More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
A.W. Tozer
Read between
August 12 - September 18, 2023
If God never answered another prayer for me as long as I live, I still want God to know that I want to serve Him until I die. If He never did another thing for me from this day on, if He withdrew His hand and let me go to pieces physically, mentally, emotionally, financially and every other way, I would still want Him to know I want to serve Him just because He is God.
The modern emphasis that God is a convenience and Jesus Christ so kindly died for us in order that we might have peace of mind is a travesty of the gospel. Sinners know it, and the liberals know it. Only we poor, lethargic evangelicals fail to see it.
Unless there is an awakening out of our spiritual lethargy, this generation of Christians is being set up to backslide as no other generation before.
The backsliding Christian is one of the most serious threats to plague the evangelical church today. If the Church is to complete the job of world evangelization before the return of Christ, we need to deal with this serious problem.
There are two main causes of backsliding. The first cause is the fickleness of the human heart.
Our ability to change our mind is our hope.
People tend to follow what is easy and what goes the natural way.
Though some made a step toward God, or even met God, it did not last, because serving Jesus Christ is contrary to the human nature. By nature, we do not persevere. The fickleness of the human heart turns a person away, and he backslides.
Backsliding always begins with the heart.
God knows before an individual knows when his heart is cooling off. After God, the individual finds it out. Then the church finds it out; and if he continues, the world finds it out. This is always the order.
If you are not doing as well as you used to, the only kind and honest thing I can say is that you are a backslider in heart. If you loved to pray before, you will love to pray as much now. If you do not love to pray as much as before, at what other conclusion can you arrive?
Backsliding is the losing of our individual communion with God.
Backsliding resides in the heart, and these other things are only external aids to the devil.
Another symptom is the presence of a critical spirit toward other preachers.
We ought to be careful lest we become too professional and develop the tendency to criticize unkindly. If it is a question of trying to improve, that is another matter. If it is a question of trying to push the standards up—to get people to write, preach, pray, talk and exhort better, to help the new choir to raise its standards—that is another matter and is perfectly all right.
there is the matter of giving; God’s warm-hearted people give spontaneously. They love it. They give joyously, because it is a pleasure to give.
Jesus is standing in Pilate’s hall, Friendless, forsaken, betrayed by all; Hearken! what meaneth the sudden call? What will you do with Jesus? Jesus is standing on trial still, You can be false to Him if you will, You can be faithful through good or ill: What will you do with Jesus? Will you evade him as Pilate tried? Or will you choose Him, whate’er betide? Vainly you struggle from Him to hide: What will you do with Jesus? Will you, like Peter, your Lord deny? Or will you scorn from His foes to fly, Daring for Jesus to live or die? What will you do with Jesus? “Jesus, I give Thee my heart
...more
What will you do with Jesus? Neutral you cannot be; Some day your heart will be asking, “What will He do with me?”
Organized human society wants us to do everything but consider our ways. Yet this is more important than any or all the objects demanding your attention.
When the Scripture says, “Consider your ways,” it means consider your moral ways. Notice that it is your own ways you are to consider, which is contrary to our common habit. And it is the work of the Holy Spirit to focus our attention there.
There is no act of grace and no trick of mercy and no justification that can take an unholy man into the presence of God or an evil man into God’s holy heaven.
God saves only sinners, and He saves only sinners who know they are sinners. He saves only sinners who admit they are sinners; but He saves sinners and turns them from being sinners to being good men and full of the Holy Spirit. When we teach anything else, we are teaching heresy.
Our choices have consequences in our moral structure, either to strengthen virtue or to rot the nerve center of virtue.
Nobody ever longs for death; they simply choose the path that leads there. They have chosen it by a series of small choices. They have made the last choice of moral folly. They have chosen death; not that they looked at death and said, “I choose you!” but they looked at all the pleasant ways that lead there and said, “I choose you.”
For every deed there is a corresponding consequence.
A scriptural principle that is often misconstrued is found in Galatians 6:7: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” This is the irrepressible law of consequence.
Spiritual lethargy has brought the evangelical church to the brink of apostasy and put the average Christian in an extremely vulnerable and challenging position.
Danger approaches the Christian life from three directions: the world through which we journey, the god of this world and our unmortified flesh.
The threat comes to us through human society outside the will of God. As long as sin remains, human society will be a threat to the Christian soul. Human society’s sin, unbelief, diversions, ambitions, however skillfully disguised, are a threat to the Christian soul.
Many Christian leaders will apologize and compromise and smooth things over with the world. But you will find nothing but stern insistence in the Bible that we ought to forsake the world and not in any way be influenced by its sin or unbelief or diversions or ambitions or worldly spirit.
The devil is called by four names in the Bible: dragon, serpent, the devil and Satan. He is called the dragon in such places as Revelation 12, when he is in government.
Whenever the devil gets into government and starts persecuting, the Bible calls him the dragon. I do not say the devil is in every government.
The best thing to do is to keep your eyes on Jesus and let Him take care of the devil.
The general rule in this area is to deal with the flesh, or the flesh will deal with you and it will not be nice.
We are living in wild, turbulent, dangerous, dramatic days, and the four winds are striving on the great sea, and the moon is mourning the time when it shall be turned to blood; but you and I need not fear. God is on our side, and God is on His holy throne and in His holy temple, and all is right with the man or woman who dares to believe.
The problem with this is that nobody has ever experienced a life of absolute victory, without any defeat, except our Lord Himself.
We must vigorously search the Scriptures to discover God’s definition of the victorious Christian life and then commit ourselves to that. No other definition is acceptable to the Christian.
The victorious Christian life is a day-today or even moment-by-moment victory over enemies and situations that we confront in the way.
Arrogance is the sin that follows in the wake of success.
He will never let you have a condescending attitude toward anybody else if you are a Christian. If you are a Christian, the Lord loves you too much to let you get away with that. Arrogance comes on the heels of victory.
Never trust your heart when you are feeling discouraged or, for that matter, when you have just won a great victory.
A discouraged heart always exaggerates everything. Do not trust a discouraged spirit, for it will never give you the true picture of you or your situation.
Regardless of your victory or failure, your relationship with God does not change. You are no less dear to God when you are a failure than when you are successful.
Superstition is, in some measure, a projection of our own nasty little personalities into heaven and making God in our own image; when we attribute a vast and limitless spitefulness to God, people become afraid of Him.
All weaknesses in the Body of Christ spring out of an inadequate view of God. They spring out of a low view of God. If God were seen as big enough, there would be a wonderful liberty in the Church.
Some Christians cannot worship unless they worship after a certain form. If they were brought up to kneel, they cannot pray standing up. If they were brought up to pray standing up, they cannot pray lying down. They just have to get into that certain formula—form and posture, and say certain words. They that worship God must worship Him how? In spirit and in truth, and that gives us complete liberty.
there are the traditions, which may not go back to Christ and the apostles at all. It is possible to follow certain mannerisms or forms—traditions—and not know where they originated or how they got there, and yet they are religiously followed and imitated by all aspiring Christians.
The worst bondage would be to insist that someone else bear the same bondage you do. Do not get into bondage to anything. Jesus Christ set us free to do His will.
Freedom to do good is the Christian’s liberty.
Freedom from hatred, from envy, from unholy ambition, from wanting your own way, and the freedom to do the will of God is Christian freedom; that is true Christian liberty. Christian liberty is never about the freedom to commit any sort of sin.
