The Crucified Life Quotes

“If we understand that everything happening to us is to make us more Christlike, it will solve a great deal of anxiety in our lives.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Crucified Life: How To Live Out A Deeper Christian Experience

“Those who seek the deeper Christian life and those who want the riches that are in Christ Jesus the Lord seek no place, no wealth, no things, only Christ.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Crucified Life: How To Live Out A Deeper Christian Experience

“Cultivation of a Religious Mind As an example, we ought to have Christian minds. Our difficulty is that we have a secular mind and a religious mind. With the secular mind, we do most everything that we do, and then we have a little private party for what we call the religious minds. With our religious mind we try to serve the Lord the best we can. It does not work that way. The Christian should not have any secular mind at all. If you are a Christian, you should “seek the things that are above”—there should be no worldly mind in you. Some might ask, “How can I pursue my studies? How can I do my housework? How can I carry on my business?” You carry on your business, do your housework and pursue your studies by making them a part of an offering to God as certainly as the money you put in the offering plate or anything else you give openly and publicly to God. Living the crucified life precludes this divided life. A life that is partly secular, partly spiritual, partly of this world and partly of the world above is not what the New Testament teaches at all. As Christians, we can turn some of the most hopeless jobs into wonderful spiritual prayer meetings, if we will simply turn them over to God. Nicolas Herman, who was commonly known as Brother Lawrence, was a simple dishwasher in the institution where he lived. He said he did those dishes for the glory of God. When he was through with his humble work, he would fall down flat on the floor and worship God. Whatever he was told to do, he did it for [35] the crucified life: how to live out a deeper christian life the glory of God. He testified, “I wouldn’t as much as pick up a straw from the floor, but I did it for the glory of God.” One saint praised God every time he drank a glass of water. He did not make a production out of it, but in his heart, he thanked God. Every time I leave my house, I look to God, expecting Him to bless me and keep me on my way. Every time I am flying in the air, I expect Him to keep me there, land me safely and bring me back. If He wants me in heaven more than He wants me on earth, then He will answer no to that prayer and it will be all over—but I will be with Him over there. 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.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Crucified Life: How to Live Out a Deeper Christian Experience

“Does it not seem strange that the generation with the most advanced technology and the easiest-to-read Bible translations is the weakest generation of Christians in the history of our country? Church attendance has never been lower, and the Christian influence in our culture never weaker. For so long we have heard the complaint that people do not read and study the Bible because the language is antiquated. Yet the generation who had only the King James Version was the generation that sparked revivals and missionary movements around the world. It just may be that the Bible translation was not the problem. It is my observation that the natural man does not understand spiritual principles. The problem has never been the translation. The problem has never been academic. The problem has always been spiritual.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Crucified Life: How To Live Out A Deeper Christian Experience

“As long as a vessel is filled with something, nothing else can come in. And here is where a spiritual law comes into play. As long as there is something in my life, God cannot fill it. If I empty out half of my life, God can only fill half. And my spiritual life would be diluted with the things of the natural man. This seems to be the condition of many Christians today. They are willing to get rid of some things in their lives, and God comes and fills them as far as He can. But until they are willing to give up everything and put everything on the altar, as it were, God cannot fill their entire lives. One of the strange things about God is that He will come in as far as we allow Him. I have often said that a Christian is as full of the Holy Spirit as he wants to be. We can beg to be filled with the Holy Spirit. 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.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Crucified Life: How To Live Out A Deeper Christian Experience

“It is my observation that the natural man does not understand spiritual principles. The problem has never been the translation. The problem has never been academic. The problem has always been spiritual.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Crucified Life: How to Live Out a Deeper Christian Experience

“What a cheap, across-the-counter commercial kind of Christianity that says, “I was in debt, and Jesus came and paid my debt.” Sure, He did, but why emphasize that? “I was on my way to hell and Jesus stopped me and saved me.” Sure, He did, but that is not the thing to emphasize. What we need to emphasize is that God has saved us to make us like His Son. His purpose is to catch us on our wild race to hell, turn us around because He knows us, bring judgment on the old self and then create a new self within us, which is Jesus Christ.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Crucified Life: How To Live Out A Deeper Christian Experience

“Some Christians have come to the point where they have talked their way about as far as they can get. They will never get any further with their head, so they might as well put it to rest. It is the hungry heart that will finally penetrate the veil and encounter God, but this will be in the lonely recesses of the heart, far from things in the natural world. This is where God will meet us—far from the maddening crowd.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Crucified Life: How To Live Out A Deeper Christian Experience

“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.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Crucified Life: How To Live Out A Deeper Christian Experience

“Some have the idea that God’s purpose is to make our lives more tolerable here on earth. That rather cheapens what Christ did on the cross. If all He wanted to do was make our lives tolerable, then He could have done it in a variety of other ways. God’s supreme purpose for us is to make us like His Son, Jesus Christ. If we understand that everything happening to us is to make us more Christlike, it will solve a great deal of anxiety in our lives.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Crucified Life: How To Live Out A Deeper Christian Experience