truth, not mine, the tie."

Prayer
You are my resting place. The more I know You the more I trust You. I can trust You even when I do not understand.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, July 04, 2016
Cultivating Faith
Though God dwells in the center of eternal mystery, there need be no uncertainty about how He will act in any situation covered by His promises. These promises are infallible predictions. God will always do what He has promised to do when His conditions are met. And His warnings are no less predictive: "The ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous" (Psalm 1:5). In the light of all this how vain is the effort to have faith by straining to believe the promises in the Holy Scriptures. A promise is only as good as the one who made it, but it is as good, and from this knowledge springs our assurance. By cultivating the knowledge of God we at the same time cultivate our faith. Yet while so doing we look not at our faith but at Christ, its author and finisher. Thus the gaze of the soul is not in, but out and up to God. So the health of the soul is secured.

Verse
Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.
Hebrews 12:2a

Thought
Confident faith comes as we know God. The better we know Him the more we will trust Him because we will understand who He is. Emphasis, then, is not so much on believing Him as it is in knowing Him.

Prayer
Lord, help me to cultivate the life-habit of gazing on You!


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, July 05, 2016
The Privilege of Choice
It is inherent in the nature of man that his will must be free. Made in the image of God who is completely free, man must enjoy a measure of freedom. This enables him to select his companions for this world and the next; it enables him to yield his soul to whom he will, to give allegiance to God or the devil, to remain a sinner or become a saint. And God respects this freedom. God once saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good. To find fault with the smallest thing God has made is to find fault with its Maker. It is a false humility that would lament that God wrought but imperfectly when He made man in His own image. Sin excepted, there is nothing in human nature to apologize for. This was confirmed forever when the Eternal Son became permanently incarnated in human flesh. So highly does God regard His handiwork that He will not for any reason violate it. For God to override man's freedom and force him to act contrary to his own will would be to make a mockery of the image of God in man. This God will never do.

Verse
Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. . . . But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, . . . But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.
Joshsua 24:14-15

Thought
Being made in the image of God brings with it the privilege of choice. Freedom to choose is not absolute but it is ours to exercise. Whom and what are we choosing?

Prayer
I choose You, O Lord, and to You I submit my choices. I want to choose Your will today. Reveal it to me clearly concerning all of today's choices. For Jesus' sake.
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Post  Admin Fri 01 Jul 2016, 10:58 pm

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, July 01, 2016
Those Sanctifying Effects of Suffering
Instant Christianity tends to make the faith act terminal and so smothers the desire for spiritual advance. It fails to understand the true nature of the Christian life, which is not static but dynamic and expanding. It overlooks the fact that a new Christian is a living organism as certainly as a new baby is, and must have nourishment and exercise to assure normal growth. It does not consider that the act of faith in Christ sets up a personal relationship between two intelligent moral beings, God and the reconciled man, and no single encounter between God and a creature made in His image could ever be sufficient to establish an intimate friendship between them. By trying to pack all of salvation into one experience, or two, the advocates of instant Christianity flaunt the law of development which runs through all nature. They ignore the sanctifying effects of suffering, cross carrying and practical obedience. They pass by the need for spiritual training, the necessity of forming right religious habits, and the need to wrestle against the world, the devil and the flesh. Undue preoccupation with the initial act of believing has created in some a psychology of contentment, or at least of non-expectation. To many it has imparted a mood of disappointment with the Christian faith. God seems too far away, the world is too near, and the flesh too powerful to resist. Others are glad to accept the assurance of automatic blessedness. It relieves them of the need to watch and fight and pray, and sets them free to enjoy this world while waiting for the next. Instant Christianity is twentieth century orthodoxy. I wonder whether the man who wrote Philippians 3:7-16 would recognize it as the faith for which he finally died. I am afraid he would not.

Verse
I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Philippians 3:10-11

Thought
We want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection but what about the "fellowship of sharing in his sufferings"? Today there are in this world believers who are suffering with and for Christ. Some aspects of maturity are achieved only through suffe

Prayer
Forgive me, Lord, for leaving behind the carrying of the cross when trying to follow You. I look for the easy way when it is through pain and suffering that You refine me and reveal Your strength.
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Post  Admin Fri 01 Jul 2016, 10:58 pm

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, June 24, 2016
Bowing to Christ's Lordship
Allowing the expression "Accept Christ" to stand as an honest effort to say in short what could not be so well said any other way, let us see what we mean or should mean when we use it. To accept Christ is to form an attachment to the Person of our Lord Jesus altogether unique in human experience. The attachment is intellectual, volitional and emotional. The believer is intellectually convinced that Jesus is both Lord and Christ; he has set his will to follow Him at any cost and soon his heart is enjoying the exquisite sweetness of His fellowship. This attachment is all-inclusive in that it joyfully accepts Christ for all that He is. There is no craven division of offices whereby we may acknowledge His Saviorhood today and withhold decision on His Lordship till tomorrow. The true believer owns Christ as his All in All without reservation. He also includes all of himself, leaving no part of his being unaffected by the revolutionary transaction. Further, his attachment to Christ is all-exclusive. The Lord becomes to him not one of several rival interests, but the one exclusive attraction forever. He orbits around Christ as the earth around the sun, held in thrall by the magnetism of His love, drawing all his life and light and warmth from Him. In this happy state he is given other interests, it is true, but these are all determined by his relation to his Lord.

Verse
Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!"
John 20:28

Thought
Thomas got it right. Pushing aside doubt he recognized the Risen Savior as his Lord and God. Each of us must bow to Christ's lordship in all of life, all of life. Have we?

Prayer
Lord, by Your Spirit, expose to me those areas of life I have not yet surrendered to Your Lordship

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, June 25, 2016
Faith Identification with Christ
The Lord becomes to him [the believer] not one of several rival interests, but the one exclusive attraction forever. That we accept Christ in this all-inclusive, all-exclusive way is a divine imperative. Here faith makes its leap into God through the Person and work of Christ, but it never divides the work from the Person. It never tries to believe on the blood apart from Christ Himself, or the cross or the "finished work." It believes on the Lord Jesus Christ, the whole Christ without modification or reservation, and thus it receives and enjoys all that He did in His work of redemption, all that He is now doing in heaven for His own and all that He does in and through them. To accept Christ is to know the meaning of the words "as he is, so are we in this world" (1 John 4:17) . We accept His friends as our friends, His enemies as our enemies, His ways as our ways, His rejection as our rejection, His cross as our cross, His life as our life and His future as our future. If this is what we mean when we advise the seeker to accept Christ we had better explain it to him. He may get into deep spiritual trouble unless we do.

Verse
In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.
Romans 6:11-12

Thought
One with Christ through faith. As A.B. Simpson declared: "One in His merits I stand, one as I pray in His name; all that His worth can command, I can with confidence claim. One in His faith and His love, one in His life I may be. Sealed by the heavenly D

Prayer
Forgive me, Lord, for living in spiritual poverty when by faith I may identify with Christ and experience abundant living.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, June 26, 2016
Creed or Creedless?
Among certain Christians it has become quite the fashion to cry down creed and cry up experience as the only true test of Christianity. The expression "Not creed, but Christ" (taken, I believe, from a poem by John Oxenham) has been widely accepted as the very voice of truth and given a place alongside of the writings of prophets and apostles. When I first heard the words they sounded good. One got from them the idea that the advocates of the no-creed creed had found a precious secret that the rest of us had missed; that they had managed to cut right through the verbiage of historic Christianity and come direct to Christ without bothering about doctrine. And the words appeared to honor our Lord more perfectly by focusing attention upon Him alone and not upon mere words. But is this true? I think not. Now I have a lot of sympathy for the no-creed creedalists for I realize that they are protesting the substitution of a dead creed for a living Christ; and in this I join them wholeheartedly. But this antithesis need not exist; there is no reason for our creeds being dead just as there is no reason for our faith being dead. James tells us that there is such a thing as dead faith, but we do not reject all faith for that reason. Now the truth is that creed is implicit in every thought, word or act of the Christian life. It is altogether impossible to come to Christ without knowing at least something about Him; and what we know about Him is what we believe about Him; and what we believe about Him is our Christian creed. Otherwise stated, since our creed is what we believe, it is impossible to believe on Christ and have no creed.

Verse
Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great: He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory.
1 Timothy 3:16

Thought
In 1 Tim.3:16 Paul may be quoting an early creedal hymn. A Creed is intended to be a terse, succinct statement of what one believes. That statement is a basic affirmation of one's principal beliefs, not an exhaustive one. As believers can we be creedless

Prayer
Father, enable me to identify eternal truth from Your Word and the application of that truth to my life. Help me to major on the majors and not the minors. In Jesus' name.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, June 27, 2016
Personal Creed in Development
Preaching Christ is generally, and correctly, held to be the purest, noblest ministry in which any man can engage; but preaching Christ includes a great deal more than talking about Christ in superlatives. It means more than giving vent to the religious love the speaker feels for the Person of Christ. Glowing love for Christ will give fragrance and warmth to any sermon, but it is still not enough. Love must be intelligent and informed if it is to have any permanent meaning. The effective sermon must have intellectual content, and wherever there is intellect there is creed. It cannot be otherwise. This is not to plead for the use of the historic creeds in our Christian gatherings. I realize that it is entirely possible to recite the Apostles' Creed every Sunday for a lifetime with no profit to the soul. The Nicene Creed may be said or sung in every service without benefiting anyone. The standard creeds are a summary of what the Christian professes to believe, and they are excellent as far as they go yet they may be learned by rote and repeated without conviction and so be altogether stale and unprofitable. While we may worship (and thousands of Christians do) without the use of any formal creed, it is impossible to worship acceptably without some knowledge of the One we seek to worship. And that knowledge is our creed whether it is ever formalized or not. It is not enough to say that we may have a mystical or numinous experience of God without any doctrinal knowledge and that is sufficient. No, it is not sufficient. We must worship in truth as well as in spirit; and truth can be stated and when it is stated it becomes creed.

Verse
God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.
John 4:24

Thought
Perceiving God's truth enables me to verbalize that truth. That stated truth becomes my creed. That creed will be revised and refined as I learn more of the Word and seek to practice it. The Spirit will teach me, often through other believers.

Prayer
I want to worship You in truth, O God. Give me understanding of Your truth that I may live by it and share it with others.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, June 28, 2016
You Are a Theologian!
The effort to be practicing Christians without knowing what Christianity is about must always fail. The true Christian should be, indeed must be, a theologian. He must know at least something of the wealth of truth revealed in the Holy Scriptures. And he must know it with sufficient clarity to state it and defend his statement. And what can be stated and defended is a creed. Because the heart of the Christian life is admittedly faith in a person, Jesus Christ the Lord, it has been relatively easy for some to press this truth out of all proportion and teach that faith in the Person of Christ is all that matters. Who Jesus is matters not, who His Father was, whether Jesus is God or man or both, whether or not He accepted the superstitions and errors of His time as true, whether He actually rose again after His passion or was only thought to have done so by His devoted followers--these things are not important, say the no-creed advocates. What is vital is that we believe on Him and try to follow His teachings. What is overlooked here is that the conflict of Christ with the Pharisees was over the question of who He was. His claim to be God stirred the Pharisees to fury. He could have cooled the fire of their anger by backing away from His claim to equality with God, but He refused to do it. And He further taught that faith in Him embraced a belief that He is very God, and that apart from this there could be no salvation for anyone. "He said unto them, 'Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world. I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.'" To believe on Christ savingly means to believe the right things about Christ. There is no escaping this.

