Morning and Evening with A.W. Tozer

What can we do but pray for the throngs of defiant men and women who believe that their humanistic view of life is all-sufficient" They believe that they are responsible "captains" of their own souls. The sad fact is that even while they are joining in the age-old rejection of Jesus Christ-"We will not have this Man to rule over us"-they still are beset with fears within. The present competitive world and its selfish society have brought many new fears to the human race. I can sympathize...

While we are right to thank God in appreciation for all of the great and good men in the history of the Christian church, we actually "follow" none of them. Our charter goes farther back and is from a higher source. They were rightly looked upon as leaders, but they were all servants of God, even as you and I are. Luther sowed. Wesley watered. Finney reaped-but they were only servants of the living God. In our local assemblies, we are part of the church founded by the Lord Jesus Christ and...

GOD BEING WHO HE is must always be sought for Himself, never as a means toward something else.

Whoever seeks other objects and not God is on his own; he may obtain those objects if he is able, but he will never have God. God is never found accidentally. "Ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart" (Jeremiah 29:13) .

Whoever seeks God as a means toward desired ends will not find God....

Too many Christian leaders, acting like enthusiastic promoters, are teaching that the essence of faith is this: "Come to Jesus-it will cost you nothing!" The price has all been paid - "it will cost you nothing!" Brethren, that is a dangerous half-truth. There is always a price connected with salvation and with discipleship. God's grace is free, no doubt about that. No one in the wide world can make any human payment towards the plan of salvation or the forgiveness of sins. I take issue on...

O taste and see.

Psalms 34:8

It was Canon Holmes, of India, who more than twenty-five years ago called attention to the inferential character of the average man's faith in God. To most people God is an inference, not a reality. He is a deduction from evidence which they consider adequate; but He remains personally unknown to the individual. `He must be,' they say, `therefore we believe He is.' Others do not go even so far as this;...

"I'm sorry. . . . I'm a stranger here myself." That is the only honest answer. Others are sometimes given, but they are never valid answers. They spring out of pride or error or uncritical and wishful thinking, and they are not to be trusted. It is no good asking for information of another who is as ignorant as ourselves. We are all strangers in a strange world. Is our state hopeless then" Is no answer to be had" Must we live in a world we do not understand and go out into a future of dark...

However unpopular we may become as a result, we must cling to the knowledge that all men are heretics by nature and can never know redeeming truth till they are enlightened from above by and through the inspired revelation we call the Scriptures. We are never kind to our neighbor when for the sake of sweet charity we smile away his perilous error and let him go unrebuked and uncorrected. The sons of light have an overwhelming obligation to the children of darkness. The lighthouse keeper dare...

Self-righteousness is terrible among God's people. If we feel that we are what we ought to be, then we will remain what we are. We will not look for any change or improvement in our lives. This will quite naturally lead us to judge everyone by what we are. This is the judgment of which we must be careful. To judge others by ourselves is to create havoc in the local assembly. Self-righteousness also leads to complacency. Complacency is a great sin and covers just about everything I have said...

The whole of true religion can be summed up in the spiritual love of Jesus. To love God and to love our neighbor was said by our Lord to be the fulfilling of the law and the prophets. All Christians believe that God reveals Himself as Christ; so the love of Jesus is in truth the love of God. Love as experienced by human beings may be on either of two levels, the human or the divine. These are not the same. They differ not only in intensity and elevation but in kind. Human love is undoubtedly...

I am convinced that anyone who brings up the question of consequences in the Christian life is only a mediocre and common Christian! I have known some who were interested in the deeper life, but began asking questions: "What will it cost me-in terms of time, in money, in effort, in the matter of my friendships"" Others ask of the Lord when He calls them to move forward: "Will it be safe"" This question comes out of our constant bleating about security and our everlasting desire for safety...

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....

Among men, questions usually have more than one side; sometimes they have many. Pros and cons are often balanced so finely against each other that it is virtually impossible to know where the right lies. But with God there is only one side. God's side is good and holy and all other sides are wrong, the degree and seriousness of the wrong increasing as we move away from the center of God's will.

Our desire for moral self-preservation should dictate that we come over immediately onto...

I think most of us remember with assurance the words of the Charles Wesley hymn which was his own personal testimony: His Spirit answers to the blood, And tells me I am born of God! Wesley testified here and in many other hymns to an inner illumination! When I became a Christian, no one had to come to me and tell me what Wesley meant. That is why Jesus taught that whosoever is willing to do His will shall have a revelation in his own heart. He shall have an inward revelation that tells him...

We ought to be fully aware that in the body of Christ we are not interested in the production of "cookie-cutter" Christians. This is a word of caution in the matter of Christian experience-there is no pattern or formula for identical Christian experiences. It is actually a tragic thing for believers to try to be exactly like each other in their Christian faith and life. I have probably been overly cautious about testifying to my own experiences because I do not want anyone to be tempted to...