Inspirational Quotes by A.W. Tozer
“God took religion from the realm of the external and made it internal. Our trouble is that we are trying to confirm the truth of Christianity by an appeal to external evidence. We are saying, “Well, look at this fellow. He can throw a baseball farther than anybody else and he is a Christian, therefore Christianity must be true.” “Here is a great statesman who believes the Bible. Therefore, the Bible must be true.” We quote Daniel Webster or Roger Bacon. We write books to show that some scientist believed in Christianity: therefore, Christianity must be true. We are all the way out on the wrong track, brother! That is not New Testament Christianity at all. That is a pitiful, whimpering, drooling appeal to the flesh. That never was the testimony of the New Testament, never the way God did things—never! You might satisfy the intellects of men by external evidences, and Christ did, I say, point to external evidence when He was here on earth.”
“body and mind and life and heart, taking the whole personality over, gently, but directly and bluntly, and making it His, so that we may become a habitation of God through the Spirit.”
“When I hear that the Church of Christ has gone throughout the whole world carrying the torch of civilization, healing and giving hope and help, I conclude the Christian Church must be of God because she is acting the way God would act. When I hear that she has founded hospitals and insane asylums, I say surely she must be of God because that is what God would do, being what He is. When I hear that she has emancipated woman and has taken her from being a chattel slave and an object of some old king’s lust to being the equal of the man and queen in his home, I say surely that must be of God.”
“When they came to Jesus nobody except a hypocrite ever needed to fear Him. When a hypocrite came to Jesus He just sliced him to bits and sent him away bleeding from every pore. If they were ready to give up their sin and follow the Lord and they came in simplicity of heart and said, “Lord, what do You want me to do?” the Lord took all the time in the world to talk to them and explain to them and to correct any false impressions or wrong ideas they had. He is the sweetest, most understanding and wonderful Teacher in the world, and He never panics anybody. It is sin that does that. If there is a sense of panic upon your life, it may be because there is sin in that life of yours which you need to get rid of.”
“There is a spiritual loneliness, an inner aloneness, an inner place where God brings the seeker, where he is as lonely as if there were not another member of the Church anywhere in the world. Ah, when you come there, there is a darkness of mind, an emptiness of heart, a loneliness of soul, but it is preliminary to the daybreak. O God, bring us, somehow, to the daybreak!”
“if you would cultivate the Spirit’s acquaintance, you must get hold of your thoughts and not allow your mind to be a wilderness in which every kind of unclean beast roams and bird flies. You must have a clean heart.”
“Holy Spirit has will and intelligence and feeling and knowledge and sympathy and ability to love and see and think and hear and speak and desire the same as any person has.”
“Matter is one mode of being; spirit is another mode of being as authentic as matter.”
“I stand for believing in God and defying the devil—and our God loves that kind of courage among His people. If you are still wrapped in grave clothes and great fears lie upon you, it is time for you to dare to rise and in sweet faith in the risen Jesus Christ declare: “I will not take this any longer. I am a child of God—why should I go mourning all the day?” Will God answer? “All right, My child,” He will answer as the burden rolls away, “I have waited long to hear you say that. Jesus is Victor and in Him you overcome!”
“Matter bumps against other matter and stops; it cannot penetrate. Spirit can penetrate everything”
“I hear people testify about their search for the deeper Christian life and it sounds as though they would like to be able to get it in pill form. It seems that it would have been much more convenient for them if God had arranged religion so they could take it like a pill with a glass of water. They buy books, hoping to get their religion by prescription. But there isn’t any such thing. There is a cross. There is a gallows. There is a man with bleeding stripes on his back. There is an apostle with no property, with a tradition of loneliness and weariness and rejection and glory—but there are no pills!”
“The more we delve into the beauty of God, the more we are surrounded by an unlimited sense of His beauty. God wants to declare this beauty upon our lives. God wants to pour into us the unlimitedness of all of His attributes and nature and character. Our problem is our limitation determines how much of God we can experience. The thing that I have discovered is simply this: The more I experience God, the more my capacity to experience God grows. Each day as I walk with God and allow the Holy Spirit to reveal to me who God really is, the more my capacity grows in worshiping and adoring this God.”
