| Devotional | Holy Motives
. . . All these examples point up to a grave modern evil, permitting temporal consequences to decide eternal issues.
A word of caution should be added. Sometimes an act, though good in itself, may, in a given set of circumstances, be better held in abeyance. Only be sure the reason for waiting is the desire to promote the glory of God and bless m ...read |
| Devotional | HONOR GOD'S SPIRIT
I think there are great numbers of Christian believers who ought to go home and go into their places of prayer and apologize to God for their demeaning attitudes toward the Holy Spirit of God. Included in their numbers are Bible teachers who are guilty of leading us astray. They have dared to teach Christians that the Holy Spirit will never speak o ...read |
| Devotional | Honoring Others Above Ourselves
Another desire of the spiritual man is to die right rather than to live wrong. A sure mark of the mature man of God is his nonchalance about living. The earth-loving, body-conscious Christian looks upon death with numb terror in his heart; but as he goes on to live in the Spirit he becomes increasingly indifferent to the number of his years here be ...read |
| Devotional | Hope Keeps Us Going
Among those treasures with which we are all endowed by nature, hope stands by itself as being at once the most precious and the most treacherous.
Just because hope is so common we accept it as a matter of course, without realizing how precious it is. Without it life in a fallen world would be unbearable; without it the zest for living would disap ...read |
| Devotional | HOPE-OR DESPAIR?
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 c ...read |
| Devotional | Hopelessly Lost
Philosophically man has lost his way. Could he think himself out of his age-old predicament he would long ago have done it, for the world has had more than enough serious-minded men of superior intellectual endowments to examine every rabbit path in all the meadows of human thought and to explore every forest and wilderness in search of the way. Si ...read |
| Devotional | Houses of God
That Christ actually inhabits the nature of the regenerate believer is assumed, implied and overtly stated in the Holy Scriptures. All the Persons of the Godhead are said to enter the nature of the one that engages New Testament truth in faith and obedience. "If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come u ...read |
| Devotional | HOW DO WE LISTEN?
The living God has spoken to lost mankind in a variety of ways. The general response among us has been, "We did not hear His voice. We did not hear anything." John recorded in his gospel the reactions of an audience of people who heard God speak audibly. When Jesus talked of His coming death, asking God to glorify His name through it, "a voice ...read |
| Devotional | HUMANS JUDGE THE LORD?
It is a fact that God made us to worship Him, and if we had not fallen with Adam and Eve, worship would have been the most natural thing for us. Sinning was not the natural thing for Adam and Eve, but they disobeyed and fell, losing their privilege of perfect fellowship with God, the Creator. Sin is the unnatural thing; it was never intended by Go ...read |
| Devotional | I Am With You Always
It is hardly possible to overstress the importance of unceasing inward prayer on the part of the one who would live the God-conscious life. Prayer at stated times is good and right; we will never outgrow the need of it while we remain on earth. But this kind of prayer must be supported and perfected by the habit of constant, unspoken prayer. But s ...read |
| Devotional | I CHOOSE TO WORSHIP
Strange things are happening all around us in Christian circles because we are not truly worshipers. For instance, any untrained, unprepared, unspiritual empty rattletrap of a person can start something "religious" and find plenty of followers who will listen and promote it! Beyond that, it may become very evident that he or she had never heard f ...read |
| Devotional | I Will Not Forsake You!
Men without God suffer alone and die alone in times of war and in other circumstances of life. All alone! But it can never be said that any true soldier of the Cross of Jesus Christ, no man or woman as missionary or messenger of the Truth has ever gone out to a ministry alone! There have been many Christian martyrs, but not one of them was on that ...read |
| Devotional | If God Is
We being what we are and all things else being what they are, the most important and profitable study any of us can engage in is without question the study of theology. That theology probably receives less attention than any other subject tells us nothing about its importance or lack of it. It indicates rather that men are still hiding from the pre ...read |
| Devotional | IF JESUS CAME TODAY
People have asked me if our present generation would gladly accept Jesus if He came at this time, instead of 2,000 years ago. I have to believe that history does repeat itself! In our own day, many who want to follow the Christian traditions still balk and reject a thorough-going spiritual housecleaning within their own lives. When Jesus came, many ...read |
| Devotional | If We Would, We May
If any man will . . . let him follow me, He says, and some will rise and go after Him, but others give no heed to His voice. So the gulf opens between man and man, between those who will and those who will not. Silently, terribly the work goes on, as each one decides whether he will hear or ignore the voice of invitation. Unknown to the world, perh ...read |
| Devotional | Image Restoration
The idea of the divine-human friendship originated with God. Had not God said first ?Ye are my friends? (John 15:14) it would be inexcusably brash for any man to say ?I am a friend of God.? But since He claims us for His friends it is an act of unbelief to ignore or deny the relationship. . . . Even though radically different from each other, two p ...read |
| Devotional | Imitating the Imitators of God
Spiritual experiences must be shared. It is not possible for very long to enjoy them alone. The very attempt to do so will destroy them. The reason for this is obvious. The nearer our souls draw to God the larger our love will grow, and the greater our love the more unselfish we shall become and the greater our care for the souls of others. Hence i ...read |
| Devotional | IN THE BEGINNING
None of us can approach a consideration of the eternal nature and Person of Jesus Christ without sensing and confessing our human inadequacy in the face of the divine revelation. John, in his gospel, provides a beautiful portrait of the eternal Christ, starting with those stark, incredible words: "In the beginning!', My brethren, that is where we ...read |
| Devotional | In the World But Not of It
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 ...read |
| Excerpt | In Word, Or In Power
Excerpted from The Divine Conqest
For our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction, as you know what kind of men we were among you for your sake. (1 Ths. 1:5)
If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. (2 Cor. 5:17)
You have a reputation of being alive, but you are dea ...read |
A.W. Tozer