Morning and Evening with A.W. Tozer

The world is full of seekers, true enough, and they gravitate quite naturally toward the church. Seekers after peace of mind are plentiful enough to keep the printing presses busy; seekers after physical health are always with us in sufficient numbers to make our leading faith healers comfortably rich; seekers after success and safety are legion, as our popular religious leaders know too well. But real seekers after truth are almost as rare as albino deer. And here is why: Truth is a...

If we are to have any satisfying and lasting understanding of life, it must be divinely given. It begins with the confession that it is indeed the God who has revealed Himself to us who is the central pillar bearing up the universe. Believing that, we then go on to acknowledge that we have discovered His great eternal purpose for men and women made in His own image. I heard a brilliant Canadian author being interviewed on the radio concerning world conditions, and he said: "I confess that...

Persons out of Christ often try to comfort themselves with the remembrance that they have never in their lives committed any really great sin. Little trifling acts of wrongdoing perhaps, but nothing of any consequence, so surely God will overlook their rather insignificant transgressions when He settles their accounts.

In the first place, a man's status before God is decided not by the number and enormity of his sins but by whether those sins have or have not been forgiven, whether he...

About the intimate workings of the Holy Spirit in the human heart there is a highly personal relationship in which no third person can share. The sacred work of redemption was wrought in darkness. No strange eye could see what was taking place when the sins of the world entered the holy soul of Christ that He might die under their weight and thus make "his life a guilt offering" (Isaiah 53:10; 2...

"Love," said Meister Eckhart, "is the will to, the intention." By that definition, it is possible to obey the divine command to love our neighbor. We may not in a thousand years be able to feel a surge of emotion toward certain "neighbors," but we can go before God and solemnly will to love them, and the love will come. By prayer and an application of the inworking power of God, we may set our faces to will the good of our neighbor and not his evil all the days of our lives, and that is...

Our mistake is that we want God to send revival on our terms. We want to get the power of God into our hands, to call it to us that it may work for us in promoting and furthering our kind of Christianity. We want still to be in charge, guiding the chariot through the religious sky in the direction we want it to go, shouting "Glory to God," it is true, but modestly accepting a share of the glory for ourselves in a nice inoffensive sort of way. We are calling on God to send fire on our altars,...

MOST OF THE WORLD'S GREAT SOULS have been lonely. Loneliness seems to be one price the saint must pay for his saintliness.

In the morning of the world (or should we say, in that strange darkness that came soon after the dawn of man's creation) that pious soul, Enoch, walked with God and was not, for God took him; and while it is not stated in so many words, a fair inference is that Enoch walked a path quite apart from his contemporaries.

Another lonely man was Noah...

The second question is: How many are worthy to hear His voice" In Acts 13:46b Paul and Barnabas told the people, "Since you reject it . . . we now turn to the Gentiles." This is a terrible judgment. But here is the gist of what I want to say: A radical and sweeping reformation is imperative among the people called Christians—Protestants generally and evangelicals in particular. What is meant by reformation" Some may recoil from that word; I have...

Heresy is not so much rejecting as selecting. The heretic simply selects the parts of the Scripture he wants to emphasize and lets the rest go.

This is shown by the etymology of the word heresy and by the practice of the heretic. "Beware," an editorial scribe of the fourteenth century warned his readers in the preface to a book. "Beware thou take not one thing after thy affection and liking, and leave another: for that is the condition of an heretique. But take everything with other."...

Since the first fallen man got still long enough to think, fallen men have been asking these questions: "Whence came I? What am I? Why am I here" and Where am I going"" The noblest minds of the race have struggled with these questions to no avail. Did the answer lie somewhere hidden like a jewel it would surely have been uncovered, for the most penetrating minds of the race have searched for it everywhere in the region of human experience. Yet the answers remain as securely hidden as if they...

Many of the great evangelists who have touched the world for God, including such men as Jonathan Edwards and Charles Finney, have declared that the church is being betrayed by those who insist on Christianity being made "too easy." Jesus laid down the terms of Christian discipleship and there are some among us who criticize: "Those words of Jesus sound harsh and cruel." This is where we stand: receiving Jesus Christ into your life means that you have made an attachment to the Person of...

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 artless, the candid, the childlike. He cannot work with those who argue or bargain or plead or excuse themselves. He hides His profoundest mysteries...

Jesus Christ came into our world in the fullness of time, and His own world, the world of nature, received Him, even though His own people received Him not! It is my own feeling that when Jesus came, all of nature went out to greet Him. The star led the wise men from the East. The cattle in the stable stall in Bethlehem did not bother Him. His own things in created nature received Him. Dr. G. Campbell Morgan believed that when Jesus went into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil, He was...

Now lest I be misunderstood and so succeed only in confusing things still further, let me assure my readers that I am and have always been a staunch advocate of theology, and regularly teach doctrine systematically in pursuance of my pastoral calling. I joyfully recognize that there is an outline of divine truth fitted to the human mind and intended by its Author to be received by it. I think no one can become a strong Christian who is not a theologian of some sort, but it is altogether...