| Devotional | THE PROMISE OF THE SPIRIT
The miraculous events wrought in Jerusalem by the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost indicated to the disciples that Jesus Christ, the Messiah-Savior, had indeed taken His place at the right hand of the Majesty on high. With Jewish critics all around, Peter lifted his voice and said that all who were in Jerusalem on that day were seeing the fulfil ...read |
| Devotional | The Psychology of Impermanence
Time may show that one of the greatest weaknesses in our modern civilization has been the acceptance of quantity rather than quality as the goal after which to strive. This is particularly evident in the United States. Costly buildings are constantly being erected with no expectation that they shall last more than one short generation. . . . Not on ...read |
Book | The Pursuit of God - Table of Contents
Here is a masterly study of the inner life by a heart thirsting after God, eager to grasp at least the outskirts of His ways, the abyss of His love for sinners, and the height of His unapproachable majesty-and it was written by a busy pastor in Chicago!
Who could imagine David writing the twentythird Psalm on South Halsted Street, or a medieval ...read |
| Devotional | The Quiet Call of Christ
It is like the Lord to fasten a world upon nothing, and make it stay in place. Here He takes that wonderful, mysterious microcosm we call the human soul and makes its future weal or woe to rest upon a single word--if. If any man, He says, and teaches at once the universal inclusiveness of His invitation, and the freedom of the human will. Everyone ...read |
| Devotional | THE REALITIES OF HEAVEN
Much of the secularism and rationalism of our times dismisses the Christian view and teaching about heaven as "nothing more than hopeful thinking." But the Christian's promised hope of future blessedness is founded upon the fullest and plainest revelations of the Old and New Testaments. That it accords with the most sacred yearnings of the human ...read |
| Devotional | The Refiner's Fire
Ten thousand enemies cannot stop a Christian, cannot even slow him down, if he meets them in a attitude of complete trust in God. They will become to him like the atmosphere that resists the airplane, but which because the plane's designer knew how to take advantage of that resistance, actually lifts the plane aloft and holds it there for a journe ...read |
| Devotional | The Responsibility of Choice
Our Lord Jesus looked after the rich young ruler as he walked away, but He did not follow him or attempt to coerce him. The dignity of the young man's humanity forbade that his choices should be made for him by another. To remain a man he must make his own moral choices; and Christ knew this and permitted him to go his own chosen way. If his human ...read |
| Devotional | The Revelatory Light of Scripture
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 increasi ...read |
| Devotional | The Rigors of Shepherding
Because we are the kind of persons we are and because we live in a world such as we do, the shepherd of souls is often forced to work at what would appear to be cross purposes with himself. For instance, he must encourage the timid and warn the self-confident; and these may at any given time be present in his congregation in almost equal numbers. ...read |
| Devotional | The Rod and the Cross
For the Christian cross carrying and chastisement are alike but not identical. They differ in a number of important ways. The two ideas are usually considered to be the same and the words embodying the ideas are used interchangeably. There is, however, a sharp distinction between them. When we confuse them we are not thinking accurately; and when w ...read |
| Devotional | The Root Appears
Now everyone knows that moisture is necessary to the germination of seeds, to the swelling of buds and to the sprouting of the root buried there in the ground. Where there is no water, life lies suspended in sleepy inaction. Even the desert plant must have a minimal quantity of moisture before there can be any growth at all. No slip of vegetable li ...read |
| Article | The Saint Must Walk Alone
Most of the world's great souls have been lonely. Loneliness seems to be one price the saint must pay for his saintliness.
In the morning of the world (or should we say, in that strange darkness that came soon after the dawn of man's creation), that pious soul, Enoch, walked with God and was not, for God took him; and while it is not stated in s ...read |
| Devotional | THE SECRET WORKING OF GOD
I do believe in the secret and mysterious working of God in the human breast. I must believe it after finding the forgiving and converting grace of God in the Savior, Jesus Christ. My father and mother held high human standards, but completely without any thought of God. My parents appeared to be without any spark of desire after God; attitudes tha ...read |
| Devotional | THE SPIRIT ILLUMINATES
When we study the New Testament record, we see plainly that Christ's conflict was with the theological rationalists of His day. John's gospel record is actually a long, inspired, passionately-outpoured account trying to save us from evangelical rationalism-the doctrine that says the text is enough. Divine revelation is the ground upon which we st ...read |
| Devotional | The Strength of Humility
In the kingdom of heaven, weak things become mighty and mighty things often prove to be useless. God seeth not as man seeth, and the things that are held in high esteem among men may be scorned by the Most High God, maker of heaven and earth.
That carnal courage so prized in the kingdom of Adam may be the direct cause of constant and humiliating ...read |
| Devotional | The Study of God
It is precisely because God is, and because man is made in His image and is accountable to Him, that theology is so critically important. Christian revelation alone has the answer to life?s unanswered questions about God and human destiny. To let these authoritative answers lie neglected while we search everywhere else for answers and find none is, ...read |
| Devotional | The Sword of the Spirit
Undoubtedly God goes along with us as far as He can in this weak and one-sided treatment of the Holy Scriptures, but He cannot be pleased with this way of doing. Our Heavenly Father takes pleasure in seeing us develop and grow up spiritually. He does not want us to live entirely on a diet of sweet stuff. He gives us for our encouragement Isaiah 41 ...read |
| Devotional | The Taming of Anger
It is significant that when our Lord describes the stream of iniquity as it flows out of the heart He begins with the thoughts. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies... Matthew 15:19. It is doubtful whether any sin is ever committed until it first incubates in the thoughts ...read |
| Devotional | THE TRANSFORMED LIFE
Many of the great evangelists who have touched the world for God, including such men as Jonathan Edwards and Charles Finney, have declared that the church is being betrayed by those who insist on Christianity being made "too easy." Jesus laid down the terms of Christian discipleship and there are some among us who criticize: "Those words of Jesu ...read |
| Devotional | The Tyranny of the Customary
In the Old Testament, the enemy that threatened Israel the most was the dictatorship of the customary. Israel became accustomed to walking around in circles and was blissfully content to stay by the safety of the mountain for a while. To put it another way, it was the psychology of the usual. God finally broke into the rut they were in and said, " ...read |
A.W. Tozer