Verse
When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi;, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?" They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.' 'But what about you?' he
Matthew 16:13-15

Thought
At least informally, we are all theologians. We must all come, and we do, to theological conclusions concerning Christ. Our salvation depends upon it. Who is He to us? What has He done that concerns us? How are we relating to Him? Those are a few of the

Prayer
You are Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God. At Your name every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that You are Lord, to the glory of God the Father! And You are my Lord!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, June 29, 2016
"Fast Food" Christianity
It is hardly a matter of wonder that the country that gave the world instant tea and instant coffee should be the one to give it instant Christianity. If these two beverages were not actually invented in the United States it was certainly here that they received the advertising impetus that has made them known to most of the civilized world. And it cannot be denied that it was American Fundamentalism that brought instant Christianity to the gospel churches. Ignoring for the moment Romanism, and Liberalism in its various disguises, and focusing our attention upon the great body of evangelical believers, we see at once how deeply the religion of Christ has suffered in the house of its friends. The American genius for getting things done quickly and easily with little concern for quality or permanence has bred a virus that has infected the whole evangelical church in the United States and, through our literature, our evangelists and our missionaries, has spread all over the world. Instant Christianity came in with the machine age. Men invented machines for two purposes. They wanted to get important work done more quickly and easily than they could do it by hand, and they wanted to get the work over with so they could give their time to pursuits more to their liking, such as loafing or enjoying the pleasures of the world. Instant Christianity now serves the same purposes in religion. It disposes of the past, guarantees the future and sets the Christian free to follow the more refined lusts of the flesh in all good conscience and with a minimum of restraint.

Verse
Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe.
Hebrews 12:28

Thought
Keep the services short and the sermons 'sound-byte size.' People are busy these days. They don't have time for long services and biblical studies." But what about that unsatisfied hunger of heart? That worship with reverence and awe? That encounter with

Prayer
Lord, teach me to wait, to quietly wait on You. I want to worship You. To listen to You. You are God."

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, June 30, 2016
Growing Up into Christ
By "instant Christianity" I mean the kind found almost everywhere in gospel circles and which is born of the notion that we may discharge our total obligation to our own souls by one act of faith, or at most by two, and be relieved thereafter of all anxiety about our spiritual condition. We are saints by calling, our teachers keep telling us, and we are permitted to infer from this that there is no reason to seek to be saints by character. An automatic, once-for-all quality is present here that is completely out of mode with the faith of the New Testament. In this error, as in most others, there lies a certain amount of truth imperfectly understood. It is true that conversion to Christ may be and often is sudden. Where the burden of sin has been heavy the sense of forgiveness is usually clear and joyful. The delight experienced in forgiveness is equal to the degree of moral repugnance felt in repentance. The true Christian has met God. He knows he has eternal life and he is likely to know where and when he received it. And those also who have been filled with the Holy Spirit subsequent to their regeneration have a clear-cut experience of being filled. The Spirit is self-announcing, and the renewed heart has no difficulty identifying His presence as He floods in over the soul. But the trouble is that we tend to put our trust in our experiences and as a consequence misread the entire New Testament. We are constantly being exhorted to make the decision, to settle the matter now, to get the whole thing taken care of at once--and those who exhort us are right in doing so. There are decisions that can be and should be made once and for all. There are personal matters that can be settled instantaneously by a determined act of the will in response to Bible-grounded faith. No one would want to deny this; certainly not I. The question before us is, Just how much can be accomplished in that one act of faith? How much yet remains to be done and how far can a single decision take us?

Verse
Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.
Ephesians 4:15

Thought
Growing up into Christ calls for tremendous growing. It does not occur at one point in time or by means of one decision. Oh, how much growing we have yet to experience!

Prayer
Lord, plant my feet on higher ground! I want to grow up into Christ. May Your Spirit fill me and change me day by day, month by month, year by year.
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Post  Admin Thu 23 Jun 2016, 12:51 pm

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, June 23, 2016
"Accepting" Christ
To the question "What must I do to be saved?" we must learn the correct answer. To fail here is not to gamble with our souls: it is to guarantee eternal banishment from the face of God. Here we must be right or be finally lost. To this anxious question evangelical Christians provide three answers, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ," "Receive Christ as your personal Saviour," and "Accept Christ." Two of the answers are drawn almost verbatim from the Scriptures (Acts 16:31, John 1:12), while the third is a kind of paraphrase meant to sum up the other two. They are therefore not three but one. Being spiritually lazy we naturally tend to gravitate toward the easiest way of settling our religious questions for ourselves and others; hence the formula "Accept Christ" has become a panacea of universal application, and I believe it has been fatal to many. . . . The trouble is that the whole "Accept Christ" attitude is likely to be wrong. It shows Christ applying to us rather than us to Him. It makes Him stand hat-in-hand awaiting our verdict on Him, instead of our kneeling with troubled hearts awaiting His verdict on us. It may even permit us to accept Christ by an impulse of mind or emotions, painlessly, at no loss to our ego and no inconvenience to our usual way of life. For this ineffectual manner of dealing with a vital matter we might imagine some parallels; as if, for instance, . . . the prodigal son had "accepted" his father's forgiveness and stayed on among the swine in the far country. Is it not plain that if accepting Christ is to mean anything there must be moral action that accords with it?

Verse
They replied, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved--you and your household."
Acts 16:31

Thought
Believing in Christ is not merely an intellectual exercise though it involves the mind. Believing in Christ is a heart and life commitment to the Savior, the King of kings and Lord of lords, very God of very God. Moral action results.

Prayer
Thank You that You have received me; forgiven me; made me a new person; come to live in my heart. May my heart commitment to You deepen and grow day by day.
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Post  Admin Thu 23 Jun 2016, 12:51 pm

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, June 08, 2016
The Gift of Divine Power
It is the teaching of Meister Eckhart that there is something far inside the mysterious depths of a human life which is unknown except as God and the individual know it. This he called the "ground" of the soul. This "ground" is, according to Eckhart, the stuff which once received the image of God at creation. The lesser powers of the soul are the instruments through which this mysterious primal stuff makes itself felt in the world. These powers are imagination, reason, the faculty of speech and the creative powers which appear at full bloom in the artist and the poet and in varying degrees of brilliance in the commonalty of mankind. In this far-in secret sanctuary, God reveals Himself to the individual as a "birth," bringing forth a new creation by the regenerating act of the Holy Spirit. Thus we receive from Christ the very nature of God (2 Peter 1:4) and are spiritually prepared for the full revelation of Christ in us, the hope of glory. This would seem to be but a slightly different way of stating the truths taught by Paul in his inspired epistles. The apostle used the language of theology, or better still, he used the language of the Bible, but what he taught was not different from that taught by the man Eckhart. This great mystic theologian thought in terms of the psychology of his times, but when we make allowance for the difference of approach, the substance is the same. And a thoroughly Christian heart will understand the language of both.

Verse
His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate
2 Peter 1:3-4

Thought
God equips us for high level living. His divine power enables us to participate in the divine nature. Why, then, do we live as spiritual paupers?

Prayer
Lord, I want to soar as an eagle into the heights of spiritual reality. Show me what it means to participate in the divine nature. For Jesus' sake.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, June 09, 2016
That Fragrance of the Rose of Sharon
The Holy Spirit never differs from Himself, and wherever He touches a human mind His sure marks are always present so plainly that there can be no mistaking them. Anyone familiar with the work of the French artist Millet will notice a similarity in everything he painted, as if the very breathing personality of the man had somehow gotten into the paint and onto the canvas. So the Holy Spirit teaches the same thing to everyone; however different the subjects may be from each other, the fine touch of the Spirit's hand may be detected on each one. For this reason, Christian devotional books are very much alike no matter who may have written them or how widely divergent may have been the religious views of the authors. The masters of the inner life may at first appear to be far apart in some of their theological positions, but before he has read long, the delighted reader will discover the likenesses in the spirit of their teachings. They are talking about the same thing in their several ways and are as alike as various paintings by the same artist. The fragrance of the Rose of Sharon lingers over their pages; one face looks forth from the lattice and one voice is heard in the garden. Because this is true, Eckhart's doctrine of "the ground of the soul" will be recognized as an old friend by the Spirit-taught Christian even though he had never before heard of Eckhart. He will find himself in familiar surroundings because he has walked there himself at other times and in different company.

Verse
I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me.
John 10:14

Thought
We recognize brothers and sisters in Christ even when they speak a different theological and experiential language. As we draw near we perceive their love for Christ, their family likeness, the fragrance of the Rose of Sharon.

Prayer
Beyond what seems correct theological language and form, Lord, may there exude from me the fragrance of You presence.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, June 10, 2016
The Inner Chamber of Humankind
However we may explain this mysterious "ground" within us, we will not have been long in the Christian way until we begin to experience it. We will find that we have within us a secret garden where no one can enter except ourself and God. Not only does no one else enter, no one else can enter. This secret inner chamber is the sacred trysting place for Christ and the believing soul; no one among all our dearest friends has the open sesame that will permit him to enter there. If God is shut out, then there can be only everlasting loneliness and numb despair. Where God is not known in the inner shrine, the individual must try to compensate for his sense of aloneness in whatever way he can. Most persons run away to the world to find companionship and surround themselves with every kind of diversionary activity. All devices for killing time, every shallow scheme for entertainment, are born out of this inner loneliness. It is a significant and revealing fact that such things have in these last days grown into billion dollar enterprises! So much will men pay to forget that they are a temple without a God, a garden where no voice is heard in the cool of the day. The better minds among us, goaded by this subconscious loneliness, may, as Schopenhauer, become philosophers of despair or, as Byron and Hardy, poets of desperation and hopelessness. But no matter how brilliant the intellect, the lonely heart can never know peace. Until we find God through Christ, that inner "ground" will remain a kind of eternal thirst inside of us, and its voice, where that voice is recognized, will be a plea, an accusation, a thin plaintive cry deep within us asking for eternal life and restoration and God.

Verse
The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children."
Romans 8:16

Thought
That inner chamber of our being is our spirit. It is with our spirit that the Holy Spirit communes. He assures us that we are God's children. He witnesses to us of Christ and eternal realities.

Prayer
You stoop to commune with me, O God. Your Spirit bears witness with my spirit that I am Your child. Thank You for that holy communion.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, June 11, 2016
Circumstantial Friction
Many Christians live like a man driving with his brakes on. It is, of course, friction that retards the car's progress, for all brakes work by friction. The car is temporarily at odds with itself; one surface wants to revolve and another surface in contact with it wants to stand still. This clash of purposes sets up friction; and friction always wins at last. Nothing can continue to move if it is opposed by enough friction. Even the most perfectly operated car cannot escape some resistance to its forward motion. There will always be gravity, air presssure and the unavoidable pressures of working parts that will tend to slow it down. But these are figured in and overcome by the steady application of energy to the wheels. It's the brakes that give a car a hard time. Now all this would seem to be a parable of some kind. The Christian need not expect to escape opposition. As long as Satan stands to resist the sons of God, as long as the world and the flesh remain, the believing man will meet opposition. Sometimes it will be sharp and obvious, but mostly it will be just the hidden and unsuspected friction set up by circumstances. No one need be anxious about this, however, for God has figured it in and made allowance for it. That kind of friction does little real harm. It will not retard progress much, and the very necessity of overcoming opposition will but add strength to the Christian's moral muscles.

