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Blog/RSS Directory |
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Tozer Devotional
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Collective Writings from the Books of A.W. Tozer
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Tozer Devotional - Keep the Torch Burning
The clever proponents of evil political ideologies are spending millions to make us Americans ashamed to love our country. By the use of all available media of communication they are persuading our people that there is little left worth defending and certainly nothing worth dying for. They are building up in the public mind a picture of an American as a generous, tolerant, smiling chap who loves baseball and babies but is not too much concerned about fringe political theories. This synthetic American subscribes to the doctrine of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man and lets go fishing-everything will be all right. And so in religion, especially among the Protestants. Let a man rise to declare the unique Lordship of Jesus Christ and the absolute necessity of obedience to Him and he is at once branded as a hatemonger and a divider of men. The devil has brainwashed large numbers of religious leaders so successfully that they are now too timid to resist him. And he, being the kind of devil he is, takes swift advantage of their cowardice to erect altars to Baal everywhere. The Bible is a book of controversy. The Old Testament prophets were men of contention. Our Lord Jesus while on earth was in deadly conflict with the devil. The Apostles, the Church Fathers and the Reformers were men of controversy. They fought the devil to the death and kept the torch of truth burning for all succeeding generations. Is our contribution to history to be the ignoble one of letting the torch go out?
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Tozer 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 methods where he can do so with success, his more effective method is to paralyze our resistance by appealing to our virtues, especially the virtue of charity. He first creates a maudlin and wholly inaccurate concept of Christ as soft, smiling and tolerant. He reminds us that Christ was brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth, and suggests that we go and do likewise. Then if we notice his foot in the door and rise to oppose him he appeals to our desire to be Christlike. You must not practice negative thinking, he tells us. Jesus said, He that is not against Me is for Me. Also He said Judge not, and how can you be a good Christian and pass adverse judgment on any religious talk or activity? Controversy divides the Body of Christ. Love is of God, little children, so love everybody and all will be well. Thus speaks the devil, using Holy Scripture falsely for his evil purpose; and it is nothing short of tragic how many of Gods people are taken in by his sweet talk. The shepherd becomes afraid to use his club and the wolf gets the sheep. The watchman is charmed into believing that there is no danger, and the city falls to the enemy without a shot. So Satan destroys us by appealing to our virtues.
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Tozer Devotional - The Great Deceiver
The Devil is a master strategist. He varies his attacks as skillfully as an experienced general and always has one more trick to use against the one who imagines he is well experienced in the holy war. By two radically opposite things the devil seeks to destroy us-by our sins and by our virtues. First, he tempts us to sin. This might be called his conventional device. It worked against Adam and Eve and still works after the passing of the centuries. By means of it millions each year are, as Paul said, drowned in destruction and perdition. One would think the human race would learn to resist the blandishments of its sworn enemy, and it probably would except that there is an enemy within the gate-the fallen heart is secretly on the side of the devil. It is, however, Satans wiliest stratagem to use our virtues against us, and this he often does with astonishing success. By means of temptation to sin he strikes at our personal lives; by working through our virtues he gets at the whole community of believers and unfits it for its own defense. A parallel to Satans technique may be seen in the activities of certain subversive political groups who use the Constitution of the United States as a shield while they work to destroy that Constitution. By unctuous pleading for the right of free speech they seek to destroy all freedom of speech. By talking piously about government by law they push our country toward the place where there will be government by dictatorship and all laws will mean what a ruling clique of base, cynical men want them to mean. So diabolical is this method that one can only conclude that those who use it learned it from their father the devil, whose they are and whom they serve.
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Tozer Devotional - Seekers After God
5. Seekers after God. Thanks be to God on high that these too are among us. They are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Their number is not large when counted against the millions who have forgotten their Maker, but taken together they are a goodly company and dear to the heart of God. Ah, those God-hungry souls! By nature they are no better than the rest of men, and by practice they have sometimes been worse. The one sign of their divine election is their insatiable thirst after the Source of their being. Deep calls unto deep and they hear and respond. These are almost always a disappointment to themselves, and sometimes they have for a while been a stumbling block to the world, as were Jacob and David and Peter. But many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it, and their questing hearts find what they seek at last. The grace of God meets them as they return and changes them from what they are sorry they have been, into what they have so fervently longed to become. Towe know what the wise Greek could not know, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses. Seekers after God there surely were even in those old Grecian times and their destiny lies in the hand of the One who gave His only-begotten Son to die for the life of the world. One word needs to be added. It will go better in the of reckoning for the seeker of pre-Christian days who stretched out pagan hands toward God in hope that he might find Him, than for the careless sinner of who is sated with hearing and who refuses to repent and believe.
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Tozer Devotional - The Foolish Spending of Life
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. Thus far Pythagoras. But I wonder why he failed to notice two other classes: those who are not seekers after anything and those who are seekers after God. These no doubt existed in Pythagoras as they do in ours and it is odd that he did not recognize them. Let us add them to the list. 4. Seekers after nothing. These are the human vegetables who live by their glands and their instincts. I refer not to those unfortunate persons who by birth or by accident have been deprived of their normal faculties. There but by the grace of God go I. I do refer to the millions of normal persons who have allowed their magnificent intellectual equipment to wither away from lack of exercise. These seekers after nothing have certain large ear-marks. They may be known by the company they keep. Their reading matter is the sports page and the comic section; their art is limited to magazine covers and the illustrated trivialities of the weekly picture magazines; their music is whatever is popular and handy and loud. After work they sit and watch television or just drive around waiting for-what? It is an omen and a portent that this describes the bulk of our population in the United States, and that they constitute what we proudly call the electorate; that is, they decide the direction our country shall go, morally, politically and religiously. O tempora! O mores!
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Tozer 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 scholars, professors, scientists, who love knowledge for itself. These are intellectual magpies with a compulsive tic that drives them to collect all the shiny bits of knowledge possible; fortunately for them there are enough others with the same tic to provide them with a means of making some kind of a living here below. 2. Seekers after honor. These are the politicians. They have an incurable itch to be known in the gates, and as a means toward this end they manage to work up a convincing if phony patriotic fever every four or six years that brings them votes and enables them to ride in the front car in the Memorial parade. Their reward is in being applauded by the masses they secretly despise, and verily they have their reward. 3. Seekers after gain. These are at the top honest businessmen who become wealthy within the law, and at the bottom racketeers who gain their wealth outside the law. Morally these latter differ not at all from the ordinary bandit, but they differ socially because they are smarter, have read a book and know a better lawyer.
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Tozer 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 beasts, and creeping things . . . who changed the truth of God into a lie. On and on the devastating words flow, mounting in intensity till no one with any conscience left or any fear of moral consequences can stand to look the Judge in the face, but must cast down his guilty eyes and cry, Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving-kindness: according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Apart from the Scriptures we have no sure philosophy; apart from Jesus Christ we have no true knowledge of God; apart from the inliving Spirit we have no ability to live lives morally pleasing to God. How wonderful that Christ could say, I am the way, the truth, and the life. For this we can never be thankful enough.
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