| Devotional | PROBLEMS AND PRESSURES
Jesus did not promise any of us that consistent Christian living would be easy! He did not promise a release from daily problems and pressures. He did not promise to take us to our heavenly home on a fluffy pink cloud! We live our lives in the knowledge of the grace of God, but we dare not forget that our Lord came to die for us and to express the ...read |
| Devotional | Prophetic Preaching
If Christianity is to receive a rejuvenation, it must be by other means than any now being used. If the Church in the second half of this century is to recover from the injuries she suffered in the first half, there must appear a new type of preacher. The proper, ruler-of-the-synagogue type will never do. Neither will the priestly type of man who ...read |
| Devotional | Prosperous, Comfortable and Spiritually Bored
The evangelical Christian need make no apology for his beliefs. They are in direct lineal descent from those of the apostles. He can check the tenets of his total creed against the life giving, transforming beliefs of church fathers both East and West, reformers, mystics, missionaries, saints and evangelists, and they will check out one by one. The ...read |
| Devotional | Protesting Protestants
Our church is going to go the way of the gospel. We are not radicals nor fools. We do not fast 40 days. We dress like other people, drive vehicles and have modern homes. We are human and like to laugh. But we believe that God Almighty has not changed and that Jesus Christ is the same. He is victorious, and we do not have to apologize for Him. We do ...read |
| Devotional | Public Bible-Reading as Part of Worship
To read the Bible well in public we must first love it. The voice, if it is free, unconsciously follows the emotional tone. Reverence cannot be simulated. No one who does not feel the deep solemnity of the Holy Word can properly express it. God will not allow His Book to become the plaything of the rhetorician. That is why we instinctively draw bac ...read |
| Devotional | Purifying Conceptions of God
. . . if superstition dishonors God, is it not an evil thing and is not the Christian who harbors it guilty of serious sin against the Majesty in the heavens? The answer to these questions is not as pat as we could desire it to be. An unqualified yes or no would both be wrong. Here is the reason:
When we first come to God through Christ, we are p ...read |
| Devotional | Purity of Heart
On our farm in Pennsylvania there were cherry trees which were attacked by little parasites of some sort. A parasite would get into a little branch, pierce the bark and exude a gum. Then the branch would get a knot on it and bend. All over the trees were those little bent places with gummy knots. After two or three years, those cherry trees would n ...read |
| Devotional | Pursuing Truth
One of the great religious thinkers of this century has pointed out a strange contradiction in the mental attitude of our times--our eager love of knowledge and our universal neglect of truth.
That men love knowledge is too well demonstrated to need proof, if by knowledge we mean facts, know-how, statistics, technical information, scientific and ...read |
| Devotional | Putting Up With the Weaknesses of Others
The Apostle Paul wrote, "We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves" (Romans 15:1). He thus plainly accepts the fact that there will be infirm persons among the believing members of the spiritual community we call the local church. He tells us to bear them, or bear with them in their weakness.
Now ...read |
| Devotional | Pythagorus Three Classes of Humanity
The Greek philosopher Pythagoras is said to have divided men into three classes: 1. Seekers after knowledge. 2. Seekers after honor. 3. Seekers after gain. It would be interesting if not too edifying to look for Pythagoras three classes in modern society. 1. Seekers after knowledge. These are no longer called philosophers, lovers of wisdom, but sch ...read |
| Devotional | QUESTIONS WE ASK
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 cal ...read |
| Devotional | Quiet Zeal
There are a certain number of persons that cannot rest until they are making a great noise and stirring up a world of dust. Their temperament demands that they be always burnt up about something. Their type of mind forbids that they let their friends and neighbors alone until they have come over on their side and gotten behind some sure-fire moveme ...read |
| Devotional | Radical Adjustment to the Jesus Way
. . . The truth is that the world does not know where it is going; it has not found life's summum bonum; it is not qualified as a model for the members of society to follow. It is instead puzzled, frightened and frustrated. Generation follows generation into an uncertain future, completely beaten, disappointed and sick at heart.
It was to thi ...read |
| Devotional | Radical Conversion
Let a man but become, as the early Methodists would have said, soundly converted, and certain things will begin to happen in his life. He will experience a wonderful unification of personality and a turning about of the whole life toward God and heavenly things. Though he will undoubtedly suffer from the inward struggle described in the seventh cha ...read |
| Devotional | Reading that Incites Thinking
When the noted scholar Dr. Samuel Johnson visited the king, the two sat for a while before the fire in silence. Then the king said, "I suppose, Dr. Johnson, that you read a great deal." "Yes, Sire," replied Johnson, "but I think a great deal more." One of the English poets--I believe it was Coleridge--boasted to a Quaker lady about his study ...read |
| Devotional | Real Worship
If you do not have this fascination, it could be that you are but another Esau. What a tragedy to be born of the red clay and live and die and be buried in the red clay. Shakespeare said of Caesar, "That though he be the emperor yet give nature time and nature will reduce him to a bit of clay that might be used to keep the wind away." The great P ...read |
| Devotional | Receiving Life Through the Book of Life
Volumes could be written in praise of the Holy Bible without using one word too many. President Woodrow Wilson once said that the Bible is a book of such importance that no one unacquainted with it can be said to be an educated man, and one who is familiar with it can be said to be uneducated. Sir Walter Scott, when he was dying, called for ?the b ...read |
| Devotional | Recognizing Real Revival
There seems to be a notion abroad that if we talk enough and pray enough, revival will set in like a stock market boom or a winning streak on a baseball club. We appear to be waiting for some sweet chariot to swing low and carry us into the Big Rock Candy Mountain of religious experience.
Well, it is a pretty good rule that if everyone is saying ...read |
| Devotional | Recognizing Satans Strategic Initiative
Many times in history the Christians in various towns, cities and even whole countries have given up their defense for reasons wholly evil. Worldliness, sinful pleasures and personal ungodliness have often been the cause of the churchs disgraceful surrender to the enemy. Today, however, Satans strategy is different. Though he still uses the old met ...read |
| Devotional | Recognizing the Witness of the Spirit
Again, the experience of the Spirit's fullness coming upon the believer's heart is often judged by the amount and quality of emotional charge that accompanies it. Some go so far as to declare bluntly that no one is filled with the Spirit who has not experienced certain physical phenomena, particularly the act of speaking in unidentified tongues. ...read |
A.W. Tozer