Morning and Evening with A.W. Tozer

But someone may say, it is not God people fear, but demons—the devil himself and evil spirits generally. The answer is that the whole business is still superstition, for it makes God a party to all this supernatural carryings-on, and even if He is on our side He is unable to help us without certain magic passes on our part, such as knocking on wood, throwing salt over our shoulder or making the sign of the cross. God is therefore subject in some measure to these evil powers and helpless...

Sometimes we Christians are opposed and persecuted for reasons other than our godliness. We like to think it is our spirituality that irritates people, when in reality, it may be our personality.

True, the spirit of this world is opposed to the Spirit of God; he that is born after the flesh will persecute him that is born of the Spirit. But making all allowances, it is still true that some Christians get into trouble through their faults instead of through their likeness to the...

The Holy Spirit knew what He was doing when He moved the Apostle Peter to write to the early Christian church about the reality of being "of one mind" in their fellowship. Peter was not asking all the brothers and sisters to settle for some kind of regulated uniformity. He was recommending a spiritual unanimity-which means that the Spirit of God making Christ real within our beings will also give us a unity in certain qualities and disposition. Peter leaves little doubt about the fruits of...

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 to assure normal growth. It does not consider that the act of faith in Christ sets up a personal relationship between two intelligent moral...

It is almost unbelievable how far we will go to avoid obeying God. We call Jesus "Lord" and beg Him to rejuvenate our souls, but we are careful to do not the things He says. When faced with a sin, a confession or a moral alteration in our life, we find it much easier to pray half a night than to obey God.

Intensity of prayer is no criterion of its effectiveness. A man may throw himself on his face and sob out his troubles to the Lord and yet have no intention to obey the commandments...

The resurrection of Christ and the fact of the empty tomb are not a part of this world's complex and continuing mythologies. This is not a Santa Claus tale-it is history and it is a reality! The true church of Jesus Christ is necessarily founded upon the belief and the truth that there was a real death, a real tomb and a real stone! But, thank God, there was a sovereign Father in heaven, an angel sent to roll the stone away and a living Savior in a resurrected and glorified body, able to...

In a recent letter a man from Jamestown, NY, quoted a statement from an editorial, "Three Degrees of Religious Knowledge," . . . and asked for clarification.

The quotation was taken from that part of the editorial dealing with the third degree of knowledge: ?. . . it is knowledge by direct spiritual experience . . . Since it was not acquired by reason operating on intellectual data, the possibility of error is eliminated."

The letter comments on this as follows: "This...

Today is our day. No one at any time has ever had any spiritual graces that we at this time cannot enjoy if we will meet the terms on which they are given. If these times are morally darker, they but provide a background against which we can shine the brighter. Our God is the God of today as well as of yesterday, and we may be sure that wherever our tomorrows may carry us, our faithful God will be with us as He was with Abraham and David and Paul. Those great men did not need us then, and we...

The idea of the divine-human friendship originated with God. Had not God said first "Ye are my friends" (John 15:14) it would be inexcusably brash for any man to say "I am a friend of God." But since He claims us for His friends it is an act of unbelief to ignore or deny the relationship. . . . Even though radically different from each other, two persons may enjoy the closest friendship for a lifetime; for it is not a requisite of friendship...

. . "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple" (14:26-27).

What Christ is saying here is that faith in Him immediately introduces another and a higher loyalty into the life. He demands and must have first place. For the true disciple it is Christ before family, Christ before country, Christ...

Have we modern men and women never given thought or meditation concerning the eternal nature of God" Who are we to imagine that we are "bailing out" the living God when we drop a $10 bill in the Sunday offering plate" Let us thank God for the reality of His causeless existence. Our God only is all sufficient, uncreated, unborn, the living and eternal and self-existent God! I refer often to the great worshiping heart of Frederick William Faber, who in these words celebrated his vision of...

THE NEW TESTAMENT TEACHES that all things are pure to the pure, and I think we may assume that to the evil man all things are evil. The thing itself is not good or bad; goodness or badness belongs to human personality.

Everything depends upon the state of our interior lives and our heart's relation to God. The man that walks with God will see and know that for him there is no strict line separating the sacred from the secular. He will acknowledge that there lies around him a...

There is a close cause-and-effect relationship between deeds and consequences. No right-thinking person would try to deny this.

The whole scheme of rewards and punishment is a solid and substantial part of the belief of both Jews and Christians, as well as of many moral philosophers and of religions other than the Judeo-Christian. The human race at first was put on probation with the words, "but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it...

Not everyone agrees with me that full qualification for eternity is not instant or automatic or painless. I can only hope that you are wise enough, desirous enough and spiritual enough to face up to the truth that every day is another day of spiritual preparation, another day of testing and discipline with our heavenly destination in mind. I hope, too, that you may begin to understand why many evangelical churches are in such a mess. It has become popular to preach a painless Christianity...