Verse
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
Philippians 4:6

Thought
There are circumstances that we feel we can control yet fail to do so. Then there are the circumstances beyond our control. It is that circumstantial friction that slows spiritual progress, causes us to veer off the path or detracts our attention from th

Prayer
Forgive me, Father, for falling into anxiety when You invite me to throw all my care on You.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, June 12, 2016
Inward Friction
But there is another kind of friction which retards spiritual progress and does real injury to the soul. It is the friction created by inward maladjustment. Our Lord had this in mind when He spoke of the value of the "single eye," and James referred to the same thing when he told of the wavering man of double mind who was unstable in all his ways. While the heart is at cross-purposes with itself, there can be no inward harmony, only discord and carnal heat that slowly wear out the life. One source of friction is resentfulness. To hold bad feeling against another is to put the brakes on; no matter how sincerely we desire to go on in the holy way, we are held back by the grinding of resentment within us. Morally resentment is static and will brake to a stop any soul that will harbor it. It is vitally important to remove the pressure that is checking forward motion. This we can do by forgiving our enemies and taking pardon and cleansing from the Lord. To name all the possible causes of inward friction would be to list the works of the flesh in their entirety. The flesh warreth against the spirit: that is, it seeks to stop the motions of the growing heart and bring it to a standstill. Or, failing that, it will put as much pressure as possible on the life and slow its progress as much as it can. The sad thing is that so many of us seem willing to let things go on that way. We "grovel here below," creeping forward painfully and at a snail's pace, when we might be racing unhindered toward the prize. Let's check up on ourselves. Possibly we may need to take the brakes off.

Verse
Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
Ephesians 4:32

Thought
Resentment and unforgiveness can eat away at love and peace. The solution is simple enough. Forgive others as Christ has forgiven you.

Prayer
Lord, help me run the race with the brakes off. By your Spirit highlight those areas of life where I am yielding to the flesh rather than to You.

OZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, June 13, 2016
Censoring Our Desires In the Will of God
The word wish in its modern sense has little or no place in the Christian's vocabulary. The word occurs rarely in the Bible, and when it does it seldom means more than to will or desire. It is hard to conceive of anything more completely futile than wishing. It is significant that wishing is done mostly by children and superstitious people. However sweet and innocent it may appear to see a child going through his little ritual of wishing, it can become something far from harmless when carried over into adult life. And even the child should be taught very early that wishing gets him nowhere. The evil of the empty wish lies in the fact that the wisher is not adjusted to the will of God. He allows his desires to play over things that are entirely out of God's will for him and dreams of possessing what he well knows he should not have. Five minutes of this futile dreaming and he has lost the fine edge off his spiritual life. Should the act ripen into a habit, his Christian life may be seriously injured. The man soon comes to substitute mere longing for hard work, and unless he corrects his fault sharply, he will degenerate into a spineless dreamer of empty dreams. Every desire should be brought to the test of God's will. If the desire is out of the will of God, it should be instantly dismissed as unworthy of us. To continue to long for something that is plainly out of the will of God for us is to prove how unreal our consecration actually is.

Verse
This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us-whatever we ask-we know that we have what we asked of him.
1 John 5:14-15

Thought
God invites us to petition Him boldly, assuring us that He hears us and will grant our requests. However, those petitions are to accord with His will. In some areas His will is crystal clear; in others somewhat unclear. Are our prayers according to His w

Prayer
Lord, I'm sometimes guilty of asking what I know is not Your will for me. Forgive me. Your will be done in my life as it is in heaven!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, June 14, 2016
Praying for the "Impossible" that God Wills for Us
Every desire should be brought to the test of God's will. If the desire is out of the will of God, it should be instantly dismissed as unworthy of us. To continue to long for something that is plainly out of the will of God for us is to prove how unreal our consecration actually is. If, however, the desired object is legimate and innocent, then there are three possible ways by which it may be obtained: one is to work for it, another is to pray for it and a third is to work and pray for it. These are clear methods by which God gives His good gifts to His people. They are not to be confused with each other and may be distinguished in practical living. Some things are altogether out of the sphere of possibility for us, and yet altogether within God's gracious will for us. What to do? Prayer is the immediate answer. God has planned that we should go to Him for impossibilities when those impossibilities are a part of His eternal will for our highest good. Under such circumstances we should press our petitions upon Him with all the boldness and ardor of an obedient and trusting child. God loves such praying and has given every reason for us to believe that He will hear our prayer and in due time send the answer.

Verse
Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.'
Matthew 7:7-8

Thought
Ask, seek and knock. God delights in answering our prayer, especially those things we view as "impossible." But it is for us to ask, seek and knock. He may answer quickly or after many years. Or He may simply and clearly say "no."

Prayer
Lord, I'm sometimes impatient in prayer and sometimes even give up. Forgive me. You know how best to answer my prayer and when. Thank You that You delight in granting the impossible.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, June 15, 2016
Work and Pray
It is useless to ask God for something we could obtain with a bit of effort properly directed. No instructed Christian will waste his time praying for things that are within his own power to obtain. To do so is to deceive ourselves and make a farce of the whole concept of prayer. If work will get it for us, then work it is or we can go without it. God will not contribute to our delinquency by supplying us with gifts which we could get for ourselves but have done nothing to obtain. But there is a third category consisting of desired objects which work alone can never secure. They lie far enough out of our reach that it will take something supernatural to get them for us, yet near enough that we must labor to obtain them. This adds up to work and prayer, and it will probably be found that the greatest majority of desired objects and objectives fall within this category. And this situation brings us close to God and makes us His co-laborers. Whether it be a desire to open a closed field, win a hostile tribe, obtain a better job, build a new church, have a successful meeting, rear a family, get through school or do any one of an almost infinIte number of legitimate things, the method is likely to be the twofold one of work and prayer. We might paraphrase the famous exhortation of Dr. Simpson and say that when faced with these borderline tasks which we must work at but which we can never do alone, the thing to do is to work as if we had it all to do and pray as if we expected God to to it all. But wishing-let the vain dreamers and the builders of Spanish castles spend their time at it if they will. We know better than to waste our time and efforts at anything so useless.

Verse
After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. . . . One of those listening was a woman named Lydia . . . The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul's message
Acts 16:10, 14

Thought
Paul would never have experienced the demonstration of God's power in Philippi had he not obeyed God and gone there. Yet Paul could not open Lydia's heart to respond to the message. Only God could do that. There is that for us to do and that for God to d

Prayer
O Lord, give me sensitivity to Your direction as to what You want me to do and what only You can do. In Jesus' name.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, June 16, 2016
The Cross Message: Foolishness or the Power of God?
The cross stands in bold opposition to the natural man. Its philosophy runs contrary to the processes of the unregenerate mind, so that Paul could say bluntly that the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness. To try to find a common ground between the message of the cross and man's fallen reason is to try the impossible, and if persisted in must result in an impaired reason, a meaningless cross and a powerless Christianity. But let us bring the whole matter down from the uplands of theory and simply observe the true Christian as he puts into practice the teachings of Christ and His apostles. Note the contradictions: The Christian believes that in Christ he has died, yet he is more alive than before and he fully expects to live forever. He walks on earth while seated in heaven and though born on earth he finds that after his conversion he is not at home here. Like the nighthawk, which in the air is the essence of grace and beauty but on the ground is awkward and ugly, so the Christian appears at his best in the heavenly places but does not fit well into the ways of the very society into which he was born.

Verse
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
1 Corinthians 1:18

Thought
The message of the Cross--Christ dying for sinners--is perceived so differently. It is foolishness to those who are perishing. It is the power of God to those who are being saved. Faith makes the difference; faith that recognizes personal sin and God's i

Prayer
You are the crucified, risen Christ. I thankfully receive Your forgiveness of my sin and Your life for my daily living. Praise Your name!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, June 17, 2016
Amid Contradictions
The Christian soon learns that if he would be victorious as a son of heaven among men on earth he must not follow the common pattern of mankind, but rather the contrary. That he may be safe he puts himself in jeopardy; he loses his life to save it and is in danger of losing it if he attempts to preserve it. He goes down to get up. If he refuses to go down he is already down, but when he starts down he is on his way up. He is strongest when he is weakest and weakest when he is strong. Though poor he has the power to make others rich, but when he becomes rich his ability to enrich others vanishes. He has most after he has given most away and has least when he possesses most. He may be and often is highest when he feels lowest and most sinless when he is most conscious of sin. He is wisest when he knows that he knows not and knows least when he has acquired the greatest amount of knowledge. He sometimes does most by doing nothing and goes furthest when standing still. In heaviness he manages to rejoice and keeps his heart glad even in sorrow.

Verse
Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a "fool" so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight.
1 Corinthians 3:18-19

Thought
Strong when weak and weak when strong! To embrace that truth--not just in mind but in heart and life expression--is to take a giant leap in spiritual maturity!

Prayer
Lord, Your pattern of life for me is antithetical to that of this world. But it is in You I live. Deliver me from the enemy's deception that I may see clearly Your way and follow it. In Jesus' name.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, June 18, 2016
Paradox Living
The paradoxical character of the Christian is revealed constantly. For instance, he believes that he is saved now, nevertheless he expects to be saved later and looks forward joyfully to future salvation. He fears God but is not afraid of Him. In God's presence he feels overwhelmed and undone, yet there is nowhere he would rather be than in that presence. He knows that he has been cleansed from his sin, yet he is painfully conscious that in his flesh dwells no good thing. He loves supremely One whom he has never seen, and though himself poor and lowly he talks familiarly with One who is King of all kings and Lord of all lords, and is aware of no incongruity in so doing. He feels that he is in his own right altogether less than nothing, yet he believes without question that he is the apple of God's eye and that for him the Eternal Son became flesh and died on the cross of shame. The Christian is a citizen of heaven and to that sacred citizenship he acknowledges first allegiance; yet he may love his earthly country with that intensity of devotion that caused John Knox to pray "O God, give me Scotland or I die."

Verse
Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
1 Peter 1:8-9

Thought
Living in the paradox with our faith eyes fixed on the unseen. We are aliens surrounded by the ultimately unreal. We are pilgrims on our way home. In it all He is real and we are really His.

Prayer
O God, my faith is fixed on You. I am Your child. You are my Father. With my hand in Yours I walk through the paradox of life.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, June 19, 2016
Living Now in Light of the Not Yet
The Christian is a citizen of heaven and to that sacred citizenship he acknowledges first allegiance . . . He cheerfully expects before long to enter that bright world above, but he is in no hurry to leave this world and is quite willing to await the summons of his Heavenly Father. And he is unable to understand why the critical unbeliever should condemn him for this; it all seems so natural and right in the circumstances that he sees nothing inconsistent about it. The cross-carrying Christian, furthermore, is both a confirmed pessimist and an optimist the like of which is to be found nowhere else on earth. When he looks at the cross he is a pessimist, for he knows that the same judgment that fell on the Lord of glory condemns in that one act all nature and all the world of men. He rejects every human hope out of Christ because he knows that man's noblest effort is only dust building on dust. Yet he is calmly, restfully optimistic. If the cross condemns the world the resurrection of Christ guarantees the ultimate triumph of good throughout the universe. Through Christ all will be well at last and the Christian waits the consummation. Incredible Christian!

Verse
Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
1 John 3:2-3

Thought
We shall be like Him! That seems altogether impossible to those who know us now and to ourselves. But we are in the process of transformation. Complete fulfillment of His promises are still in the future but in the light of those promises we can live now

Prayer
Father, I see darkness all around me but you provide a laser beam that leads to home. May that beam of light reflect through my life to those about me. May You shine through me!


