A.W. Tozer > Quotes

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”
― A.W. Tozer

“God never hurries. There are no deadlines against which he must work. Only to know this is to quiet our spirits and relax our nerves.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

“It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.”
― A.W. Tozer

“One hundred religious persons knit into a unity by careful organization do not constitute a church any more than eleven dead men make a football team.”
― A.W. Tozer

“Rules for Self Discovery:
1. What we want most;
2. What we think about most;
3. How we use our money;
4. What we do with our leisure time;
5. The company we enjoy;
6. Who and what we admire;
7. What we laugh at.”
― A.W. Tozer

“I want the presence of God Himself, or I don't want anything at all to do with religion... I want all that God has or I don't want any.”
― A.W. Tozer

“Faith is the gaze of a soul upon a saving God.”
― A.W. Tozer

“Any faith that must be supported by the evidence of the senses is not real faith.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

“Perhaps it takes a purer faith to praise God for unrealized blessings than for those we once enjoyed or those we enjoy now.”
― A.W. Tozer

“I can safely say, on the authority of all that is revealed in the Word of God, that any man or woman on this earth who is bored and turned off by worship is not ready for heaven.”
― A.W. Tozer

“Refuse to be average. Let your heart soar as high as it will.”
― A.W. Tozer

“Sometimes I go to God and say, "God, if Thou dost never answer another prayer while I live on this earth, I will still worship Thee as long as I live and in the ages to come for what Thou hast done already. God’s already put me so far in debt that if I were to live one million millenniums I couldn’t pay Him for what He’s done for me.”
― A.W. Tozer

“The reason why many are still troubled, still seeking, still making little forward progress is because they haven't yet come to the end of themselves. We're still trying to give orders, and interfering with God's work within us. ”
― A.W. Tozer

“We can afford to follow Him to failure. Faith dares to fail. The resurrection and the judgment will demonstrate before all worlds who won and who lost. We can wait.”
― A.W. Tozer, Born After Midnight

“The yearning to know what cannot be known, to comprehend the incomprehensible, to touch and taste the unapproachable, arises from the image of God in the nature of man. Deep calleth unto deep, and though polluted and landlocked by the mighty disaster theologians call the Fall, the soul senses its origin and longs to return to its source.”
― A.W. Tozer

“True faith rests upon the character of God and asks no further proof than the moral perfections of the One who cannot lie.”
― A.W. Tozer

“We can never know who or what we are till we know at least something of what God is.”
― A.W. Tozer

“The fact of God is necessary for the fact of man. Think God away and man has no ground of existence.”
― A.W. Tozer

“Faith is an organ of knowledge, and love an organ of experience.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

“Nothing is complete in itself but requires something outside itself in order to exist.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

“The vague and tenuous hope that God is too kind to punish the ungodly
has become a deadly opiate for the consciences of millions.”
― A.W. Tozer

“O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, so that I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, ‘Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away.’ Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long.”
― A.W. Tozer

“A man by his sin may waste himself, which is to waste that which on earth is most like God. This is man's greatest tragedy and God's heaviest grief.”
― A.W. Tozer

“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.”
― A.W. Tozer

“Justice is not something God has. Justice is something that God is.”
― A.W. Tozer

“Philosophy and science have not always been friendly toward the idea of God, the reason being they are dedicated to the task of accounting for things and are impatient with anything that refuses to give an account of itself. The philosopher and the scientist will admit that there is much that they do not know; but that is quite another thing from admitting there is something which they can never know, which indeed they have no technique for discovering.”
― A.W. Tozer

“I am Thy servant to do Thy will, and that will is sweeter to me than position or riches or fame, and I choose it above all things on Earth or in Heaven.”
― A.W. Tozer

“What we think about when we are free to think about what we will – that is what we are or will soon become.”
― A.W. Tozer

