A.W. Tozer, Bible studies and sermons

[Shammu]

GLAMOR INSTEAD OF GLORY
By A.W. Tozer

      One ominous sign in the social structure that surrounds us is the false attitude toward anything that can be called "ordinary." There has grown up all around us an idea that the "commonplace" is old-fashioned and strictly for the birds! This existing mania for glamor and contempt for the ordinary are signs and portents in American society. Even religion has gone glamorous! In case you do not know what glamor is, I might explain that it is a compound of sex, paint, padding and artificial lights. It came to America by way of the honky-tonk and the movie lot; got accepted by the world first, and then strutted into the Church-vain, self-admiring and contemptuous. Instead of the Spirit of God in our midst, we now have the spirit of glamor, as artificial as painted death! Say what you will, it is a new kind of Christianity, with new concepts that face us brazenly wherever we turn within the confines of evangelical Christianity. The new Christian no longer wants to be good or saintly or virtuous!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

GETTING GOD IN FOCUS
By A.W. Tozer

      While many are busy trying to set forth satisfactory definitions of the word "faith," we do well to simply consider that believing is directing the heart's attention to Jesus! It is lifting the mind to "behold the Lamb of God," and never ceasing that beholding for the rest of our lives. At first this may be difficult, but it becomes easier as we look steadily at His wondrous Person, quietly and without strain. Distractions may hinder, but once the heart is committed to Him the attention will return again and rest upon Him like a wandering bird coming back to its window. I would emphasize this one great volitional act which establishes the heart intention to gaze forever upon Jesus. God takes this intention for our choice and makes what allowances He must for the thousand distractions which beset us in this evil world. So, faith is a redirecting of our sight, getting God in our focus, and when we lift our inward eyes upon God, we are sure to meet friendly eyes gazing back at us!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

"A CHEERFUL HEART"
By A.W. Tozer

       The thankful Christian will turn with true delight to the expression of Joseph Addison in his Thanksgiving hymn, "When All Thy Mercies, 0 My God," found in many of the better hymnals. Addison gives a mental image that requires music for its expression: Ten thousand thousand precious gifts My daily thanks employ; Nor is the least a cheerful heart That tastes these gifts with joy! Here is the spirit of thanksgiving. Here is the understanding of what pleases God in our acceptance and use of His gifts. "A cheefful heart that tastes these gifts with joy" is the only kind of heart that can taste them safely. While Addison had in mind chiefly the gifts God showers upon us here below, he was too much of a Christian to think that God's gifts would cease at death. So he sang: Through every period of my life Thy goodness I'll pursue; And after death in distant worlds, The glorious theme renew!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

LET US BE THANKFUL
By A.W. Tozer

      To be grateful to God's servants is to be grateful to God; and it follows that in a very real sense we thank God when we thank His people! We will always have spiritual leaders, and I think we make two mistakes in our attitudes toward them. One is not being sufficiently grateful to them. The other is in following them too slavishly. The first is a sin of omission, and because it is something that is not there, it is not likely to be noticed as a sin that is plainly present. We do make a serious mistake when we become so attached to the preaching or writing of a great Christian leader that we accept his teaching without daring to examine it. We should follow men only as they follow the Lord. We should keep an open mind lest we become blind followers of a man whose breath is in his nostrils. Learn from every holy man and his ministry. Be grateful to every one of them and thankful for them - and then follow Christ!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

GOD GIVES-AND GIVES
By A.W. Tozer

      We ought to spend more time remembering the blessings and the benefits God is continually giving us while we are alive-before we leave this vale of tears! He gives us forgivenes - so we are to live for Him as forgiven sinners. He gives us eternal life. This is not just a future reality - our life in Him is a present bestowment. He gives us sonship: "Beloved, now are we the sons of God!" In this relationship there are many other gifts we receive from God, and if we do not possess them it is because we are not God's children in faith! We ask God to help us, to meet some need, to do something for you, and the Lord mercifully does it. I consider these the little and the trifling things, yet we make a great deal of them. But they are really the passing things compared to the great present benefactions of forgiveness, reinstatement in favor with God, sonship and eternal life!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

FAITHFUL STEWARDSHIP
By A.W. Tozer

      God has been pleased to deal with us in a most remarkable way concerning our Christian stewardship and responsibility of honoring Him with the things He has entrusted to us. The Bible teaching is plain: you have the right to keep what you have all to yourself-but it will then rust and decay, and ultimately ruin you! This may hurt some of you but I am obliged to tell you that God does not need anything you have! He does not need a dime of your money! What you need to understand is that it is your own spiritual welfare at stake in such matters as this. There is a beautiful and enriching principle involved in our offering to God what we are and what we have, but none of us are giving because there is a depression in heaven! A long time ago God said: "If I had need of anything, would I tell you?" Brethren, if the living God had need of anything, He would no longer be God!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

LIVE FOR GOD'S GLORY
By A.W. Tozer

      It may be difficult for the average Christian to get hold of the idea that his daily labors can be performed as acts of worship acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. We must practice living to the glory of God actually and determinedly. By one act of consecration of our total selves to God we can make every subsequent act express that consecration. By meditation upon this truth, by talking it over with God often in our prayers, by recalling it to our minds frequently as we move about among men, a sense of its wondrous meaning will begin to take hold of us. The New Testament accepts as a matter of course that in His incarnation, our Lord took upon Him a real human body. He lived in that body here among men and never once performed a non-sacred act! Brethren, we must offer all our acts to God and believe that He accepts them. We should then keep reminding God in our times of private prayer that we mean every act for His glory. We thus meet the temptations and trials by the exercise of an aggressive faith in the sufficiency of Christ!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

