| Devotional | EVERYDAY WORSHIP
It is my experience that the totality of our Christian lives-our entire attitude as persons-must be towards the worship of God! If you do not know the presence of God in your office, your factory, your home-then God is not in the church you attend, either! I became a Christian when I was a young man working in a tire factory in Akron, Ohio. I reme ...read |
| Devotional | EVERYONE MAY COME
There is a strange beauty in the ways of God with men. He sends salvation to the world in the person of a Man and sends that Man to walk the byways, saying, "If any man will come after Me!" No fanfare; no tramp of marching feet! A kindly Stranger walks through the earth, and so quiet is His voice that it is sometimes lost in the hurly-burly; but ...read |
| Devotional | Everyone's Savior
It may shock some people to be told that Christ is not an American. Nor was He a Jew merely. He was born of the seed of Abraham of the line of David, and His mother was a Jewess of the tribe of Judah. Still Christ is vastly more than a Jew. His dearest name for himself was "the Son of man." He came through the Jewish race, but he came to the huma ...read |
| Devotional | Everything in Jesus
God's gifts are many; His best gift is one. It is the gift of Himself. Above all gifts, God desires most to give Himself to His people. Our nature being what it is, we are the best fitted of all creatures to know and enjoy God. "For Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee" (from The Confessions of St. Augus ...read |
| Devotional | Evidence of the Spirit at Work
Someone wrote to me recently asking what I meant by a statement which occurs in the booklet Paths to Power, which I wrote some years ago. The passage reads: "No one was ever filled with the Holy Spirit without knowing it. The Holy Spirit always announces Himself to the human consciousness." What bothered my correspondent was the nature of this " ...read |
| Devotional | Exaltation of the Humble
From Adam we inherit the instinct to meet our enemies head on, to try to win by direct assault, and it is only after many shocking failures that we learn that victories are not so won in the realm of the spiritual. The carnal approach usually does little more than to alienate the enemy still further from us and, worse than all, it puts us in a posi ...read |
| Devotional | EXCEPT YE REPENT
There are many compelling lessons to be drawn from the Scriptures and one of the clearest is that sinful and rebellious people can never be forced into repentance. The same act that may cause one person to repent and believe will cause others to hate and despise God! The same Bible sermon that brings the person to tearful submission at an altar of ...read |
| Devotional | Exercising Our Option to Experience God
Without doubt the greatest need of the human personality is to experience God Himself. This is because of who God is and who and what man is. God is the essence of intelligent, self-conscious life and man is created in His image. God is love, and man is made for God. God and man exist for each other and neither is satisfied without the other. Thoug ...read |
| Devotional | Experiencing God Despite the Distractions
In the normal course of things a certain number of distractions are bound to come to each one of us; but if we learn to be inwardly still these can be rendered relatively harmless. It would not be hard to compile a long list of names of Christians who carried upon their shoulders the burden of state or the responsibilities of business and yet manag ...read |
| Devotional | EXPLORE GOD'S WORD
What a strange paradox! The atheistic free-thinker rants and raves about the Bible being a "dangerous" book at the very same time that the Word of God is speaking life to my soul! Strange indeed that some humans have the idea that the Word of God can only be approached with shivering fears. But that is true only of those who love their sin and ha ...read |
| Devotional | Exploring Divine Revelation
God has given us a broad world of truth for our spiritual and intellectual habitation. This universe of truth is to the human soul as limitless as the air to a bird or the sea to a fish. There the Christian mind can luxuriate at perfect liberty. While the ages unfold the believer will need no more than has been already given, for it represents the ...read |
| Devotional | FAILURE OF RELIGION
Millions of men and women refuse to face up to the fact that religion, in and of itself, is not enough for the sinner's need. It is amazing how many things religious people want to do to you. They can start with infant baptism and end up with the last rites when you are 108 years old-and all of that time they will manipulate you, maul you and swee ...read |
| Devotional | FAITH AND EXPERIENCE
I insist that the effective preaching of Jesus Christ, rightly understood, will produce Christian experience in Christian believers. Moreover, if preaching does not produce spiritual experience and maturing in the believer, that preaching is not being faithful to the Christ revealed in the Scriptures. Let me say it again another way: the Christ of ...read |
| Devotional | Faith and Fiction
Credulity and faith are like toadstools and mushrooms respectively, near enough in appearance to be mistaken for each other, but so wholly unlike that their effects are exactly opposite.
The true man of faith is seldom credulous, and the credulous man seldom has real faith. Faith belongs to the simple-hearted, credulity to the simple-minded. They ...read |
| Devotional | FAITH AND OBEDIENCE
What is our answer to the many confused persons who keep asking: "How can we know that we have come into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ?" First, we stand together on the basic truth that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. A second fact is that men and women are saved by faith in Christ, alone; without works and without our ...read |
| Devotional | FAITH AND PRAYER
In Hebrews we find a long list of benefits which faith brings to its possessor: justification, deliverance, fruitfulness, endurance, victory over enemies, courage, strength and even resurrection from the dead. Then, everything that is attributed thus to faith might with equal truth be attributed to prayer; for faith and true prayer are like two sid ...read |
| Devotional | Faith Despite Feeling or Sight
A fanatic is somebody seeking desirable ends but ignoring constituted means. Seeking to get out of the religious rut is a desirable end. It is right and it is in the will of God. But trying to do it in a manner that is not according to God"s constituted means is all wrong and gets us nowhere. When they want to get blessed, some people try getting ...read |
| Devotional | Faith Divisions
It should always be kept in mind that the Church is a divine family and that its loyalties sometimes cut sharply across the ties that bind earthly families together.
The cross is a sword and often separates friends and divides households. The idea that Christ always brings peace and patches up differences is found nowhere in His own teachings. Qu ...read |
| Devotional | Faith Grows with Use
It was a saying of George Mueller that faith grows with use. If we would have great faith we must begin to use the little faith we already have. Put it to work by reverent and faithful praying, and it will grow and become stronger day by day. Dare today to trust God for something small and ordinary and next week or next year you may be able to trus ...read |
| Devotional | Faith Identification with Christ
If we would be followers of Christ indeed we must become personally and vitally involved in His death and resurrection. And this requires repentance, prayer, watchfulness, self-denial, detachment from the world, humility, obedience and cross carrying. That is why it is easier to talk about revival than to experience it.
To avoid personal involv ...read |
A.W. Tozer