Morning and Evening with A.W. Tozer

If you have ever given much thought to this present world in which we live, you have some idea of the power of interpretation. The world is a stable fact, quite unchanged by the passing of years, but how different is modern man's view of the world from the view our fathers held. The world is for all of us not only what it is; it is what we believe it to be, and a tremendous load of wealth or woe rides on the soundness of our interpretation! In the earlier days, when Christianity exercised a...

THE CELEBRATED PRAYER of the great German astronomer, Kepler, has been a benediction to many: "O God, I thank Thee that Thou hast permitted me to think Thy thoughts after Thee."

This prayer is theologically sound because it acknowledges the priority of God in the universe. "In the beginning God" is undoubtedly the most important sentence in the Bible. It is in God that all things begin, and all thoughts as well. In the words of Augustine, "But Thou, O Lord, who ever livest, and...

The coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost was a gracious experience of fulfillment and blessing and direction for the Christian church. It was the continuing emphasis for believers that we must live to gear ourselves into things eternal and to live the life of heaven here upon earth. We must yield our first obedience and loyalty to Jesus Christ, at any cost! Anything we try to offer God tbat is less than that really is a degradation of the Christian church. Frankly, I would...

History shows clearly enough that true spirituality has never at any time been the possession of the masses. In any given period since the fall of the human race, only a few persons ever discerned the right way or walked in God's law. God's truth has never been popular. Wherever Christianity becomes popular, it is not on its way to die--it has already died. Popular Judaism slew the prophets and crucified Christ. Popular Christianity killed the Reformers, jailed the Quakers and drove John...

John the Baptist gave his questioners a brief sentence that I have called the "hope and the despair" of mankind. He told them that "a man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven." John was not referring to men's gifts. He was speaking of spiritual truth. Divine truth is of the nature of the Holy Spirit, and for that reason it can be received only by spiritual revelation. In his New Testament letters, the Apostle Paul declares again and again the inability of human reason to...

We are sent to bless the world, but never are we told to compromise with it. Our glory lies in a spiritual withdrawal from all that builds on dust. The bee finds no honey while crawling around the hive. Honey is in the flower far away where there is quiet and peace and the sun and the flowing stream; there the bee must go to find it. The Christian will find slim pickings where professed believers play and pray all in one breath. He may be compelled sometimes to travel alone or at least to go...

Men may, and often do, pray without faith (though this is not true prayer), but it is not thinkable that men should have faith and not pray. The biblical formula is The prayer of faith. Prayer and faith are here bound together by the little preposition of, and what God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. Faith is only genuine as it eventuates into prayer. When Tennyson wrote More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, he probably uttered a truth of vaster...

The cure for superstition is an increased appreciation of the being of God: not names only, but character and being. The idea that the devil is afraid of a word or a gesture is pure superstition. He is not afraid of any name, not even the name Jesus. There are thousands of little boys in Latin America who bear that name, and surely Satan does not stand in fear of them. No, it is not a combination of letters that strikes terror to the heart of Satan. It is the glorious Person who bears the...

No one has any right to believe that he is indeed a Christian unless he is humbly seeking to obey the teachings of the One whom he calls Lord. Christ once asked a question (Luke 6:46) that can have no satisfying answer, "Why do you call me, `Lord, Lord," and do not do what I say"?

Right here we do well to anticipate and reply to an objection that will likely arise in the minds of some readers. It goes like this: "We are saved by accepting...

It was not to the unregenerate that the words "Do not fret" were spoken, but to God-fearing persons capable of understanding spiritual things. We Christians need to watch and pray lest we fall into this temptation and spoil our Christian testimony by an irritable spirit under the stress and strain of life.

It requires great care and a true knowledge of ourselves to distinguish a spiritual burden from religious irritation. We cannot close our minds to everything that is happening...

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...

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....

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...

The Apostle Paul wrote, "We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves" (Romans 15:1). He thus plainly accepts the fact that there will be infirm persons among the believing members of the spiritual community we call the local church. He tells us to bear them, or bear with them in their weakness.

Now who are the infirm persons in the church" How can we identify them" Not how can we find them, for...