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, June 20, 2016
Time as Environment not Sanctifier
Sin has done frightful things to us and its effect upon us is all the more deadly because we were born in it and are scarcely aware of what is happening to us. One false concept to which we cling tenaciously is time. We think of it as being a sort of viscid substance flowing onward like a sluggish river, bearing upon its bosom nations and empires and civilizations and men. We visualize this sticky stream as an entity and ourselves as helplessly stuck in it for as long as our earthly lives endure. Or again, by a simple shift in our thinking we picture time as a revealer of the shape of things to come, as when we say "Time will tell." Or we imagine it a benign physician and comfort ourselves with the thought that "Time is a great healer." All this is so much a part of us that it would be too much to expect that the habit of referring everything to time could ever be broken. Yet we may guard against the harm that such thinking carries with it. The most harmful mistake we make concerning time is that it has somehow a mysterious power to perfect human nature. We say of a foolish young man "Time will make him wiser," or we see a new Christian acting like anything but a Christian and hope that time will someday turn him into a saint. The truth is that time has no more power to sanctify a man than space has. Indeed, time is only a fiction by which we account for change. It is change, not time, that turns fools into wise men and sinners into saints. Or more accurately, it is Christ who does the whole thing by means of the changes He works in the heart.

Verse
But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.
2 Peter 3:8

Thought
Time does not change us, God does. He changes us as we walk by the Spirit.

Prayer
Forgive me, Lord, for trusting time rather than You. Change me, ever change me as I walk with You. For Jesus' sake.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, June 21, 2016
Change Occurs within Time but Is Not Caused by It
Saul the Persecutor became Paul the servant of God, but time did not make the change. Christ wrought the miracle, the same Christ who once changed water into wine. One spiritual experience followed another in fairly rapid succession until the violent Saul became a gentle, God-enamored soul ready to lay down his life for the faith he once hated. It should be obvious that time had no part in the making of the man of God. My purpose in writing this little piece is not to engage in an exercise in semantics but to alert my readers to the injury they may suffer from an unfounded confidence in time. Because a Moses and a Jacob lost the impulsive, headstrong sins of their youth and in their old age became gentle, mellow saints we tend to take it for granted that time wrought the transformation. But it is not so. God, not time, makes saints. Human nature is not fixed, and for this we should thank God day and night. We are still capable of change. We can become something other than what we are. By the power of the gospel the covetous man may become generous, the egotist lowly in his own eyes. The thief may learn to steal no more, the blasphemer to fill his mouth with praises unto God. But it is Christ who does it all. Time has nothing to do with it.

Verse
But I trust in you, O LORD; I say, 'You are my God.' My times are in your hands.
Psalm 31:14-15a

Thought
God acts within time. He sometimes uses time. But He is not limited by time nor chained to it. The time we have left does not determine the transformation we may experience. Our response to the Spirit within time does.

Prayer
Time cannot change me but You can, O Lord. My times are in Your hands.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, June 22, 2016
Facilitating Change
Many a lost man is putting off the day of salvation, vaguely hoping that time is on his side, when actually the likelihood of his ever becoming a Christian grows less day by day. And why? Because the changes taking place in him are hardening his will and making it more and more difficult for him to repent. "Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." See the change-words in this text: "seek... call... forsake... return." These all denote specific changes the returning sinner must make in himself, acts that he must perform. But this is not enough. "Have mercy... pardon"; these are the changes God makes in and for the man. To be saved the man must change and be changed. To enter the kingdom of God, our Lord explained, a man must be born again (John 3:3-7). That is, he must undergo a spiritual change. . . . The initial change, however, is not the only one the redeemed man will know. His whole Christian life will consist of a succession of changes, moving always toward spiritual perfection. To achieve these changes the Holy Spirit uses various means, probably the most effective being the writings of the New Testament. Time can help us only if we know that it cannot help us at all. It is change we need, and only God can change us from worse to better.

Verse
Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
Isaiah 55:6-7

Thought
There is a time to wait and a time to act. We sometimes confuse the two. When we know God's will it is always the time to do God's will. Are we changing?

Prayer
You, Lord, would I seek and rise up to do Your will. Change me, Lord, change me!
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TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, June 07, 2016
Alive in Christ
We might well spend the rest of the year reverently inquiring into the meanings of the resurrection. And probably the best method to pursue is to search for those meanings that touch us as individual Christians here and now. It is, of course, necessary to preserve the theology of the resurrection and to guard the truth well and carefully; but that is not enough. We must know what it means to us as pilgrims and strangers. That He "rose again the third day according to the Scriptures" is the biblical foundation for our faith in a risen Lord. But love and faith would go further; they would devoutly seek to experience the present riches of His Easter triumph. Jesus is Victor! That is the truth His resurrection proclaims. Now it remains for us to allow Him to be Victor in us, thus multiplying the glory of His triumph in the hearts of His trusting people.

Verse
In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus."
Romans 6:11

Thought
Are we living in the shadows of Friday and Saturday or in the triumph of Easter Sunday resurrection? Too often we live as if unrelated to the Risen Christ rather counting ourselves dead to sin and alive to God.

Prayer
Your death and resurrection, Lord, I see as not merely historical events of the past. Thank You that through faith in You I may experience the effects of those events in daily life.
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TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, May 22, 2016
Exercising Our Gifts
The task of the church is too great for any one person to compass and too varied for the skill of any one person to accomplish. God has met this difficulty by dividing the task and giving to every man gifts that enable him to do his part. By distributing the work, He lightens the burden for all and makes possible smooth carrying out of His purposes among men. That is undoubtedly the reason behind the gifts of the Spirit given to the various members of the Christian community. Here, as elsewhere, the manifold wisdom of God is revealed. Not all men can sing; at least not all men can sing well enough to be heard in public. Only a limited number are called to preach. Real teachers are scarce because the gift which enables a Christian to teach is not given to many. Even the humbler gifts, such as "helps" and "governments," are given to relatively few. The gift of the evangelist is not given to all, or the pastor's gift or the gift of wisdom. Blessed is the man who knows his gift and who seeks to exercise it toward the other members of the body of Christ as a "good steward of the manifold grace of God." A revival of true New Testament Christianity must surely bring with it a manifestation of spiritual gifts. Anything short of it will create a just suspicion that the revival is something short of scriptural.

Verse
Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms."
1 Peter 4:10

Thought
God has gifted each of us to serve other members of the Body in particular ways. It is our responsibility, in conjunction with other body members, to identify our gifts and faithfully exercise them. The health of the church demands it!

Prayer
Father, show me the unique gifts You have given me with which to serve You and Your Church. Remind me that those gifts are from You and are to be used to build up Your Church.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, May 23, 2016
The Inner and Eternal You
All life is at root spiritual. God is spirit, and since He is the Cause and Origin of everything, it follows that everything originally came out of spirit. Matter may indeed be only the objectification of spirit. It is interesting to learn that modern science comes pretty close to teaching just that today. It is not necessary, however, to understand the philosophical ground for this belief (if such ground exists); it is enough to believe the Scriptures, and they make it very clear that a human being is essentially a spirit clothed in a body, and that the inner life is the key to all the rest of the life. The whole Bible magnifies the inner and eternal part of man and lays correspondingly lighter emphasis upon the external and temporal. Paul sang his ringing song of victory over this world, a song he could sing with all those who "look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:18). Indeed it may be truthfully said that everything of lasting value in the Christian life is unseen and eternal. Things seen are of little real significance in the light of God's presence. He pays small attention to the beauty of a woman or the strength of a man. With Him the heart is all that matters. The rest of the life comes into notice only because it represents the dwelling place of the inner eternal being.

Verse
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthains 4:18

Thought
Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, they are not our own. It is through our bodies that we express our spirit/soul/mind/heart. Our bodies are vehicles by which we disclose our real being.

Prayer
Father, this body of mine is not externally attractive and is certainly aging, but remind me that the inner me can keep growing and become beautiful as You change me. Praise to You for eternal life in Christ and inner transformation through Him. Amen."

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, May 25, 2016
Present Tense Believing
The book of Acts lays strong emphasis upon steadfastness in the faith, as do the Pauline epistles and the Book of Hebrews. Obviously the apostles conceived the Christian life to be a long tough journey, requiring a lot of faith and determination but ending in glory at last. Neither Christ nor His apostles taught the once-for-all finality of the act of believing so popular among us today. The whole build-up of the usual evangelistic meeting these days is toward the initial act of believing. Once a confession has been extracted from the seeker, a sense of victory seizes on everybody. It is as if a fish had been landed and safely stowed into the basket. The saving act has been performed, and there remains nothing more to be done. Not so taught the apostles or the faithful leaders of the church of God through the centuries. Faith in Christ is not a act to be done and gotten over with as one might get inoculated against yellow fever or cholera. The repentant sinner's first act of believing in Christ for forgiveness and eternal life is the beginning of a continuous act of believing which lasts throughout life and for all eternity. "Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed." These words accord perfectly with the exhortations of Barnabas to the Christians at Pisidia and Antioch: "That with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord . . . confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God."

Verse
But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation--if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel.
Colossians 1:22-23a

Thought
Believing is present tense. It is good to have believed yesterday. Of greater significance is believing today whether going through sunshine or darkness, mountain tops or valleys. Believing today prepares us to keep believing tomorrow.

Prayer
Lord, I cling to You today. I may be stumbling and blundering but in faith I hold on to You. I choose to believe. Help me when my faith is weak. For Jesus' sake.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, May 26, 2016
Continuing the Journey
We have heard of some churches that hold a service very early Sunday morning so the worshipers can get their religious duties over before going out to play golf the rest of the day. It gives them a comfortable feeling to know that their responsibilities toward God have been discharged with a minimum of inconvenience and without hindering in any way the fun of the day. We would be tempted to smile at this if we did not notice an uncomfortable parallel between that practice and the practice of getting our believing done early so that we might be free thereafter to walk as men. The insurance policy aspect of salvation is very prominent in our times. We pay it up in advance (or allow the Lord to pay it) and from there on we rest in an accomplished fact. The urge to go on is almost wholly absent. This is not good, and it is surely not scriptural. True faith is not an end; it is a means to an end. It is not a destination; it is a journey, and the initial act of believing in Christ is a gate leading into the long lane we are to travel with Christ for the rest of our earthly days. That journey is hard and tired, but it is wonderful also, and no one ever regretted the weariness when he came to the end of the road.

Verse
We live [walk] by faith, not by sight.
2 Corinthians 5:7

Thought
It is by faith we walk and keep on walking. If we sit down, simply stand or fall without getting up, we are not walking. Make progress in your journey of faith today!

Prayer
Thank You, Lord, I do not walk alone. You are with me. You lead me. By faith I recognize Your presence and follow you.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, May 27, 2016
Deed Seeds
Every man sows what he will later reap and reaps what he has previously sown. This is a law of life, says Paul, and we may as well know that we cannot beat it. God will not be mocked. We are all sowing our own future, and the seeds we sow are the deeds we do. And, ironically enough, sometimes deeds we neglect to do or are afraid to do become seeds also and bring forth their harvest. For in the total scheme of things it often happens that deeds undone have as great power for good or evil as deeds actually performed. The unbreakable link between harvest and seed was forged by the Lord God Himself at the creation. From Him went forth the word, "after his kind," and that word has linked together the seed and the harvest, the sowing and the reaping, from that day to this. Our today is bound to all our yesterdays, and our tomorrow will be the sum of our present and our past. That is the fact, and we may make of it what we will. The sovereign God has permitted us to have a measure of conditional sovereignty, a mark of the divine image once given at the Creation and partially lost by the Fall.

