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by
A.W. Tozer
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December 24, 2020 - March 14, 2021
the life Christ ransomed on the cross, redeemed from the judgment of sin, and made a worthy and acceptable sacrifice unto God.
What I mean by “the crucified life” is a life wholly given over to the Lord in absolute humility and obedience: a sacrifice pleasing to the Lord.
The crucified life is a life absolutely committed to following after Christ Jesus. To be more like Him. To think like Him. To act like Him. To love like Him. The whole essence of spiritual perfection has everything to do with Jesus Christ. Not with rules and regulations. Not with how we dress or what we do or do not do. We are not to look like each other; rather, we are to look like Christ. We can get all caught up in the nuances of religion and miss the glorious joy of following after Christ. Whatever hinders us in our journey must be dealt a deathblow.
One important point many fail to understand is that the Bible was never meant to replace God; rather, it was meant to lead us into the heart of God. Too many Christians stop with the text and never go on to experience the presence of God.
Probably there is no greater offense in all of Christendom than speed-reading the Bible. The Bible must be read slowly and meditatively, allowing the Spirit of God to open up our understanding.
Quite simply put, a Christian is one who sustains a right relationship with Jesus Christ. A Christian enjoys a kind of union with Jesus Christ superseding all other relationships.
the question that really matters, is simply, what do you think of Christ? And what are you going to do with Christ? Every question we might ever have can be boiled down to the subject of Jesus Christ.
He had to live among men, holy and harmless, spotless and undefiled. He had to die for man and then rise on the third day, according to the Scripture. He did all three. What the Spirit of God carries back home to the heart the Holy Spirit impales on our consciences, and we cannot escape until we have done something about Jesus.
Christ died for me. He took my sins. God raised Him from the dead and sent the Holy Spirit to say, “This is my beloved Son . . . hear ye him” (Matt. 17:5). So I must hear, I must listen, I must identify, I must admit, I must follow, I must devote, I must dedicate. I must follow the Lamb wherever He goes. He is on my conscience until I do. My conscience is impaled with the fact that He rose again in triumph of the resurrection and the confirmation of the saving grace for the whole human race.
The things that are of earth belong to sight, reason and our senses. The things that are in heaven belong to faith, trust and confidence in God.
In the meantime, while He wants me here, I will thank Him every hour and every day for everything.
Let us do away with our secular and worldly minds and cultivate sanctified minds. We have to do worldly jobs, but if we do them with sanctified minds, they no longer are worldly but are as much a part of our offering to God as anything else we give to Him.
The first point, “your life.” The second point, “is hid.” The third point, “with Christ.” Then the last point, “in God.” Here are the jewels on the earth from the sky. Your faith is strengthened assurance, and here is the cure of all cures: “your life is hid with Christ in God.”
The hope of the Church is that “when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory” (Col. 3:4).
Remember, it is one thing to believe the Bible but something else altogether to allow the Bible, through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, to impact and change your life.
We can talk about it, but until we are willing to empty ourselves, we will never have the fullness of the Holy Spirit in our lives. God will fill as much of us as we allow Him to fill.
Contrary to the natural man is the spiritual man. This is the Christian who is mature in his faith, who is led, taught and controlled by the Holy Spirit, and to whom the Spirit of God can speak.
It is the will of God that you should enter the holy of holies, live under the shadow of the mercy seat, and go out from there and always come back to be renewed and recharged and re-fed. It is the will of God that you live by the mercy seat, living a separated, clean, holy, sacrificial life—a life of continual spiritual difference.
Sermons on the Song of Songs or On Loving God by Bernard of Clairvaux. Have you ever read Dark Night of the Soul by Saint John of the Cross? Or The Scale of Perfection or The Goad of Love by Walter Hilton? Or The Amending of Life by Richard Rolle? Or The Life of the Servant or A Little Book of Eternal Wisdom by Henry Suso? Or the great sermons by John Tauler and Meister Eckert? What about The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis? Or Introduction to the Devout Life by Francis de Sales? Or The Cloud of Unknowing or The Letters of Samuel Rutherford or the works of William Law or the letters of
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First, living the crucified life involves completely forsaking the world. Second, the crucified life means turning fully to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Great devotional writers tried hard to rouse the Church of their day that the nuns should be inwardly what their profession showed them to be outwardly. One such writer was Walter Hilton, who lived 200 years before Luther was born, so he never heard of Protestantism or the Reformation. Yet this English Christian was so strong in his faith that he wrote a series of letters to the nuns of a certain convent and warned them of this very thing. That series of letters is called The Scale of Perfection. It is a most wonderful book.
