Morning and Evening with A.W. Tozer

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 unbeautiful. To do His supreme work of grace within you He will take from your heart everything you love most. Everything you trust in will go from...

What a difference it makes when we humans cease being general and become pointed and personal in our approach to God! We then come to see that all that God did was for each of us. It was for me that holy men spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. For me Christ died-and when He arose on the third day it was for me. When the promised Holy Spirit came it was to continue in me the work He had been doing for me, since the morning of the Creation! So, I have every right to claim all of the...

The birth of Christ was a divine declaration, an eternal statement to a race of fallen men and women. The Advent of Christ clearly established: First, that God is real. The heavens were opened and another world than this came into view. Second, that human life is essentially spiritual. With the emergence into human flesh of the Eternal Word of the Father, the fact of man's divine origin is confirmed. Third, that God indeed had spoken by the prophets. The coming of the Messiah-Savior into the...

The absence of spiritual devotion today is an omen and a portent. The modern church is all but contemptuous of the sober virtues—meekness, modesty, humility, quietness, obedience, self-effacement, patience. To be accepted now, religion must be in the popular mood. Consequently, much religious activity reeks with pride, display, self-assertion, self-promotion, love of gain and devotion to trivial pleasures.

It behooves us to take all this seriously. Time is running out for all of us....

Now everyone knows that moisture is necessary to the germination of seeds, to the swelling of buds and to the sprouting of the root buried there in the ground. Where there is no water, life lies suspended in sleepy inaction. Even the desert plant must have a minimal quantity of moisture before there can be any growth at all. No slip of vegetable life has yet pushed up out of soil that was totally arid. No root has yet sprung out of the dry ground.

Yet Isaiah saw a tender plant grow...

THESE ARE THE TIMES that try men's souls. The Spirit has spoken expressly that in the latter times some should depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron. Those days are upon us and we cannot escape them; we must triumph in the midst of them, for such is the will of God concerning us.

Strange as it may seem, the danger today is greater for the fervent Christian than...

Many people continue to live in daily fear that the world "is coming to an end." Only in the Scriptures do we have the description and prediction of the age-ending heavenly and earthly events when our Lord and Savior will be universally acknowledged as King of kings and Lord of lords. God's revelation makes it plain that in "that day" all will acclaim Him "victor!" Human society, generally, refuses to recognize God's sovereignty or His plan for His redeemed people. But no human being or...

To think well and usefully a man must be endowed with certain indispensable qualifications. He must, for one thing, be completely honest and transparently sincere. Another qualification is courage. The timid man dare not think lest he discover himself, an experience to him as shocking as the discovery that he has cancer. The sincere thinker comes to his task with the abandonment of a Saul of Tarsus, crying, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do" Thinking carries a moral imperative. The searcher...

It matters little how twisted a man's life may be, there is hope for him if he will but establish a right attitude toward God and refuse to admit any other element into his spiritual thinking. God and I; here is the beginning and the end of personal religion. Faith refuses to acknowledge that there is or ever can be a third party to this holy relation.

Attitude is all-important. Let the soul take a quiet attitude of faith and love toward God, and from there on the responsibility is...

Our heavenly Father disciplines us for our own good, "that we may share in His holiness." God's motives are always loving! I have known people who seemed to be terrified by God's loving desire that we should reflect His own holiness and goodness. As God's faithful children, we should be attracted to holiness, for holiness Godlikeness-likeness to God! God encourages every Christian believer to follow after holiness. We know who we are and we know who God is. He does not ask us to be God and...

The points at which God's way and man's intersect are likely to be four (though there may be others), and we will usually find our differences with God to occur somewhere in these four areas. . . .

Second, our moral standards. There are probably as many ideas of righteousness as there are people in the world, and it would be futile to argue that one is better than another. The test is not which code is best but whether or not any code agrees with the Scriptures. In the Christian...

To stay free from religious ennui we should be careful not to get into a rut, not even a good rut. Our Lord warned against vain repetition. There is repetition that is not vain, but oft-repeated prayers become vain when they have lost their urgency. We should examine our prayers every now and again to discover how much sincerity and spontaneity they possess. We should insist on keeping them simple, candid, fresh and, original. And above all we should never seek to induce holy emotions. When...

. . . No man is ever the same after God has laid His hand upon him. He will have certain marks, and though they are not easy to detect perhaps we may cautiously name a few. . .

Another mark of the Spirit's working is a mighty moral discontent. In spite of our effort to make sinners think they are unhappy the fact is that wherever social and health conditions permit the masses of mankind enjoy themselves very much. Sin has its pleasures (

The third stage of true worship is wonder. Here the mind ceases to understand and goes over to a kind of delightful astonishment. Carlyle said that worship is "transcendent wonder," a degree of wonder without limit and beyond expression. That kind of worship is found throughout the Bible (though it is only fair to say that the lesser degrees of worship are found there also). Abraham fell on his face in holy wonderment as God spoke to him. Moses hid his face before the presence of God in the...