Verse
Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.
Galatians 6:7

Thought
Today presents unique opportunity-deeds to be done and deeds not to be done. There will be deeds performed. Will they be the right ones or the wrong ones? The closeness of our walk with God and our appropriation of His enablement are the determinants.

Prayer
Lord, help me to make this day special by doing what You want me to do and not doing what is not Your will.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, May 28, 2016
What We Reap Depends On What We Sow
We may sow to the flesh if we will. There will be no interference from above. Thus to sow is our privilege--if we want to reap the harvest of corruption which must inevitably follow, a harvest no man in his right mind could deliberately choose. No, the snare lies in choosing the pleasures of sowing with the secret hope that in some way we can escape the sorrows of the reaping; but never since the beginning of the world has it been possible to separate the one from the other. The way to deal with a law of God is to work along with it. By faith and obedience we can put every divine law to work for us. And the law of sowing and reaping may be brought to our service and made to toil for our everlasting good. So kind is God and so thoughtful of His creatures. "He that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." There it is, and we have but to submit to it to gain from it an everlasting reward. Deeds done in the Spirit, in obedience to Christ and with the purpose of bringing honor to the Triune God, are seeds of endless blessedness. The first gift of life is not by works, but by faith in the work of a sufficient Redeemer; but after the miracle of the new birth has been accomplished, the Christian to a large extent carrries his future in his hands. If he denies himself and takes up his cross in meek obedience, his deeds will become seeds of life and everlasting glory. He may forget his deeds of love or think them small and useless, but God is not unmindful. He never forgets. The sweet harvest of a life well lived will be there to meet the sower after the toil is ended and the heat of the day is past.

Verse
The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary indoing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we
Galatians 6:8-9

Thought
The harvest (not our salvation!) depends on the seed we sow. We can only reap tomorrow what we sow today. What kind of seed are we sowing?

Prayer
You have shown me, Lord, that good seed is doing good to all people. It's not enough to hold the seed, contemplate it. Good seed has to be sown. May I sow much good seed. For Jesus' sake.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, May 29, 2016
Beyond the Shadows
"Behold, Thy servant," confessed Augustine concerning one period in his life; "behold, Thy servant, fleeing from his Lord, and obtaining a shadow." "God is stupendously rich Reality," wrote von Hugel 1,500 years later, "the alone boundlessly rich Reality." These sentences agree with and explain each other, and both accord with the teaching of Scripture and the facts of the creation. God is the only absolute Reality; all other reality is relative and contingent. While the things we know and experience day by day are real, they are not real in themselves but only as God gives them existence. They could not continue to be should God withdraw His constant word of creation and leave them to themselves for even one short moment. Here then is the rational ground for the Christian's insistence that God must be everything to us, that we must hold nothing dear except God. All other things are to be seen in relation to God and valued only as they are held in God and for God. All things are but shadows cast by the great Reality, God, and if we were to gain the whole world and miss God, we should have no more than a handful of shadows.

Verse
On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, 'If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.'
John 7:37

Thought
Our attention may be fixed on the shadows rather than the God-Reality; on the gifts rather than the Giver; the blessings rather than the Blessor. Let's fix our heart-eyes on God!

Prayer
Lord, so often my attention is fixed on blessings, good feelings; wanting life to run smoothly, comfortably. I look to You. I want to draw near to You, to know You.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, May 30, 2016
Stepping Out of the Shadows
All things are but shadows cast by the great Reality, God, and if we were to gain the whole world and miss God, we should have no more than a handful of shadows. With this great eternal truth before His mind--the absolute reality of God as the central fact of existence--Christ taught the necessity of separation from the world and of complete consecration to God as the only way to escape the shadows and obtain those riches that cannot pass away. The modern Christian who insists upon separation as a condition of true spirituality is not the old-fashioned narrow person he is currently declared to be. His religious philosophy is altogether sound and wholly in accord with the total sum of things in heaven and earth. God being who and what He is and things being what they are, complete consecration is the only way to peace for any of us. The drift among Christians today is definitely away from this truth. More and more, our religious leaders are coming to place confidence in shadows and are teaching others to do the same. And just so far as shadows are accepted as real, the one great Reality is ignored. It is hard to think how a greater tragedy could possibly come upon us.

Verse
Then he said to them all: 'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.'"
Luke 9:23-24

Thought
One day we will step on heaven's shore into the full glory of God-Reality. Will we then discover that here on earth we spent most of our life in the shadows, in cultural Christianity, when we could have embraced the reality of God?

Prayer
O Lord, how often I forget that in this world system I am an alien. I want to know You, to follow You. That means taking up my cross daily. May I do it even if few around me understand.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, May 31, 2016
Being Holy In All We Do
It is the privilege of every Christian to live so fully in God that he never gets out of the experienced Presence for one moment. When we have so learned to live in God and to experience His continual Presence, everything in our lives becomes spiritually significant. The old dividing line between the spiritual and the secular is removed, and every act becomes spiritual. What before had seemed mundane and nonspiritual now shines with a new light. God is found to be inhabiting our simplest acts as surely as our most lofty ones. All of life becomes good and acceptable to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. A life lived in Christ becomes in the true sense a life of unceasing prayer. The whole life becomes a prayer: words are verbal prayers, thoughts become mental prayers, deeds become prayers in action and even sleep may be but unconscious prayer. Psychology acknowledges a deep-down stratum of the mind which it calls the subconscious. It is that part which is in control during sleep and while we are under the power of an anesthetic. It may be the part of us that receives spiritual impressions first, becoming consciously aware of them only after they have first been received and registered in that mysterious depth of the mind which lies immediately below consciousness. Whether or not that is the correct explanation for things, it is still true that the whole mind may be placed so fully under the control of Christ that even sleep and forgetfulness work on our side to bless and help us in our practical waking lives. Whatever the explanation, the fact is known to every Spirit-filled Christian. We are only trying to state the familiar truth in less familiar language.

Verse
But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: 'Be holy, because I am holy.'
1 Peter 1:15-16

Thought
'Be holy in all you do.' When we open to the Holy Spirit everything-all rooms of our heart, all the closets, the crevices-everything, those secular/sacred compartmental dividers disappear. We allow the Spirit control of everything!

Prayer
O Spirit of God, I throw open to You my whole heart and life. Change me. Change my thinking. Wholly cleanse. Fill me!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, June 01, 2016
Seeing God through the Window of the Scriptures
There is a naive assumption on the part of many that the Bible has about it some kind of magic power for good, so that merely to read it or quote it is profitable, regardless of the circumstances. This idea needs to be corrected. Peter suggested that the writings of Paul might not always be profitable to everyone. ". . . Even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction" (2 Peter 3:15-16). There is a danger that the Word of God may become an opaque veil to hide God from us, and without doubt it sometimes is just that. The Scripture should be like the atmosphere, a transparent medium through which we look at the sun. When the atmosphere above us stops the light and allows us to see it instead of seeing through it, then its proper function is destroyed. So it is with the Word of God. When we so read the Bible as to make it an end rather than a medium through which we penetrate to the divine Person of God, it is no longer doing its proper work in us. Or otherwise stated, the Bible is a telescope through which we look at the "land that is very far off." When we become content with the telescope, it must surely fail us, for God never meant an instrument to take the place that belongs to Him alone; He never intended that a Book should substitute for the Living Word. The threefold purpose of the Bible is to inform, to inspire faith and to secure obedience. Whenever it is used for any other purpose, it is used wrongly and may do actual injury. The Holy Scriptures will do us good only as we present an open mind to be taught, a tender heart to believe and a surrendered will to obey. If we do these things, then the written Word will surely become to us a transparent lens through which we may gaze upon the Triune God. And so to gaze in faith is to experience a bit of heaven here below.

Verse
Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.
Luke 24:45

Thought
The Scriptures are a window through which to see God; an amplifier by which to hear His voice. Essential in "inscripturization" was the ministry of the Holy Spirit. His ministry continues essential in opening our minds to understand the Scriptures.

Prayer
Open my eyes to see, my ears to hear, my mind to understand. I want to see You, to discern Your voice, to live in the enablement You give. In Jesus' name.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, June 02, 2016
Handling Criticism
"Let not thy peace depend on the tongues of men," said the wise old Christian mystic, Thomas a Kempis; "for whether they judge well or ill, thou art not on that account other than thyself." The desire to stand well with our fellow men is a natural one, and quite harmless up to a point, but when that desire becomes so all-consuming that we cannot be happy apart from the praises of men, it is no longer harmless, it is sinful in itself and injurious in its effects. One of the first things a Christian should get used to is abuse. The sweetest soul ever to live in this world was subjected to an ever-increasing barrage of vile calumny during His walk among men; and if they so used the Master of the house, how can the servants hope to escape? The only way to avoid evil tongues is to withdraw entirely from the society of men; and even then there might be those who would raise a meaningful eyebrow and suggest that perhaps after all we may have a pretty good reason for getting under cover! To do nothing is to get abused for laziness, and to do anything is to get abused for not doing something else.

Verse
My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me.
1 Corinthians 4:4

Thought
How vulnerable we are to the criticism of others, particularly those whom we respect. There is the danger that we listen more closely to the praise and criticism of others than to God. It is God whom we serve today and tomorrow.

Prayer
Lord, You know that I do and say much that is deserving of criticism. May I change where You show me and may I follow Your will even when others do not understand.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, June 03, 2016
God is Our Critic
Was it not Voltaire who said that some people were like insects, they would never be noticed except that they sting? A traveler must make up his mind to go on regardless of the insects that make his trip miserable. They cannot stop a determined man; they can only make his journey unpleasant. So it is with the people who delight to swarm around the ears of God's servants as they move onward toward their appointed goal. We may all expect to be stung by our many fellow humans who appear to have dedicated themselves to the task of causing minor heartaches wherever they can as long as they can to as many people as possible. These misguided people cannot be escaped, they can only be endured. One thing is certain, a Christian's standing before God does not depend upon his standing before men. A high reputation does not make a man dearer to God, nor does the tongue of the slanderer influence God's attitude toward His people in any way. He knows us each one, and we stand or fall in the light of His perfect knowledge. Let us be sure that we are right with God and with men; after that there is nothing we can do except to "both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord." And by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, we may do our hoping and waiting in such a way that our enemies will be forced to admit that we have been with Jesus and learned of Him.

Verse
You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God's judgment seat.
Romans 14:10

Thought
It is to God we are responsible. We can sometimes learn from our critics. But we serve God. He is our judge. Remembering that can help us to go on despite criticism and also save us from becoming critics of others.