"WHY AM I HERE?"
By A.W. Tozer

       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 did not exist. Why is man lost philosophically? Because he is lost morally and spiritually. He cannot answer the questions life presents to his intellect because the light of God has gone out in his soul. The fearful indictment the Holy Ghost brings against mankind is summed up count by count in the opening s of Romans and the conduct of every man from earliest recorded history is evidence enough to sustain the indictment. 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!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

NOTHING BUT SWEETNESS
By A.W. Tozer

      Let me caution you about the attitudes of some of the bubbly "happy! happy!" people in our congregations who will insist that the Word of God can never be anything but honey sweet! Fellow believers, when we digest, absorb and soak up the Word of the Lord, it becomes part and parcel of our daily lives. It is our delight. It is indeed honey and sweetness. But as we share that same Word in our witness to lost men and women, we will know something of bitterness and hostility, even enmity. It will follow then in experience, that Christian believers who are intent upon being faithful witnesses for Jesus Christ may not always find sweetness and light in their contacts with evil, rebellious people. We need to pray for men and women in our churches who have determined to set their own agendas-to live their lives as they please! They have determined to manage the influences of the Word of God in their lives.

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

THOUGHTS ON COMMUNION
By A.W. Tozer

      What a sweet comfort to us that our Lord Jesus Christ was once known in the breaking of the bread. In earlier Christian times, believers called the Communion "the medicine of immortality," and God gave them the desire to pray: Be known to us in breaking bread, But do not then depart; Savior, abide with us and spread Thy table in our heart. Some churches have a teaching that you will find God only at their table-and that you leave God there when you leave. I am so glad that God has given us light. We may take the Presence of the table with us. We may take the Bread of life with us as we go. Then sup with us in love divine, Thy body and Thy blood; That living bread and heavenly wine Be our immortal food! In approaching the table of our Lord, we dare not forget the cost to our elder Brother, the Man who was from heaven. He is our Savior; He is our Passover!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

THE BREATH OF GOD
By A.W. Tozer

      Two of the great realities in our midst are surely the promised Presence of God and the testimony of His eternal Word! By the "Word of God" I do not refer only to the book you hold in your hand-paper and letters, pages and ink-sewed together with silk thread. By the Word of God I do mean the expression of the mind of God: the mighty, world-filling breath of God! Most of the things men and women talk about cannot be counted among the great realities of life. In October, people talk a great deal about the World Series as a great reality, but by December they have forgotten who pitched and who struck out. People spend their entire lives in the pursuit of those things that can only perish and fade away. But when it is all over, they are still going to be faced with the reality of the eternal Word of God, the revelation of Truth which God has given us! Think of the changes that would come if humans would suddenly stop and hear the Word of God!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

LIFE FLOWS FROM GOD
By A.W. Tozer

       Without doubt, we have suffered the loss of many spiritual treasures because we have let slip the simple truth that the miracle of the perpetuation of life is in God! Be assured that God did not create life and toss it from Him like some petulant artist disappointed with his work. All life is in Him and out of Him, flowing from Him and returning to Him again, a moving indivisible sea of which He is the fountainhead. That eternal life which was with the Father is now the possession of believing men and women, and that life is not God's gift only-but His very Self! The regeneration of a believing soul is but a recapitulation of all His work done from the moment of creation. So, redemption is not a strange work which God for a moment turned aside to do: rather it is His same work performed in a new field, the field of human catastrophe!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

LET US TAKE IT PERSONALLY
By A.W. Tozer

      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 riches of the Godhead in mercy given. What a blessed thought-that an infinite God can give all of Himself to each of His children! He does not distribute Himself that each may have a part, but to each one He gives all of Himself as fully as if there were no others. All that He is and all that He has done is for us and for all who share the common salvation.

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

CONFUSED ABOUT WORSHIP
By A.W. Tozer

      To really know Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord is to love and worship Him! As God's people, we are so often confused that we could be known as God's poor, stumbling, bumbling people, for we are most prone to think of worship as something we do when we go to church on Sunday! We call it God's house. We have dedicated it to Him. So, we continue with the confused idea that it must be the only place where we can worship Him. We come to the Lord's house, made of brick and stone and wood. We are used to hearing the call to worship: "The Lord is in His holy temple-let us kneel before Him!" This is on Sunday and in church-very nice! But on Monday, as we go about our different duties, are we aware of the continuing Presence of God? The Lord desires still to be in His holy temple, wherever we are; for each of us is a temple in whom dwells the Holy Spirit of God!

A.W. Tozer

[Shammu]

LET THE DAY DAWN
By A.W. Tozer

      The Bible tells us that when a person becomes a Christian, it is as though the sun has come up and the day has dawned. Then his experience along the path should be like the glowing light which shineth more and more unto the perfect day! This brings us to a question: if all Christians are alike in standing and state, why did Jesus point out three distinctions in the Christian life-"some thirty, some sixty and some a hundred fold"? If we are all alike and have all "arrived" at the same place and state, why did the Apostle Paul tell the Philippian Christians "I have suffered the loss of all things, that I may know Him and if by any means, I might attain unto that superior resurrection"? I am of the opinion that we cannot experience that which we have not believed. I still think we must instruct and urge men and women, toiling along in average and common Christian ways, to move forward and claim spiritual victory they have not yet known.

A.W. Tozer