― A.W. Tozer ,
from Delighting in God
“Someone once complimented me by telling me they thought I was a good preacher and they got a great deal out of my sermons. When I was younger, I might have agreed, but I have listened to recordings of some of my sermons and they sound awful, to tell you the truth. I do not claim to be a good preacher. However, I do preach about good things, and that is what makes a vast difference between a good preacher and preaching about something good. I am preaching about something good when I am preaching about God; I am now writing about that which is good and above everything else we could even think about. This is the core and center and source of all theology and all doctrine and all truth, all life and all matter and all mind, all spirit and all soul. This is the great need of the hour because the situation, as I see it in churches today, is very serious. It is not how well we say it, but rather how well we believe it.”
― A.W. Tozer ,
from Delighting in God
“What this means is that my worship grows and grows as my perception of God grows. God cannot grow. My perception of God grows as I experience Him day after day. I should be more capable of worshiping God today than I was ten or twenty years ago. As I move toward God, my capacity to understand God grows deeper and deeper.”
― A.W. Tozer ,
from Delighting in God
“Life is so short that many people waste it trying to find themselves—outside of God. This knowledge transcends reason and comes to us only by way of divine revelation and illumination. Keep in mind, ideas of God not rooted in revealed truth give way to human speculation and certain untruths about God, and disqualify any worship we might try to give to God.”
― A.W. Tozer ,
from Delighting in God
“Even those who do not believe in God make a god out of not believing in God. What is it that you really believe and think of when you hear the word God? Your perception of God determines everything about you.”
― A.W. Tozer ,
from Delighting in God
“The preaching that has stirred the church the most has been hard preaching of the Word of God, irrespective of the feelings or trends in the culture. This preaching was not to entertain, but rather to stir the hearts in worship of God. The focus of the preaching was God.”
― A.W. Tozer ,
from Delighting in God
“It is hard to imagine a more painful disillusionment than to come to the judgment seat of Christ and find that all our earthly lives we had been striving after the flesh and never permitting the creative Holy Spirit to work in us that which was pleasing in His sight.”
“God desires to take us deeper into Himself. We will have much to learn in the school of the Spirit. He wants to lead us on in our love for Him who first loved us.”
“There is a way of release from [the] tyranny [of the flesh]. It is by the cross of Jesus…. That ends the bondage of the flesh. The power to live free from it comes from the Holy Ghost.”
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A.W. Tozer (1897 - 1963)
A "20th-century prophet" many called him during his lifetime. For 31 years A.W.Tozer was pastor of Southside Alliance Church in Chicago. He was involved in the missionary alliance movement for most of his pulpit life. A.W. Tozer lived in the presence of God he saw clearly and he spoke as a prophet to the church. He sought for God's honor with the zeal of Elijah and mourned with Jeremiah at the apostasy of God's people.Leonard Ravenhill was a close friend of pastor and writer A. W. Tozer and spoke of him as one of the most influential voices in the Church in America. A.W. Tozer's materials are a mainstay in Evangelical churches in our day and he is one of the most quoted authors. He was a prophet in his day and his writings are even more influential in our day. One of his books: The Pursuit of God, has had over 1 million copies sold world-wide.
Recommends these books by A.W. Tozer:
The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God by A.W. Tozer
Crucified Life: How To Live Out A Deeper Christian Experience by A.W. Tozer
The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer
Aiden Wilson Tozer was born April 21, 1897 on a small farm in Western Pennsylvania, the third of six children. And although he would inspire millions with his preaching and writing, he was given very little education during his childhood.
A. W. Tozer was 66 when he died of a heart attack on May 12, 1963. Buried in a small cemetery in Akron, his tombstone simply and appropriately reads, "A Man of God." He left behind many books that continue to give Christians encouragement and guidance. His writings are as fresh today as when he was alive. His honest and colloquial humor has been known to sweep up congregations in gales of laughter. And his wisdom has left them silent and stunned. For almost 50 years Tozer walked with God, and even though he is gone, he continues to minister to those who are eager to experience God.
A 20th-century prophet" they called him even in his lifetime. For 31 years he was pastor of Southside Alliance Church in Chicago, where his reputation as a man of God was citywide. Concurrently he became editor of Alliance Life, a responsibility he fulfilled until his death in 1963.
His greatest legacy to the Christian world has been his 30 books. Because A.W. Tozer lived in the presence of God he saw clearly and he spoke as a prophet to the church. He sought for God's honor with the zeal of Elijah and mourned with Jeremiah at the apostasy of God's people.
But he was not a prophet of despair. His writings are messages of concern. They expose the weaknesses of the church and denounce compromise. They warn and exhort. But they are messages of hope as well, for God is always there, ever faithful to restore and to fulfill His Word to those who hear and obey.