Prayer
Forgive me, Lord, for judging my brothers and sisters. And forgive them for unjustly judging me. Help me to discern the difference between evil criticism and that which is for my good.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, June 04, 2016
Never-ending Love
Meister Eckhart said that God must love if He is to remain God. Were He to stop loving us He would lose His Godhead. Such expressions as "if God is to remain God" and all others like them are in one sense ridiculous, for God can never cease to be God, nor can He lose anything that is Himself. The human mind, however, in its struggle to understand the impenetrable mysteries that surround the Person of God, is forced to think according to its own laws and to express itself in language that is in itself inaccurate, but which nevertheless represents an honest effort of the human heart to grasp the inconceivable. In saying that God must love us if He is to remain God, we are simply thinking human thoughts about God. It is the effort of the finite to contain the infinite, and while the thoughts are short of the mark, they are the best we are able to produce, we being what we are. Eckhart was right in saying that God must love us. God being what He is, He has no choice. His love falls upon everything and everyone as the sun's rays light upon all the ten thousand objects on the face of the earth. The sun has no choice; it must shine on, whether it is shining upon a beautiful forest or a rubbish heap. The object upon which it shines has nothing to do with its shining. It shines because it is the sun. God is love, so His loving is not something He may do nor not do at His will. Loving us is not an intermittent act or series of acts which God does in between other acts. His love flows steadily out upon the whole human race in an unbroken and continuous fullness. There is not a time, not a fraction of time, when God's love is not active toward us. It is as constant as the being of God, for it is the being of God in unforced, normal expression.

Verse
Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
1 John 4:8

Thought
God is love. He eternally loves others. "Love is the being of God in unforced, normal expression." What release to know that God does not stop loving me when I fail Him. His love is as eternal as He is, because God is love.

Prayer
O God, I will never understand the quality, the depth, the eternalness of Your love. But thank You, thank You. 

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, June 05, 2016
Love the Cause of Redemption
Everything that God does is done without effort or strain. He does all his acts with equal ease and tranquillity. We are often tempted to wonder how God could love us, but honest as this feeling is, it is nevertheless the result of a wrong way of looking at things. God does not love us because we are hard or easy to love; He loves us because He is God, not because we are good or bad or more attractive or less so. God's love is not drawn out of Him by its object; it flows out from God in a steady stream because He is love. "God so loved the world," not because the world was lovable but because God is love. Christ did not die for us that God might love us; He died for us because God already loved us from everlasting. Love is not the result of redemption; it is the cause of it. One question may demand to be answered: Does God love some people more than others? If not, what was meant by calling John "the disciple Jesus loved," as if to say that He loved John more than the rest? The answer is simple. John was more responsive to the love of Christ and could receive and enjoy it to a greater fullness. The divine love could operate toward this loving man with a joyous freedom not possible with others who had not his simplicity and faith. The sunflower that turns its face to the sky all day long gets more sun than the violet that hides among the leaves. But the same sun shines in fullness upon both. God has no favorites, except as some of His children by their loving response make it possible for Him to shower more love upon them.

Verse
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:16

Thought
God loves us because He is God. He does not love some of us more or less than others. He loves each one. Out of His love He has provided redemption. Are we running to His love or running from it?

Prayer
Father, You so love me that You gave Christ for me. He so loved me that He paid the penalty of my sin by dying for me. In thanks and worship I bow before You.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, June 06, 2016
Livng By Faith In the Victor
The two major elements present in the Easter story are the fact and the meaning of the fact. That Christ arose after He had been put to death by crucifixion is the fact; the true historicity of the event is too well established to require proof or even comment today. The meaning of that resurrection, however, must be rediscovered by each believing soul and by the church age after age till our Lord returns to earth again. One meaning attached to the resurrection is that Christ has conquered the enemies of mankind and guaranteed the final triumph of all true believers over every power of the devil. For the rescue of the lost race was effected only after a fight. Let us not allow our poetic imagination to run away with us. Easter is more than sunshine and lilies. It signifies the appearance again of our David who went into the field to meet the Goliath of sin and death in mortal combat. Christ came back to assure us that the victory had been won. Death and the devil had been done in by the only One who was capable of such a mighty act, Jesus the Son of God. An old hymn states this for us in ecstatic language: The strife is o'er, the battle done; The victory of life is won; The Song of triumph has begun--Hallelujah! The powers of death have done their worst,But Christ their legions hath dispersed; Let shouts of holy joy outburst--Hallelujah! He brake the age-bound chains of hell; The bars from heaven's high portals fell; Let hymns of praise His triumph tell: Hallelujah!

Verse
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 15:56-57

Thought
Not only has Christ won the victory over sin, death and Satan, we may share in that victory. We can't win it ourselves but we can participate in it by faith identification with the Victor.

Prayer
Thank You, Father, for victory through the Lord Jesus Christ. I stand with Christ in His victory.
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Tozer Devotional Empty Re: Tozer Devotional

Post  Admin Sat 21 May 2016, 10:18 pm

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, May 02, 2016
Family Matters
It is too bad that anything so obvious should need to be said at this late date, but from all appearances, we Christians have about forgotten the lesson so carefully taught by Paul: God's servants are not to be competitors, but co-workers. In any religious work there are two interests, either of which may be served: the spiritual interest or the natural; the divine or the human; our own or God's. And it is altogether possible to serve our own interests with poured-out devotion. It is possible to serve the flesh even while engaged in the most intense sort of religious activities. The very fact that our activities are religious will sometimes disguise the presence of the rankest kind of selfishness. It is impossible for two servants of Christ to compete as long as the work they are doing is God's work. When the spirit of competition enters, we may be sure that the work of God is no longer being done. God is one; it is wholly impossible for Him to compete with Himself. As long as His Spirit is in control there can be no such thing as competition among those who are under that control. The Spirit achieves cooperation, always, and makes of His servants not competitors, but co-workers.

Verse
For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building.
1 Corinthians 3:9

Thought
The church, its servants, its people are God's. There is, then, no basis and nor room for competition. Just as there is no competition in the Godhead.

Prayer
Father, varied are the traditions, the interpretation of certain biblical passages, and the gifts of my brothers and sisters in Christ. But we are one family. We are co-workers for Your glory. May I treat them as co-workers not competitors.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, May 03, 2016
Cultivating the Psychology of Cooperation
A local church, as long as it is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, cannot entertain the psychology of competition. When it begins to compete with another church, it is a true church of God no longer; it has voided its character and gone down onto a lower level. The Spirit that indwells it is no longer divine; it is human merely, and its activities are pitched on the plane of the natural. Wherever the spirit of competition between brethren rears its head, there will be found carnality, selfishness and sin. The only way to deal with it is to tag it for what it is and put it away in the sorrows of repentance. The Holy Spirit always cooperates with Himself in His members. The Spirit-directed body does not tear itself apart by competition. The ambitions of the various members are submerged in the glory of the Head, and whatever brings honor to the Head meets with the most eager approval of the members. We should cultivate the idea that we are co-workers rather than competitors. We should ask God to give us the psychology of cooperation. We should learn to think of ourselves as being members in particular of one and the same body, and we should reject with indignation every suggestion of the enemy designed to divide our efforts.

Verse
I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.
1 Corinthains 3:6-7

Thought
Since the church, its ministry, its servants, its people are God's, ministers and people cooperate in serving and glorifying God. A physical body in which the individual members compete rather than cooperate illustrates the chaos that results when compet

Prayer
By Your Spirit, Lord, remind me that I am one member of Your family. May I relate to other believers, other ministers as to family members with whom to cooperate not compete.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, May 04, 2016
Christ the Source of Moral Beauty
One thing the Bible teaches very plainly is that Christ is the sum of all virtues and the essense of all beauty. On this subject, modern Christians have a lot to learn. We have been cheated of this truth for the last half-century or more, the emphasis falling elsewhere. And we are always victims of the prevailing religious vogue. Whatever is getting the attention from our spiritual leaders is what we finally come to accept as orthodoxy in any given period of history. And right now we are definitely not hearing much about the loveliness of Jesus. Christ is God shining through the personality of a man, and shining unhindered. His sacred humanity does not veil His divine beauty in any degree. The Christ who lived among men showed forth the nature of God as certainly as if He had still been with His Father in the preincarnate state. There is no moral beauty but what Christ is the source of it. Every trait of lovely character we see in any believing man or woman is but an imperfect demonstration of how wonderful Jesus is. Even those moral beauties that appear to be "natural" to some people have their source in Him. For human goodness cannot exist apart from Christ. They are but broken lights of Thee, And Thou, O Christ, are more than they.

Verse
One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.
Psalm 27:4

Thought
The more we gaze upon the moral beauty of the Lord, particularly as reflected in the human personality of Christ, the more we want to be like Him. Reflecting Christ's beauty in our own piece of the world points others to Him.

Prayer
Father, let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me. I've seen shades of that beauty in the lives of some of Your children. May Your Spirit produce it in me. In Jesus' name.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, May 05, 2016
Christ's Loveliness Reflected in His People
Some good Christians are afraid to give notice to any lovely virtues which may appear here and there among God's people lest they detract from the glory of Christ. Such timidity is understandable, but uncalled for. If we know to begin with that all goodness is from Christ, that all sweetness, all holiness, all loveliness are out of Him and from Him and in Him, we will not hesitate to recognize moral excellence wherever it may occur on this dark planet. If a ray of holy light shines out from any man's life, it must be because Christ is there shining in secret in a human breast, and we should be quick to catch this dim glimpse of the Light of the World again incarnated in a human being. The glory of Christ will not suffer from this frank and eager acknowledgment of virtue where we find it. Because we are sentient beings, we must have some love-motivation to keep us running. This fact (on a lower level) is well known to everyone. God knew this (for He made us) and gave us the supreme love-Object of the universe to fire our hearts with holy passion. That Object is Jesus. The Christian faith may be summed up in the love of Jesus. To love Him enough is to be sweetly and wonderfully free. To love Him as He should be loved is to know at once complete release from religious forms and traditions. It is to reach the goal of life even here below.

Verse
And let the loveliness of our Lord, our God, rest on us, confirming the work that we do. Oh, yes. Affirm the work that we do! (The Message).
Psalm 90:17

Thought
Experiencing Christ's love and loving Him brings a new dimension to daily living. We serve Him, we obey Him, we follow Him because we love Him! Have we opened ourselves to that love?

Prayer
May Your loveliness rest on me and all your people. It is that loveliness that confirms the work we do. We serve You as an expression of our love for You.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, May 06, 2016
Free Indeed!
It is a difficult thing to do, yet very necessary that we find a place of complete spiritual freedom and loving dependence upon one another. Here in the wide valley between two high and dangerous peaks is the broad dwelling of God's true and wise children. The spirit of complete inward freedom is a precious heritage from the cross and should be treasured as one of life's most wonderful possessions. It is our privilege to be wholly free from evil habits, from superstition, from the fear of men, from the slavery of popular customs, from the necesssity of pleasing the self-elected dictators of society. Such freedom is wondrously delightful, near to the joy of heaven itself. The one whom the Son has set free is as free from others as if there were no others living in the world. He would walk with God in quiet inward liberty if no one else on earth were to go along with him. Yet such a happy soul has no feeling of independence; he is deeply conscious that he is a member of a larger body of which Christ is the head, and he willingly acknowledges his indebtedness to all other Christians. He thanks God for every one of His children and is eager to learn from all of them. He is grateful for "holy men of God who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost," for translators, expositors, teachers, intercessors, hymnists, and he thankfully acknowledges the part they all had in ministering to his own life the liberating things of the free Spirit.

Verse
So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
John 8:36

Thought
How much we owe to those men and women of God who have gone on before. From their experience and example we have learned much. Yet we, too, may walk with God, enjoying the freedom He gives while learning of Him through others who so walked.

