Morning and Evening with A.W. Tozer

We confess, do we not, that we have a Christian responsibility to believe God's Word and to obey God's Truth" Then we should accept the fact that it is our task to practice the Christian virtues in the power of the Holy Spirit as we await the coming of Him who will come. The great spiritual needs around us should drive us back to the gospel records of the life and ministry of our Lord Jesus. When evil men crucified Jesus, killed Him, they had no power to change Him. They could not alter the...

As Christian believers (I am assuming you are a believer), you and I know how we have been changed and regenerated and assured of eternal life by faith in Jesus Christ and His atoning death. On the other hand, where this good news of salvation by faith is not known, religion becomes an actual bondage. If Christianity is known only as a religious institution, it may well become merely a legalistic system of religion, and the hope of eternal life becomes a delusion. I have said this much about...

Peter contained or has been accidentally associated with more contradictions than almost any other Bible character. He appeared to be a combination of courage and cowardice, reverence and disrespect, selfless devotion and dangerous self-love. Only Peter could solemnly swear that he would never desert Christ and then turn around and deny Him the first time he got in a tight place. Only Peter could fall at Jesus' feet and acknowledge his own sinfulness and then rebuke his Lord for suggesting...

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...

I do not consider that it is my place as a Christian to stand around making judgments and calling other people "hypocrites." Our Lord Jesus Christ is the only man I know who was holy and perfect enough to call the religious leaders of the day hypocrites. I am just a man with faults and shortcomings of my own, and I must always consider myself lest I be tempted! I preach to my own congregation about our faults and our failings, with the warning that some of our professions of blessing and...

We ought to spend more time remembering the blessings and the benefits God is continually giving us while we are alive-before we leave this vale of tears! He gives us forgivenes - so we are to live for Him as forgiven sinners. He gives us eternal life. This is not just a future reality - our life in Him is a present bestowment. He gives us sonship: "Beloved, now are we the sons of God!" In this relationship there are many other gifts we receive from God, and if we do not possess them it is...

To know God in the scriptural meaning of the term is to enter into experience of Him. It never means to know about. It is not a knowledge mediated by the intellect, but an unmediated awareness experienced by the soul on a plane too high for the mind to reach. Where then is the place of the intellect in Christian experience" And why waste time thinking when we know beforehand that thought cannot bring us to the knowledge that is most of all to be desired, the knowledge of God" The answer is...

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 Peter 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...

When we sing, "The Light of the world is Jesus," there should be a glow on our faces that would make the world believe indeed that we really mean it! The Incarnation meant something vast and beautiful for John Milton-and he celebrated the coming of Jesus into the world with one of the most beautiful and moving expressions ever written by a man: This is the month, and this the happy morn, Wherein the Son of Heaven's eternal King, Of wedded maid, and Virgin mother born, Our great redemption...

I have met two classes of Christians; the proud who imagine they are humble, and the humble who are afraid they are proud! There should be another class: the self-forgetful men and women who leave the whole thing in the hands of Christ and refuse to waste any time trying to make themselves good. They will reach the goal far ahead of the rest. The truly humble person does not expect to find virtue in himself, and when he finds none he is not disappointed. He knows that any good deed he may do...

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...

It is a fact that the New Testament message of good news, "Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures," embraces a great deal more than an offer of free pardon. Surely 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...

How can we tell whether or not a man or a religious demonstration is of God" The answer is easy to find, but it will take courage to follow the facts as God reveals them to us. The tests for spiritual genuineness are two: First, the leader must be a good man and full of the Holy Ghost. Christianity is nothing if not moral. No tricks of theology, no demonstrations of supernatural wonders, no evidences of blind devotion on the part of the public can decide whether or not God is in the man or...

Excerpted from Of God and Men

A prophet is one who knows his times and what God is trying to say to the people of his times.

What God says to His church at any given period depends altogether upon her moral and spiritual condition and upon the spiritual need of the hour. Religious leaders who continue mechanically to expound the Scriptures without regard to the current religious situation are no better than the scribes and lawyers of Jesus' day who faithfully parroted the...