Tozer Devotional

Tozer Devotional - The Changing External and the Unchanging Internal

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 07:00:00 GMT

While Jesus grew through the various stages of developing childhood, He never saw a mechanical device more complicated than a cart. He never saw paper, or plastic, or a telephone, or a radio, or a camera, or a printed sheet, or a paved highway, or a gun, or a steam engine, or an electric motor. No one in His day ever got vaccinated or took vitamin pills or consulted a psychiatrist or had a song recorded or rode in a balloon or airplane or elevator. The people of His time had to get along without floating soap, chlorophyll toothpaste, rubber gloves, ready-mix flour, canned peas, Alka-seltzer, parking meters, Wheaties, puffed rice, electric razors, in-a-door beds, wristwatches, typewriters and Band-aids. Jesus never nursed from a rubber nipple or ate a scientifically compounded formula or played with an "educational" toy or attended a progressive school or saw a comic book or owned a toy bomb shelter.

Judged against our present highly complicated manner of life, the people of Palestine in the days of Christ's flesh scarcely lived at all. Were we forced suddenly to live as they did, we would feel that the bottom had dropped out of the world. Surely people who lived so close to nature could not be "real people" (to borrow the language of the liberals).

But they were real human beings all right, those simple people of Bethlehem and Capernaum. And the striking thing is that they were exactly the kind of people we are. Not one minor variation distinguishes them from us. Only the externals were different. Those things that have changed belong to the outer man; the inner man has not changed in the slightest.

Tozer Devotional - Changing Times and Unchanging Thirst

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 07:00:00 GMT

There is a well-known saying which I think originated with the French, that the more things change the more they remain the same.

The wisdom of this saying may be seen in almost every department of human life, the reason probably being that of all the things that change and still remain unchanged, there is no better example than human nature itself.

And when do we see the unchanging quality of human nature more perfectly than at Christmas-time? Consider the radical difference between today's world and the world into which the Baby Jesus was born. Compared with our twentieth-century civilization, everything surrounding the wondrous Child was crude and primitive. Jesus was born in a stable, not in a hospital; His mother was attended by a midwife, not by a skilled scientist; His baby face was lighted by a tallow candle, not by an electric bulb; He traveled into Egypt on the back of the lowly burro, not by auto or streamlined train.

Tozer Devotional - Godly Products of Suffering

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 07:00:00 GMT

But Paul's trials yield for us more than this negative kind of blessing. They also teach us positive lessons to help us to endure affliction by that well-known psychological law by which we are able to identify ourselves with others and "halve our griefs while we double our joys." It is always easier to bear what we know someone has borne successfully before us.

From the trials and triumphs of Paul, we gather, too, that happiness is really not indispensable to a Christian. There are many ills worse than heartaches. It is scarcely too much to say that prolonged happiness may actually weaken us, especially if we insist upon being happy as the Jews insisted upon flesh in the wilderness. In so doing, we may try to avoid those spiritual responsibilities which would in the nature of them bring a certain measure of heaviness and affliction to the soul.

The best thing is neither to seek nor seek to avoid troubles but to follow Christ and take the bitter with the sweet as it may come. Whether we are happy or unhappy at any given time is not important. That we be in the will of God is all that matters. We may safely leave with Him the incident of heartache or happiness. He will know how much we need of either or both.

Tozer Devotional - Growing by Means of Trials

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 07:00:00 GMT

In reading Second Corinthians, it is difficult to restrain a feeling of real pity for the noble old man as he sweats under the bitter lashings of the enemy. But such pity is wasted now. He has long been where the wicked cease from troubling and the toilworn are at rest. For many long years, his eyes have gazed upon the vision beatific in the land where The red rose of Sharon Distills its heartsome bloom And fills the air of heaven With ravishing perfume.

He walks now with the noble army of martyrs and shares the goodly fellowship of the prophets and the glorious company of the apostles. He does not need our pity.

But from Paul and his afflictions we may learn much truth, some of it depressing and some altogether elevating and wonderful. We may learn, for instance, that malice needs nothing to live on; it can feed on itself. A contentious spirit will find something to quarrel about. A faultfinder will find occasion to accuse a Christian even if his life is as chaste as an icicle and pure as snow. A man of ill will does not hesitate to attack, even if the object of his hatred be a prophet or the very Son of God Himself. If John comes fasting, he says he has a devil; if Christ comes eating and drinking, he says He is a winebibber and a glutton. Good men are made to appear evil by the simple trick of dredging up from his own heart the evil that is there and attributing it to them.

Tozer Devotional - Commendation in the Face of Condemnation

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 07:00:00 GMT

Paul's Corinthian detractors first tried to discredit him entirely by starting a whispering campaign to the effect that he was actually no apostle but a power-hungry impostor seeking to bring them under his control. When the apostle had written his reply in defense of his apostolic authority, they then shifted their attack and accused him of other kinds of double dealing. "He gives himself as a reference for himself," they said sarcastically. "He must have letters of recommendation like a common traveling preacher. Such a man cannot be an apostle." Paul had to answer that, and he did. But it was not easy. His second epistle to the Corinthians was surely one of the most difficult he was ever called upon to write, for he was forced for the church's sake to speak in his own defense. His beloved fellow Christians must trust him if he is to help them, so he will state his case frankly, even if his whole soul shrinks from the task. The words "I am speaking as a fool," "I am become a fool," indicate how deeply he felt the humiliation. But he sacrificed himself for the good of the church and let his enemies think what they would. That was Paul's way.

Tozer Devotional - Blessed Suffering

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 07:00:00 GMT

The Christian who finds himself in trouble for his faith's sake may draw a lot of consolation from Paul's epistles to the Corinthians.

Nowhere else in the entire New Testament is the humanity of the great apostle seen so clearly as when he staggers under the cruel attacks of the anti-Paul bloc in the Corinthian church. His sufferings are there the most poignant and nearest to the sufferings of Christ because they are inward and of the soul. For always the soul can suffer as the body cannot.

Tozer Devotional - Vital Faith Shows Itself in Changed Living

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 07:00:00 GMT

We would make a clear distinction here between moral action and mere religious activity. In truth there is already too much of that popular type of activity which does little more than agitate the surface of religion. Its never-ending squirrel-cage motion gives the impression that much is being done, when actually nothing really important is happening and no genuine spiritual progress is being made. From such we must turn away.

By moral action, we mean a voluntary response to the Christian message: not merely the acceptance of Christ as our personal Savior but a submission to the obligation implicit in the doctrine of the Lordship of Jesus. We must free ourselves from the inadequate concept of the gospel as being only "good news," and accept the total meaning of the Christian message centering in the cross of Christ. We must restore again to the church the idea that the offer of salvation by faith in Christ carries with it the condition that there must be also a surrender of the life to God in complete obedience.

Anything less than this puts the whole thing in the passive voice. A lifetime of passive listening to the truth without responding to it paralyzes the will and causes a fatty degeneration of the heart. The purpose of Bible teaching is to secure a moral and spiritual change in the whole life. Failing this, the whole thing may be wasted.