Prayer
Father, I want to know that full freedom which is in Christ. I want to be free in the Spirit yet sensitive to what You teach me through other believers


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, May 07, 2016
Dependent Freedom
There will always be danger from one or the other of these two extremes, slavish dependence or arrogant independence. Some Christians (by far the majority) will accept a place of timid conformity and surrender themselves to the bondage of authority and custom. In all things religious they will become meek followers of popular trends within their own circle. Such as these have no vision of their own, no true convictions, no inward freedom. They are slaves of the religious machine; they know nothing of the liberty with which Christ has made us free. The other extreme is found here and there among us, and while it never has as many followers as the cult of bondage, it is nevertheless quite well represented in orthodox circles. Its followers glorify freedom to a point where they deny their proper debt to fellow Christians and scorn the interdependence of the body. They are often contemptuous of spiritual authority, and they deny the right of Spirit-gifted men to exercise their gifts within the church. This breeds a kind of religious anarchy that is altogether unscriptural and, as might be expected, extremely injurious to the cause of true spirituality. Both extremes must be avoided. We must live in the paradox of happy dependent freedom.

Verse
You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.
Galatians 5:13

Thought
Christ is the source of true freedom. He teaches us and leads us through other believers. But we are primarily servants to Him not to them. With our brothers and sisters in Christ we are fellow pilgrims, fellow servants. We serve Him in serving others. W

Prayer
Thank You, Father, for freedom in Christ. Help me to guard against self-indulgence. May I freely serve others in love by Your enablement.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, May 08, 2016
"Lord, Do It Again!"
Such a fast hold does inertia have upon almost everything religious that it takes a powerful and sudden attack by determined forces to move anything. It takes something like a crusade to get anything done these days. The principle of laissez faire is so firmly implanted in all of us that something in the nature of an earthquake is needed to jar us loose and start us on the right way. It is an illuminating experience to read the history of the great spiritual movements that have blessed the world over the last 2,000 years. Scarely any of these began quietly; almost always they struck the earth with the suddenness of a cyclone. We have only to mention a few to prove our point: the ministry of John the Baptist, the appearance of Jesus Christ with His miracles, Pentecost, the Reformation, the Wesleyan revivals, the Great Awakening, revivals in Wales, in Korea, the strange and wonderful work under the Prophet Harris in Africa--the list is long. These movements struck with the unexpectedness of lightning and found people without a defense against them. Methodism, for instance moved with the speed of a forest fire and took on the character of a crusade. The spiritual certainty within the hearts of a select few became so white-hot that it set others on fire around it and started an unplanned movement toward a return to New Testament standards and the deeper things of the Spirit.

Verse
Lord, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, O LORD. Renew them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy.
Habakkuk 3:2

Thought
True revival is not something we can manufacture. It must come from God. It is not about personalities and methods and strategies. It is God moving in sovereign power.

Prayer
O Lord, do it again! Stir Your Church with renewing power as You have done in times past. Send refreshing. In Jesus' name.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, May 09, 2016
Movements That Cease to Move
It is an illuminating experience to read the history of the great spiritual movements that have blessed the world over the last 2,000 years. Scarcely any of these began quietly; almost always they struck the earth with the suddenness of a cyclone. . . . History shows another fact also. When the first heat of the originators of great movements had spent itself after their death, immediately another spirit entered and took over--it was the spirit of conventionalism. It retained the outward form of the orginal movement but lost all the inward heat. The movement ceased to move; its adherents gained popularity and lost power; the apocalyptic quality of its message disappeared; its new teachers set about to make its teaching acceptable to Christendom--and their success became at last their greatest tragedy. It is a lamentable fact that the crusading spirit is almost wholly lost to the deeper life branches of the church. Modern crusaders are for the most part no more than high octane proselyters operating down on a level far below New Testament plateaus. They make all the noise and get all the notice, while hungry-hearted saints shake their heads in discouragement and wait for-what?

Verse
Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?
Psalm 85:6

Thought
Often God uses little people in bringing revival to His Church. People filled with the Spirit who are fully convinced of their weakness and unworthiness but firmly trusting in God's power. Many of us God could not use in reviving His Church. We would tak

Prayer
Father, will You not revive us again. By Your Spirit cause our "movement" to move! Not by our might nor our power but by Your Spirit, O God.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, May 10, 2016
That Persistent Question
A droll bit of advice sometimes given to persons who are being bothered by some disagreeable problem is, "Let it alone and it will go away by itself." While the words are usually intended to be humorous, they express, better than many more serious words would do, an unfortunate habit which is altogether too prevalent among us. It is the habit of neglecting spiritual questions in the vague hope that they will stop bothering us and go away of themselves. We all come into the world with one tremendous question facing us, the question of our relation to the God from whose hand we came. None of the heavy problems propounded by philosophy can equal this one in vital significance and solemn meaning for the individual man. So important is it that it may properly be said that no other question really exists at all till this one has been settled. And it will not settle itself; it must be settled by each one of us personally and individually. lf we ignore it, it will not go away. It will be there to haunt us in the last day we spend on earth, and it will be there to face us in the day of judgment when it is too late to do anything about it. The question is not a philosophical one merely; it is not even a theological one. It is strictly personal. The deceitful human heart would like only too well to involve it in the fog of doctrinal argument and thus rob it of its real meaning. That is a common way to deal with it, but it is never a satisfactory way. The question will come back again out of the fog to demand a true answer, that is, a moral answer. What shall I do with my sin?

Verse
When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, 'Brothers, what shall we do?'
Acts 2:37

Thought
Reflection: Sin. We may call it by less offensive terms. We may even dismiss it as nonexistent. But it is there. It stares at us in the mirror and in the lives of other people. Sin. My sin. What am I to do about it?

Prayer
Lord, that load of sin. Some of my sin others clearly see. Some of it I successfully hide from other people. But You know all about it. And You alone provide the remedy through Christ. Thank You!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, May 11, 2016
The World's Primary Problem
Two questions are embraced within the one problem: What shall I do with my sin? and what shall I do with Jesus which is called Christ? In spite of every effort of the pseudo-learned world to dispose of the sin question, it remains still, a perennial heartache to the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve. It is one of those persistent pains that lies deep in the soul and never quite stops hurting. It just won't go away. The devil and the busy sons of men have sought throughout the centuries for something to make this problem go away. They have invented how many thousands of amusements, they have created innumerable pleasures to take the mind off its central woe; but nothing works. Sin is still the world's first problem. The second question, What shall I do with Jesus? is the anwer to the first one, because Jesus came to save men from their sins. Let us answer the second one rightly and the first one will be solved automatically. If we but come to Jesus with our sin upon us and without any hope except His mercy, we shall surely be delivered from the ancient curse. But remember, sin demands an answer. It won't just go away. It must be carried away by redeeming blood, and redeeming blood was never shed by any other lamb except the Lamb of God.

Verse
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.
1 Peter 2:24

Thought
Christ has died for your sin and mine. Not just the sin of the past which we have confessed and for which we have asked forgiveness but sin in the future which we shall confess. What unfailing love! What amazing grace!

Prayer
O Christ, You bore my sins in Your body on the cross. By Your wounds I am healed. You did it so that I might die to sins and live for righteousness. Lord, I want so to live!

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, May 12, 2016
Serving God's Purpose in This Generation
The life Ideal was described by the apostle in the Book of Acts: "For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep." We submit that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to improve upon this. It embraces the whole sphere of religion, appearing as it does in its three directions: God, the individual, society. Within that simple triangle all possible human activities are carried on. To each of us there can be but these three dimensions: God, myself, others. Beyond this we cannot go, nor should we even attempt to go. If we serve God according to His own will, and in doing so serve our generation, we shall have accomplished all that is possible for any human being. David was smart enough to serve God and his generation before he fell asleep. To fall asleep before we have served our generation is nothing short of tragic. It is good to sleep at last, as all our honored fathers have done, but it is a moral calamity to sleep without having first labored to bless the world. No man has any right to die until he has put mankind in debt to him. No man has any moral right to lie down on the earth till he has wrought to take something of the earth out of the hearts of men, till he has helped to free men from the tyranny of that same earth and pointed them to that kingdom that will abide after the heavens and the earth are no more.

Verse
For when David had served God's purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep; he was buried with his fathers and his body decayed.
Acts 13:36

Thought
David served God's purpose in his generation. What purpose does God have for you and me in our generation? Are we serving it?

Prayer
Father, I am not a David in spiritual strength, gifts or leadership. But I am Your servant where You have placed me. Reach out to people through me for Jesus' sake.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, May 13, 2016
Under Obligation
David's religion had social implications, but he was no mere do-gooder, no patcher-upper of the world's hurts. All his service was rendered according to the will of God. It was the divine quality in his ministry that made it immortal. Many good deeds may be done whose final effects will not be lasting. A sick man laboring to cure the ills of another sick man may be a moving sight, but it can hardly be a reassuring one, for both will die at last. But the service that can bring the healing touch of God into human life is infinitely to be preferred to any other. It is the will of God that brings eternity into human toil. We should remember that if we are to serve our generation we must get at it right away, for our generation will not be around long. Isaac Watts wrote: Time, like an ever rolling stream Bears all its sons away; They fly, forgotten, as a dream Dies at the opening day.We are all born in debt to the world, and that debt increases as we grow older. If we are wise in the Spirit, we shall see to it that we turn the tables and put the world in debt to us. This we can do only by serving our generation by the will of God before it is too late.

Verse
I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish."
Romans 1:14

Thought
As was Paul so are we under obligation to share the Good News of Christ with people all around us. We are under obligation to share Christ by our life, our daily living and our words. People need the Lord!

Prayer
Holy Spirit, use even me. I'm so weak, so small, so unimpressive. But reach out through me. For Christ's sake.


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, May 14, 2016
Serving God in Serving Others
Any serious-minded Christian may at some time find himself wondering whether the service he is giving to God is the best it could be. He may even have times of doubting, and fear that his toil is fruitless and his life empty. This is not as bad as it sounds, and may actually prove to be an excellent thing for him--if he knows how to use it. Christian service, like every other phase of religion, can become a very hollow affair. The church has marked out certain work and approved it as service acceptable to God, and for the most part the church has been right. But is should be kept in mind that it is not the kind or quantity of work that makes it true service--it is the quality. Before the judgment seat of Christ, very little will be heard of numbers or size; moral quality is about all that will matter then. If we are wise we will give attention now to the quality of our service; it is obvious that it will be too late to do anything about it when the service is ended and the account rendered up.

Verse
The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'"
Matthew 25:40

Thought
We're inclined to try to serve better and harder if we serve in high profile and are amply rewarded in human adulation. Often service is of the highest quality when least noticed and recognized, except by the Lord.

Prayer
Father, help me to remember that it is You I serve in serving others, whether or not noticed and appreciated by others. It is You I serve.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, May 15, 2016
Quality Service
The great weight of exhortation these days is in the direction of zeal and activity. "Let's get going" is the favorite watchword for gospel workers, with the result that everyone feels ashamed to sit down and think. But it will pay to do it, nevertheless. It would be a shock to most of us to learn just what God thinks of our breathless activity, and a greater shock to many to find out the true quality of our service as God sees it. For not all religious activity is accepted of God, not even when it appears to produce results and get things done. The Lord seeth not as man seeth. Christian service, to be accepted of God, must be fresh and sincere. Whatever is done out of habit is not approved; anything done in a perfunctory manner is below the level of quality expected of us. The careless song, the sermon preached for no higher reason than because it is Sunday again, the tithe tossed into the plate, the testimony given because it seems the thing to do--not one of these will stand up under the searching eyes of God. In Christian service motive is everything, for it is motive that gives to every moral act its final quality.

Verse
And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Colossians 3:17

Thought
For the believer there is no secular/sacred dichotomy. All is sacred whether carrying out work in the office, the school, the shop, the home. We may do all to the glory of God!

