Morning and Evening with A.W. Tozer

To know the truth is the greatest privilege any man can enjoy in this life, as truth itself is without doubt the richest treasure anyone can possess. This follows from the nature of truth, and from the world-outlasting dowry it brings to those who open their hearts to it. Apart from truth our human lives would lose all their value, and we ourselves become no better than the beasts that perish. Our response to truth should be eager and instant. We dare not dally with it; we dare not treat it...

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." (

We can go one step further and come to what I will call the rut, which is bondage to the rote. When we are unable to see and sense bondage to the rote, we are in a rut. For example, a man may be sick and not even know it. The doctors may have confided in the man's wife and said, "We don't want to frighten your husband, but he could drop any minute. He is critically ill,so just expect it at any moment." But the man himself does not know he is seriously ill.He goes about his business as though...

By a kind of poetic justice, Peter has been the center of a number of historical contradictions, or perhaps we should say traditional, for many of them lack the dignity of authentic history. They are the fabrications of the Roman special pleaders who will make a case for themselves even if they must assassinate truth to do it.

Peter is, for instance, the only man in the world who was never married and yet had a mother-in-law; for the Bible says Peter's wife's mother lay sick of a...

If God knows that your intention is to worship Him with every part of your being, He has promised to cooperate with you. On His side is the love and grace, the promises and the atonement, the constant help and the presence of the Holy Spirit. On your side there is determination, seeking, yielding, believing. Your heart becomes a chamber, a sanctuary, a shrine in which there may be continuous, unbroken fellowship and communion with God. Your worship rises to God moment by moment! We have all...

The rapidity with which improvement is made in the life will depend altogether upon the degree of self-criticism we bring to our prayers and to the school of daily living. Let a man fall under the delusion that he has arrived, and all progress is stopped until he has seen his error and forsaken it. Paul said, "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" (

. . . advertising, at least in the United States, is the most powerful educational agent extant. Those who write the advertising copy probably do more to determine the way the average person thinks than the school and church combined.

The reasons for this are two. One is that men may flee from the admonitions of parents and the good counsel of the church, but where can anyone hide from the advertiser" He is as near to being ubiquitous as anything on earth except...

WE ARE UNDER CONSTANT TEMPTATION these days to substitute another Christ for the Christ of the New Testament. The whole drift of modern religion is toward such a substitution.

To avoid this we must hold steadfastly to the concept of Christ as set forth so clearly and plainly in the Scriptures of truth. Though an angel from heaven should preach anything less than the Christ of the apostles let him be forthrightly and fearlessly rejected.

The mighty, revolutionary...

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...

When we look closely at this world system and society, we see the terrible and ugly scars of sin. Sin has obscenely scarred and defaced this world, taking away its harmony and symmetry and beauty. That is the negative picture. Thank God for the positive promise and prospect that heaven is the place of all loveliness, all harmony and beauty. These are not idle words. If you love beautiful things, you had better stay out of hell, for hell will be the quintessence of all that is morally ugly...

Only God could reconstruct the world and allow for such reversals of fact; but anyone can tinker at it theoretically. Had Hitler, for instance, been a good and gentle man, six million Jews now dead would be living (making allowance for a certain few who would have died in the course of nature); had Stalin been a Christian, several million Russian farmers would be alive who now molder in the earth. And consider the thousands of little children who died of starvation because one man had a...

A SHORT GENERATION AGO, or about the time of the first World War, there was a feeling among gospel Christians that the end of the age was near, and many were breathless with anticipation of a new world order about to emerge.

This new order was to be preceded by a silent return of Christ to earth, not to remain, but to raise the righteous dead to immortality and to glorify the living saints in the twinkling of an eye. These He would catch away to the marriage supper of the Lamb,...

Jesus gives the story of the man who was covetous and lost his soul. So do not be covetous--be generous. Do not be stingy, but be free with your money. Do not be afraid--thank the Lord, trust Him and put fear away. These are examples of the constituted means of faith and obedience. We sing this and do not know we are singing it: "Trust and obey, for there"s no other way/ To be happy in Jesus, But to trust and obey." We sing that, but we have sung it so long that we might as well sing Mother...

. . . 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...