| Devotional | FAITH MUST BE RESTORED
The Bible tells about man's being alienated from and an enemy to God. Should this sound harsh or extreme you have only to imagine your closest friend coming to you and stating in cold seriousness that he no longer has any confidence in you. "I do not trust you. I have lost confidence in your character. I am forced to suspect every move you make" ...read |
| Devotional | Faith That Acts in Faith
People use the word fanatic whenever you get a little bit joyful about the Lord. They say you are a fanatic. Webster says that a fanatic is somebody who is too enthusiastic about religion, as if you could be too enthusiastic about religion. John Wesley said, "A fanatic is one who seeks desirable ends but ignores constituted means." Suppose a farm ...read |
| Devotional | FAITHFUL STEWARDSHIP
God has been pleased to deal with us in a most remarkable way concerning our Christian stewardship and responsibility of honoring Him with the things He has entrusted to us. The Bible teaching is plain: you have the right to keep what you have all to yourself-but it will then rust and decay, and ultimately ruin you! This may hurt some of you but I ...read |
| Devotional | Faithful Use of God-given Resources
One thing taught large in the Holy Scriptures is that while God gives His gifts freely. He will require a strict accounting of them at the end of the road. Each man is personally responsible for his store, be it large or small, and will be required to explain his use of it before the judgment seat of Christ. . . .
Then there are talents. These ar ...read |
| Devotional | Faithless Action and Actionless Faith
Rightly understood, faith is not a substitute for moral conduct but a means toward it. The tree does not serve in lieu of fruit but as an agent by which fruit is secured. Fruit, not trees, is the end God has in mind in yonder orchard; so Christlike conduct is the end of Christian faith. To oppose faith to works is to make the fruit the enemy to the ...read |
| Devotional | False Hope and Certain Hope
Only a Christian has a right to hope, for only he has the power of God to give substance to his hope. The man who hopes in Christ is as safe as the rainbow-circled throne where sits the God who cannot lie. Such a man has a moral right to look upward and quietly wait for the fulfillment of every promise. Let him but see to it that his anticipations ...read |
| Devotional | FALSE PRETENDERS
All persons who are alienated from God and outside of Christ are part and parcel of a mighty deception! They are called upon to pretend that they can have peace of mind within and that they can be relatively happy and make a big success of their human lives if they have youth and wealth and morality and high position. In that sense of what is going ...read |
| Devotional | Fast Food Christianity
It is hardly a matter of wonder that the country that gave the world instant tea and instant coffee should be the one to give it instant Christianity. If these two beverages were not actually invented in the United States it was certainly here that they received the advertising impetus that has made them known to most of the civilized world. And it ...read |
| Devotional | Fatherly Chastisement
Chastisement is an act of God; cross carrying an act of the Christian. When God in love lays the rod to the back of His children He does not ask permission. Chastisement for the believer is not voluntary except in the sense that he chooses the will of God with the knowledge that the will of God includes chastisement. ?For whom the Lord loveth he ch ...read |
| Devotional | Favoritism
There is an evil which I have seen under the sun--one that grows and does not diminish. And it is all the more dangerous because it is done without evil aforethought but, as it were, carelessly and without wrong intent.
It is the evil of giving to them that have and withholding from them that have not. It is the evil of blessing with a loud voice ...read |
| Devotional | Feeding on God's Word in Obedience and Humility
Faith, constant meditation on the Scriptures, obedience, humility, . . . 3. "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Romans 10:17). The Scriptures purify, instruct, strengthen, enlighten and inform. The blessed man will meditate in them day and night. 4. To be entirely safe from the devil's snares the man of God must be complet ...read |
| Devotional | Fellow Workers with God
If this working, yet not working, doing God's work, yet not doing it, should seem to be confusing, remember there is a parallel for it in the well-known testimony of Paul in Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me." From all this I think we may draw the following conclusion: We can no more ...read |
| Devotional | Finding Christ in Christmas
Christmas will come and go again this year as it has done through the lost centuries and, after a brief moment of kindness felt, they of the cold, hard world will go on killing and hating and contriving to outwit and outfight each other. Things are no better, the cynics will say, no better than they were before. The whole thing is a childish myth. ...read |
| Devotional | Finding Light and Life in Christ
The happiest man in the world," said a well-known preacher some time ago, "is the new convert before he has met too many Bible teachers and seen too many church members."
Even after we have made what allowance we must for the obvious irony in these words, there still remains in them sufficient truth to perturb the honest Christian soul more th ...read |
| Devotional | Finding Truth in Christ
The Christian is concerned primarily with truth, and especially with Him who is Truth incarnated. Facts are not to be despised. They are to be sought for their practical value and used in the service of truth, but they are never to be allowed to substitute for those "treasures of wisdom and knowledge" which are hidden in Christ.
In this day of ...read |
| Devotional | Fleeing the Rut
If we call Him Lord, how dare we sit any longer in the rut! The Lord has called us to move on. But when people are in a rut, not even the angel Gabriel can help them if they will not come out of it. This is not an accusation but a suggestion. If you are not in a rut, don't get mad--somebody else is. But if you are in a rut you ought to get out of ...read |
| Devotional | Following the Truth
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 ...read |
| Devotional | Footprints in Song
One of the serious weaknesses of present-day evangelicalism is the mechanical quality of its thinking. A utilitarian Christ has taken the place of the radiant Savior of other and happier times. This Christ is able to save, it is true, but He is thought to do so in a practical across-the-counter manner, paying our debt and tearing off the receipt li ...read |
| Devotional | Forgiveness for the Past and Provision for the Present
. . . 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 ...read |
| Devotional | Form and Substance
Another substitute for discipleship is . Our Lord referred to this when He reproached the Pharisees for their habit of tithing mint and anise and cumin while at the same time omitting the weightier matters of the Law such as justice, mercy and faith. Literalism manifests itself among us in many ways, but it can always be identified in that it lives ...read |
A.W. Tozer