| Devotional | Divine Initiative
The Christian Scriptures, particularly the Gospel of John, contain two truths which appear to stand opposed to each other.
One is that whosoever will may come to Christ. The other is that before anyone can come there must have been a previous work done in his heart by the sovereign operation of God.
The notion that just anybody, at any time, ...read |
| Devotional | Divinely Occupied
The doctrine of the divine indwelling is one of the most important in the New Testament, and its meaning for the individual Christian is precious beyond all description. To neglect it is to suffer serious loss. The apostle Paul prayed for the Ephesian Christians that Christ might dwell in their hearts by faith. Surely it takes faith of a more than ...read |
| Devotional | DO THINGS POSSESS US?
I think a lot of people in our congregations get confused when some learned brother advises us that we must all join in a fervent fight against "materialism." If men and women do not know what materialism is, how can they be expected to join the battle? Materialism in its crisis form occurs when men and women created in the image of God accept an ...read |
| Devotional | Do We Follow in Their Steps?
Read history and see how the covenanters stood and died rather than give up to the enemy. Are we satisfied to be degenerate sons of great fathers? Consider A. B. Simpson who walked the shores of the Atlantic Ocean with cardboard in the soles of his shoes because he did not have money to buy new ones. He prayed and groaned in spirit and cried to God ...read |
| Devotional | Do You Know Where You are Going?
It is a simple axiom of the traveler that if he would arrive at the desired destination he must take the right road. How far a man may have traveled is not important; what matters is whether or not he is going the right way, whether the path he is following will bring him out at the right place at last. Sometimes there will be an end to the road, a ...read |
| Devotional | DO YOU LOVE BEAUTY?
When we look closely at this world system and society, we see the terrible and ugly scars of sin. Sin has obscenely scarred and defaced this world, taking away its harmony and symmetry and beauty. That is the negative picture. Thank God for the positive promise and prospect that heaven is the place of all loveliness, all harmony and beauty. These a ...read |
| Devotional | Doing Today What Ought to be Done
Altogether apart from the prophetic expectations of devout men, there is the familiar fact of death itself. Of those Christians who had died, Paul said simply, "Some have fallen asleep." What a vast and goodly company they make, those sleeping saints, and how their number will be increased this year. And which ones among us can give assurance tha ...read |
| Devotional | DOTING ON THE PAST
I always get an uneasy feeling when I find myself with people who have nothing to discuss but the glories of the days that are past! Why are we not willing to believe what the Bible tells us? The Christian's great future is before him. Therefore, the whole direction of the Christian's look should be forward. It is a fact that we should ponder s ...read |
| Devotional | Dross Removal
If God sets out to make you an unusual Christian He is not likely to be as gentle as He is usually pictured by the popular teachers. A sculptor does not use a manicure set to reduce the rude, unshapely marble to a thing of beauty. The saw, the hammer and the chisel are cruel tools, but without them the rough stone must remain forever formless and u ...read |
| Devotional | EASTER-AND MISSIONS
Do we really believe that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is something more than making us the "happiest fellows in the Easter parade"? Are we just to listen to the bright cantata and join in singing, "Up from the Grave He Arose," smell the flowers and go home and forget it? No, certainly not! It is truth and a promise with a specific moral ap ...read |
| Devotional | Embracing God's Thoughts
Whenever and wherever there is a controversy between God and a man, God is always right and the man always wrong. "So that you may be proved right in your words and prevail in your judging" (Psalm 51:4).
The only way any man can be right is to come over onto God's side. Whoever sticks to his own side is forever wrong.
The points at which G ...read |
| Devotional | Embracing the Cross of Christ
Let us plant ourselves on the hill of Zion and invite the world to come over to us, but never under any circumstances will we go over to them. The cross is the symbol of Christianity, and the cross speaks of death and separation, never of compromise. No one ever compromised with a cross. The cross-separated between the dead and the living. The timi ...read |
| Devotional | Emergency Living
Before there can be acceptable service there must be an acceptable life. Before we can know how much we owe we must learn how great is the need. Men are caught in a disaster worse than earthquake or flood, and the redeemed of the Lord are to work for their rescue. In considering these things we must not go on the defensive. The Lord loves the artle ...read |
| Devotional | Empty Words
We Christians owe it to ourselves and to the human race to be above all persons, candid, downright and completely transparent. We must have no truck with fancy, but see to it that our religious talk hugs the facts as tightly as a glove and that our words always have some reality corresponding to them.
Over the years I have been disturbed more tha ...read |
| Devotional | Encountering God
The man that will have God's best becomes at once the object of the personal attention of the Holy Spirit. Such a man will not be required to wait for the rest of the church to come alive. He will not be penalized for the failures of his fellow Christians, nor be asked to forego the blessing till his sleepy brethren catch up. God deals with the i ...read |
| Devotional | Encountering the Whole Word of God
Almost every cult with which we have any acquaintance practices this art of selecting and ignoring. The no-hell cults, for example, habitually stress everything in the Bible that seems to support their position and play down or explain away all the passages that deal with eternal punishment.
But we do well to look closer to home. Proneness to her ...read |
| Devotional | Enduring Hardship
It is possible to be beaten until you are numb. You can smile and praise the Lord and say, "Jesus, I my cross have taken," for a while. But then you are slowly beaten until you are numb, and you get into a sort of a rut where you cannot fight back. Timothy had been with Paul a long time, and Paul had been in so much trouble so much of the time. T ...read |
| Devotional | ENOCH ESCAPED DEATH
The Genesis record concerning Enoch should speak to us of our own troubled times-for that is the purpose of the Word of God. It should be our concern that we hear and that we obey! The faith and deportment of the man Enoch compose a vivid picture a powerful object lesson to encourage every believer in his or her faith. There is only one conclusion ...read |
| Devotional | Evangelical Intellectualism and the Spirit's Power
There has emerged lately in American Christianity a school of religious thought conceived in intellectual pride and dedicated to the proposition that everything of value in the Christian faith can be reduced to philosophical terms and understood by the human mind. The notion seems to be that anything God can utter we can comprehend, allowing possib ...read |
| Devotional | EVERY HINDRANCE REMOVED
There are many legal and governmental reasons why lost men and women should not go to heaven! It should not be difficult for us to acknowledge that a holy and righteous God must run His universe according to holy law - and we do not belong there because we have broken every one of those holy laws in some way! Therefore, there must be an effective r ...read |
A.W. Tozer