“You have come out of the world and closed the door on yourself and put on a certain garb, which indicates you are separated from the world. Now look out that you do not take the world with you into the nunnery and be as worldly in there as you were out on the street. Remember that it is the forsaking of the world in your heart that makes you unworldly.”
It is never possible, however, to forsake the world in spirit if it is not forsaken in practice.
The only thing I can do for God is that which is holy like God, and the only thing that I can do for Jesus is that which Jesus has allowed and permitted and commanded me to do.
It is never possible to forsake the world in your spirit and not forsake it in reality.
There is a distinction between that part of the world that is divinely given, where Christians plant, reap, sow, work and live in the world by following God’s commandments. God meant it to be so, and that is not “worldliness.” Worldliness is the pride of life and the desire for what the eye sees and the longing of the ambitious soul for position and all that which the world does because of the sin in it. This includes all that is the world that overflows into a thousand things the Church has traditionally rejected.
So, the first step is to forsake completely the world, which is all negative, and turn your back on it. In so doing, you turn wholly to the Lord Jesus Christ, which is all positive.
When God calls a man to follow Him, He calls that man to follow Him regardless of the cost.
What concerns me is that what Bonhoeffer said of conditions in Germany then is terribly, frighteningly true of American Christianity today. The parallel is alarming.
God wills that His children should grow in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. He wills that we should go on to perfection. He wills that we should be holy.
but God wills that you should take with you riches, diamonds, pearls, silver and gold tried in the fire. He wills that you should have a harvest of souls. He wills that you should send your good works before you. He wills that you should be a productive, fruitful Christian.
This, of course, is the great prayer by the author of The Cloud of Unknowing: “God . . . I beseech Thee so for to cleanse the intent of mine heart with the unspeakable gift of Thy grace, that I may perfectly love Thee, and worthily praise Thee.”
The father of fear is unbelief.
My circumstances are no indication of whether the smiling favor of God is upon me. Fear causes me to look around at my circumstances instead of up at the smiling face of God.
The objective before us is to know Christ. We are to learn of Him, to know the power of Christ’s resurrection, to be conformed onto His death, to experience in us that which we have in Christ. In order to do that, we must “count all things but loss for the excellency of [this] knowledge.”
“Let those see who can see by the grace of God.” Or, to put it in the language of the Bible, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear” (Matt 11:15; Mark 4:9; Luke 8:8).
But when the Holy Spirit chooses, He chooses both the time of the crucifixion and the cross upon which He will crucify us. Our responsibility is to yield to His wisdom and allow Him to do the work without any advice from us.
The Bible talks about angels, archangels, seraphims, cherubims, watchers, holy ones, principalities and powers. However, we insist on only people; that is all. We are afraid to rise and let our faith-filled imagination enjoy the wonder of the universe.
The short route to intimacy with God is forgiveness of sins.
The question that we should be asking is, why does God forgive sin? He forgives sin because sin is the roadblock that stands between us and Him. If we are ever going to know God, the roadblock has to be removed. So God can forgive sin. Why does God pour out His Spirit on us? In order that the Spirit can come and show us the things of God. Why does God answer prayer? In order that in answering prayer He might unveil His own face to us.
The purpose of the Bible is not to replace God; the purpose of the Bible is to lead us to God.
Perhaps the ultimate truth here is that when we allow God to be Himself, we then—and only then—discover who and what we are as men and women.
First, if you are going to have a personal revival, you must “set [your] face like a flint” (Isa. 50:7).
Second, you must set your heart on Jesus Christ.
First they soothe you, then they pat you on your back and hope you’ll quiet down. After that, they use harsh words, accusing you of thinking you are better than other people. And when that doesn’t work, they deride you and start making fun of you. And when that doesn’t work, they ignore you.
The third thing you must do in order to experience personal revival is expose your life to God’s examination.
The fourth thing you must do for personal revival is to make some holy affirmations.
In Psalm 57:1, David says, “In the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpass.” Instead of going out to fight his own battles, David took refuge in God.
The other aspect of David’s solution is found in Psalm 57:5. David took refuge in God but, at the same time, he was giving God an opportunity to exalt Himself. “Be thou exalted, O God.” This was David’s passion. The only way God could be exalted was if he, David, would find his refuge in God.
If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up. DANIEL 3:17-18
