| Devotional | The Unchanging Need of the Human Heart
We of the twentieth century have exactly the same basic needs as the people of the first century. We feel the weight of sin and mortality just as they did. We long for peace and life eternal exactly as they did. We are tortured by fears, stunned by losses, grieved by betrayals, hurt by enmities, made heartsick by failures, scared by threatening dea ...read |
| Devotional | The Unending Chapter
That next chapter after the last is the source of all the Christian's hope, for it assures us that our Lord has put death in its place and has delivered us from the ancient curse. Death did not end the activities of our Lord; it did not even interrupt them, for while His body lay in Joseph's new tomb, He was preaching to the spirits in prison (1 ...read |
| Devotional | The Union of Faith and Works
Just as in eternity God acted like Himself and when incarnated in human flesh still continued to be true to His holiness in all His conduct, so does He when He enters the nature of a believing man. This is the method by which He makes the redeemed man holy. He enters a human nature at regeneration as He once entered human nature at the incarnatio ...read |
| Devotional | THE UNITY OF ALL THINGS
If we are humble and sincere Christians, this should be one of the most welcome thoughts we have ever considered: the work of Christ in redemption will achieve ultimately the expulsion of sin, the only divisive agent in the universe! When that is accomplished, God's creation will once more realize the unification of all things. We who are men and ...read |
| Devotional | THE WALK OF FAITH
There are spiritual lessons for every Christian believer in the life of godly Enoch, seventh generation from Adam through Adam's third son, Seth. We are impressed that he could resist the devil and find fellowship with his Creator-God, for he lived in a worldly society headed for destruction. Enoch's daily walk was a walk of faith, a walk of fell ...read |
| Devotional | The Way to God is a Person
When they knew God, they glorified him not as God, read the terrible words, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted b ...read |
| Devotional | THE WINSOME SAINTS
Much of Christianity overlooks the fact that if we are led by the Spirit of God and if we show forth the love of God this world needs, we become the "winsome saints." The strange and wonderful thing about it is that truly winsome and loving saints do not even know about their attractiveness. The great saints of the past did not know they were gre ...read |
| Devotional | The Witness of the Spirit
Knowledge by spiritual experience is not mental, it is intuitive. It is consciousness, it is acquaintance with something or someone by direct awareness. It might help the reader to understand what we mean by such words as ?awareness? and ?consciousness? if he were to ask himself how he knows he exists, how he knows he is himself and not someone els ...read |
| Devotional | The Wonder of God
Moses took us back to the beginning of all that we see, all that we call the universe. He took us back before the stars and moon were, before space was and before time was, and said, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). So Moses said that the One who calls us to Himself has a right to do so because He antedates ...read |
| Devotional | THE WONDER OF REDEMPTION
My brethren in the Christian faith, stand with me in defense of this basic doctrine: The living God did not degrade Himself in the Incarnation. When the Word was made flesh, there was no compromise on God's part! It is plain in the ancient Athanasian Creed that the early church fathers were cautious at this point of doctrine. They would not allow ...read |
| Devotional | THE WORD MADE FLESH
I have given much thought and contemplation to the sweetest and tenderest of all of the mysteries in God's revelation to man-the Incarnation! Jesus, the Christ, is the Eternal One, for in the fullness of time He humbles Himself John's description is plain: the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. I confess that I would have liked to have seen ...read |
| Devotional | The Word of God
Of course we of this generation cannot know by firsthand experience how the Word of God was read in other times. But it would be hard to conceive of our fathers having done a poorer job than we do when it comes to the public reading of the Scriptures. Most of us read the Scriptures so badly that a good performance draws attention by its rarity. It ...read |
| Devotional | THE WORLDLY "VIRUS"
As Christian believers, we must stand together against some things. So, if you hear anyone saying that A.W. Tozer preaches a good deal that is negative, just smile and agree: "That is because he preaches the Bible!" Here are some of the things we oppose: we are against the many modern idols that have been allowed to creep into the churches; we ar ...read |
| Devotional | The Wrong Kind of Teachers
The newborn Christian finds himself alive with a sweet, enjoyable kind of life that he accepts naively, almost unconsciously. To him everything is simple and immediate. He knows no intermediary. Christ is to him on an infinitely higher level what its mother is to a baby--warmth, nourishment, protection, rest and an object of satisfying affection. ...read |
| Devotional | The "Exegete" of the Father
Elsewhere I have said that we cannot know God by thinking, but that we must do a lot of thinking if we would know Him well. This sounds self-contradictory, but I am sure that the two statements are in full accord with each other. The inability of the human mind to know God in a true and final sense is taken for granted throughout the Bible and even ...read |
| Devotional | The "Rote" to "Rutness"
We can go one step further and come to what I will call the rut, which is bondage to the rote. When we are unable to see and sense bondage to the rote, we are in a rut. For example, a man may be sick and not even know it. The doctors may have confided in the man's wife and said, "We don't want to frighten your husband, but he could drop any min ...read |
| Devotional | THINK LIKE GOD THINKS
If God knows that your intention is to worship Him with every part of your being, He has promised to cooperate with you. On His side is the love and grace, the promises and the atonement, the constant help and the presence of the Holy Spirit. On your side there is determination, seeking, yielding, believing. Your heart becomes a chamber, a sanctuar ...read |
| Devotional | Thinking Well
The creative religious thinker is not a daydreamer, not an ivory tower intellectual carrying on his lofty cogitations remote from the rough world; he is more likely to be a troubled, burdened man weighed down by the woes of existence, occupied not with matters academic or theoretical but the practical and personal. The great religious thinkers of t ...read |
| Devotional | Those Museum Pieces
Now I do not think that Satan much cares to destroy us Christians physically. The soldier dead in battle who died performing some deed of heroism is not a great loss to the army but may rather be an object of pride to his country. On the other hand the soldier who cannot or will not fight but runs away at the sound of the first enemy gun is a shame ...read |
| Devotional | Those Sanctifying Effects of Suffering
Instant Christianity tends to make the faith act terminal and so smothers the desire for spiritual advance. It fails to understand the true nature of the Christian life, which is not static but dynamic and expanding. It overlooks the fact that a new Christian is a living organism as certainly as a new baby is, and must have nourishment and exercise ...read |
A.W. Tozer