“Acquaint thyself with God.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

“When we try to focus our thought upon One who is pure uncreated being we may see nothing at all, for He dwelleth in light that no man can approach unto. Only by faith and love are we able to glimpse Him as He passes by our shelter in the cleft of the rock.”
― A.W. Tozer

“The burden borne by mankind is a heavy and a crushing thing. The word Jesus used means a load carried or toil borne to the point of exhaustion. Rest is simply release from that burden. It is not something we do, it is what comes to us when we cease to do. His own meekness, that is the rest.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

“God knows instantly and effortlessly all matter and all matters, all mind and every mind, all spirit and all spirits, all being and every being, all creaturehood and all creatures, every plurality and all pluralities, all law and every law, all relations, all causes, all thoughts, all mysteries, all enigmas, all feeling, all desires, every unuttered secret, all thrones and dominions, all personalities, all things visible and invisible in heaven and in earth, motion, space, time, life, death, good, evil, heaven, and hell.”
― A.W. Tozer

“Without doubt, the mightiest thought the mind can entertain is the thought of God, and the weightest word in any language is its word for God.”
― A.W. Tozer

“We can be in our day what the heroes of faith were in their day - but remember at the time they didn't know they were heroes.”
― A.W. Tozer

“The Church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshiping men. This she has not done deliberately, but little by little and without her knowledge; and her very unawareness only makes her situation all the more tragic.”
― A.W. Tozer, Tozer on the Almighty God: A 366-Day Devotional

“The man who would truly know God must give time to Him.”
― A.W. Tozer

“Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshipers [meeting] together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be, were they to become 'unity' conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

“But the sons of this world have not God; they have only each other, and they walk holding to each other and looking to one another for assurance like frightened children.”
― A.W. Tozer

“To be effective the preacher's message must be alive; it must alarm, arouse, challenge; it must be God's present voice to a particular people.”
― A.W. Tozer

“ One of the purest souls ever to live on this fallen planet was Nicholas Herman, known as Brother Lawrence. He wrote very little, but what he wrote has seemed to several generations of Christians to be so rare and so beautiful as to deserve a place near the top among the world's great books of devotion. The writings of Brother Lawrence are the ultimate in simplicity; ideas woven like costly threads to make a pattern of great beauty. ”
― A.W. Tozer

“We might be wise to follow the insight of the enraptured heart rather than the more cautious reasoning of the theological mind.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

“Yet if we would know God and for other's sake tell what we know we must try to speak of his love. All Christians have tried but none has ever done it very well. I can no more do justice to that awesome and wonder-filled theme than a child can grasp a star. Still by reaching toward the star the child may call attention to it and even indicate the direction one must look to see it. So as I stretch my heart toward the high shining love of God someone who has not before known about it may be encouraged to look up and have hope.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

“Were we able to extract from any man a complete answer to the question, "What comes into your mind when you think about God?" we might predict with certainty the future of that man.”
― A.W. Tozer

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. ... Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God.


For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God. This is true not only of the individual Christian, but of the company of Christians that composes the Church. Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God, just as her most significant message is what she says about Him or leaves unsaid, for her silence is often more eloquent than her speech. ...”
― A.W. Tozer

“Teach us to know that we cannot know, for the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Let faith support us where reason fails, and we shall think because we believe, not in order that we may believe.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

“Jesus calls us to his rest, and meekness is His method. The meek man cares not at all who is greater than he, for he has long ago decided that the esteem of the world is not worth the effort.”
― A.W. Tozer, Pursuit of God

“God must do everything for us. Our part is to yield and trust”
― A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

“Always, everywhere God is present, and always He seeks to discover Himself to each one”
― A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

“Teach us, O God, that nothing is necessary to Thee. Were anything necessary to Thee that thing would be the measure of Thine imperfection: and how could we worship one who is imperfect? If nothing is necessary to Thee, then no one is necessary, and if no one, then not we. Thou dost seek us though Thou does not need us. We seek Thee because we need Thee, for in Thee we live and move and have our being. Amen.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

“We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts”
― A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God