Prayer
Lord, please remind me that service to You is not restricted to a church building or a church office position. I can do the menial tasks of life to Your glory though unnoticed by others.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Mon, May 16, 2016
Magical Words and Real Faith
Faith differs from superstition in its ground of hope. Faith rests upon character, specifically the character of God. A word is only as good as the character of the one who uttered it. Superstition counts upon a word, a text, and never thinks back of the text to the one who gave it. For the superstitious man there is a magic power in a word quite apart from the one who spoke it. The very word is magical and has only to be spoken under the right circumstances to be effective; morality or character have no place in this scheme of things. Words only count there. This in its various manifestations is a sure mark of superstition. Even in some Christian circles this ill-grounded trust in sounds and symbols is encountered all too frequently. Some believers, for instance, fear to speak the name of Jesus apart from the titles which accompany it. They dare not say Jesus, but must always say the Lord Jesus Christ, regardless of the circumstances. Obviously they believe that God is concerned with the protocol of word arrangement and will be displeased if the order is broken. Such words as amen, hallelujah, glory and others of like sacred association are repeated endlessly and meaninglessly in the apparent belief that they have in them some strange power for good. This can be no more than high-grade magic. It will pay us to search our own hearts thoroughly to discover just why we use these words.

Verse
Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, 'In the name of Jesus whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.'
Acts 19:13

Thought
The seven sons of Sceva sought to use the name of Jesus in attempting to exorcise spirits from those demon-possessed. They failed miserably because they neither knew Jesus or trusted in Him. What we believe and in whom we believe is what counts.

Prayer
Lord, forgive me for using words, even Your name, as if there were some magical meaning to them. It is Your Person, who You are--Almighty God--in whom I trust and rest through Christ.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Tue, May 17, 2016
The Great and Sovereign God
Any sound religious experience must begin with a proper conception of the nature of God. The terrible power of idolatry for evil lies in its unworthy conception of the character of the Supreme Being. Indeed it may be said without qualification that all religious experience that incorporates in itself low or ignoble ideas of God is in essence superstitious. The god of superstition is an irresponsible god, arbitrary and without character. The supersititious person must constantly try to outwit him or placate him or catch him with words and force a favor out of him. But such a person is never at peace because he is never sure of anything. His hope is fugitive and skittish. There is no trustworthy being back of his faith; there are only words. True faith does not rest upon texts alone but upon God who wrote the text. The word is an expression of the character of God and is exactly as good as that character, no more and no less. The free man in Christ has been delivered from the "tyranny of words." He has gone beyond the word to God Himself and has found there his true fatherland and everlasting home. He can no longer be intimidated by the little slave-men who threaten him with punishment if he fails to repeat this religious phrase or mutter that sacred word. He has discovered the true ground of religious hope--the character of God. To such a man the Scriptures are the very words of God, meaningless apart from Him but altogether glorious when understood as the verbal expression of His holy being.

Verse
How great you are, O Sovereign LORD! There is no one like you, and there is no God but you, as we have heard with our own ears.
2 Samuel 7:22

Thought
It is not the phonetic sound of "God words" or words written on paper in which we believe. It is God. Because of who He is we can trust Him, His word and His promises.

Prayer
Sovereign LORD, how great You are! There is none like You. You are God and in You I trust.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Wed, May 18, 2016
Created in the Image of God
At the risk of being charged with inexcusable boldness, we venture the assertion that while the Incarnation is mysterious, it is not illogical or contrary to reason. We would not presume to settle with a pen stroke those profound and awful mysteries which have stilled the voices of the ages and brought men and angels to their knees in worship; but we would dare to say that in our opinion the act of becoming man was altogether reasonable from God's standpoint. It placed no strain upon the divine nature and admitted into the scheme of God nothing unnatural or inconsistent. The reasons for so believing are these: Man was originally made in the image of God. "God created man; in the likeness of God made he him." This is a cardinal docrine of the Christian faith. It is not necessary to understand all that is included in this doctrine, for even here we run into some real theological problems. But faith can soar where reason can never climb, and it is only necessary that we believe the truth. Its power over us depends upon our believing it, not upon our understanding it. The fact is all that matters: man was made in the image of God. Now, if man was made in the image of God, then God must certainly carry something of the image of man. (That sin has marred the image and introduced a foreign and destructive element into human nature does not detract from the force of the argument.) If a boy looks like his father it must surely follow that the father must look like the boy. Somewhere within man's nature, twisted and deformed as it may be, there is godlikeness. This will not be seriously questioned by anyone who knows his Bible. No student of Christian theology would deny this as a fact, though he might reject the conclusions we draw from the fact.

Verse
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:27

Thought
The image of God in which we are created is certainly not bodily form. Image gathers up aspects of spirit (ruach/pneuma), soul (nephesh/psyche) and heart (leb/kardia). Sin has marred and distorted that image but not destroyed it. Every human being has a

Prayer
Lord, I fall so short of the potential You have provided. You have made me in Your image. Sin and self have terribly blurred and marred that image. But You give me Your Spirit that I may know You.

TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Thu, May 19, 2016
God in "People" Expression
If in the infinite condescension of God, mankind was made with a nature somewhat like its creator, then is it not reasonable that God could clothe Himself with human nature in the mystery of incarnation? and all within the framework of easy possibility without the embarrassment of uniting things unlike each other? When the ancient Word stood up in human flesh, He felt at home. He was not out of His element, for had He not heard the Father say, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness"? There was nor jar, no wrench caused by the forced union of dissimilar natures. It is our humble opinion that the "exile" element in the earthly experience of our Lord has been greatly overplayed. That He was sad and lonely and far from home, a stranger in a strange land, is an idea that has grown up around the beautiful and the simple fact, but it is not necessarily a part of the fact. So far as we can recall there is nothing in the record to give the impression that His presence in human flesh was an unnatural or painful experience. He happily called Himself "the Son of man," not an exile among men. All this is not to attempt to take away from the valid mystery that surrounds the Incarnation or to lessen the awe with which we contemplate the wonder of the Word becoming flesh to dwell among us. It is rather to clear away unauthorized notions and give the beauty of the Incarnation a chance to make its own impression upon us. That impression will be deep enough without our adding anything to it.

Verse
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:14

Thought
In Christ, God becomes "people"-you and me kind of people except for our sin. He exuded the glory of the Only Begotten. The eye of faith could perceive His origin and sense that He was full of grace and truth. All this in "people" expression.

Prayer
Father, I see in Christ living among people what You desire in my living by means of the indwelling Spirit. He produces the product of His control-the fruit of the Spirit. May that fruit characterize my life!


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Fri, May 20, 2016
Persevering Strength Produced Through Trials
The whole Bible and all past history unite to teach that battles are always won before the armies take the field. The critical moment for any army is not the day it engages the foe in actual combat; it is the day before or the month before or the year before. It is an old saying that the wars of England were won on the playing fields of Eton. The experience of hard training, tough competition and sportsmanship gained in their school years prepared the young men for real war when it came. Again that rule holds for all of us everywhere, even up on the high levels of spirital warfare. It did not take Moses long to lead the children of Israel out through the Red Sea to deliverance and freedom; but his fittedness to lead them out was the result of years of hard discipline. It took David only a few minutes to dispose of Goliath; but he had beaten the giant long before in the person of the lion and the bear. Elijah faced a sulking King Ahab and stared him down in the name of Jehovah, but we must remember that his courage to stand before kings was the result of years spent in standing before the King of kings. Christ stood silent in the presence of Pilate and for our sake went calmly out to die. He could endure the anguish of the cross because He had suffered the pains of Gethsemane the night before; there was a direct relationship between the two experiences. One served as a preparation for the other.

Verse
Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing or your faith develops perseverance.
James 1:2-3

Thought
Who of us welcomes trials and counts them as pure joy? Trials hurt but they also prepare. Trials produce perseverance which leads to maturity. Want to grow in Christ? Welcome trials!

Prayer
Father, forgive me for my whining when undergoing trial and discipline. You see what is ahead and are preparing me for it. Help me to so understand what is occurring and to accept it in faith.  


TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sat, May 21, 2016
Discipline That Prepares Us
The whole Bible and all past history unite to teach that battles are always won before the armies take the field. The converse of this is true also. Battles are never lost the day they are fought. They are lost the day or the year before; the results merely become manifest when the armies meet. If we were wise enough, we could predict without fail the outcome of any battle, for the law of causation determines it always. Lot fled from Sodom with the tattered remnant of his family and left all his property behind to perish in the flames, but his loss did not occur the night he escaped the burning city; it occurred the day he lifted up his eyes and saw all the well-watered plains of Jordan and coveted them. On a certain night Judas betrayed Christ with a kiss, but his tragic downfall did not take place that night; it only became evident. For months he had been undermining his own soul by filching from the meager funds entrusted to his care. He had gotten himself ready for the kind of death he died by the kind of life he had lived. His betrayal and suicide might have been accurately predicted by anyone who could have known what had been going on inside him during the days before the betrayal. Preparation is vital. Let this be noted by everyone. We can seek God today and get prepared to meet temptation tomorrow; but if we meet the enemy without first having met God, the outcome is not conjectural; the issue is already decided. We can only lose. We do well to imitate the ant who takes advantage of the summer to get ready for the winter.

Verse
No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
Hebrews 12:11

Thought
Huge victories and shattering defeats do not occur in a vacuum or in a moment of time. Rather, they are like a long burning wick of a bomb. Victories and defeats result from discipline or lack of it over a period of time which God uses to prepare us.

Prayer
You discipline me for my good, Lord, so that I may share in Your holiness. That discipline sometimes seems exceedingly hard. Yet You know what I need because You know what is coming.
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TOZER DEVOTIONAL
Sun, May 01, 2016
Those Matters Beyond Human Understanding
A determination to know what cannot be known always works harm to the Christian heart. Ignorance in matters on our human level is never to be excused if there has been opportunity to correct it. But there are matters which are obviously "too high for us." These we should meet in trusting faith and say as Jesus said, "Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight." There are things that we can never understand until we have the benefit of advanced experience and the addition of a light beyond anything we possess at present. Under those circumstances it is not good to attempt to understand. Confessed ignorance becomes us better. Human curiosity and pride often combine to drive us to try to understand acts of God which are plainly outside the field of human understanding. We dislike to admit that we do not know what is going on, so we torture our minds trying to fathom the mysterious ways of the Omniscient One. It's hard to conceive of a more fruitless task. For instance, a child which had been long desired and prayed for is suddenly taken away. The parents are prostrated with grief, and to add to their suffering comes the torturing thought that they should know why it all happened, but do not. Then begins the long, painful attempt to learn the secret of life and death. Why did this happen? What does God have in mind? These poor friends bruise their minds cruelly trying to fathom the unfathomable. We may as well learn (and the earlier the better) that God has no private secretaries who are on the inside of the secrets of eternity. All God wanted to say, He has said in the Scriptures. Beyond that we show the greatest wisdom simply to remain still before Him and whisper, "Even so, Father." To the adoring heart, the best and most satisfying explanation for anything always will be, "It seemed good in thy sight."

Verse
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,' declares the LORD. 'As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.'
Isaiah 55:8-9

Thought
There are mysteries God deigns to unlock for humankind and there are other mysteries that will always remain just that. We sometimes confuse the two categories.

Prayer
Thank You, God, that I am not God. For the foolishness of sometimes trying to be, forgive me.
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