[BBC List] you can say that again

[Mike Abendroth]

Quotes & Excerpts from
 

A. W. Tozer

 

   _____  

 

The Christian in the world
 

"The idea that this world is a playground instead of a battleground has now
been accepted in practice by the vast majority of Christians. They are
facing Christ and the world....

 

"The ‘worship’ growing out of such a view of life is as far off center as
the view itself - a sort of sanctified nightclub without the champagne and
the dressed-up drunks."

 

 This World: Playground or Battleground? by A.W. Tozer, pp. 5-6. 

 

   _____  

 

The Root of the Righteous


"In our constant struggle to believe we are likely to overlook the simple
fact that a bit of healthy disbelief is sometimes as needful as faith to the
welfare of our souls.  I would go further and say that we would do well to
cultivate a reverent skepticism. It will keep us out of a thousand bogs and
quagmires where others who lack it sometimes find themselves. It is no sin
to doubt some things, but it may be fatal to believe everything.

"Faith is at the root of all true worship, and without faith it is
impossible to please God. Through unbelief Israel failed to inherit the
promises. “By grace are ye saved through faith.” “The just shall live by
faith.” Such verses as these come trooping to our memories, and we wince
just a little at the suggestion that unbelief may also be a good and useful
thing....

"Faith never means gullibility. The man who believes everything is as far
from God as the man who refuses to believe anything. Faith engages the
person and promises of God and rests upon them with perfect assurance.
Whatever has behind it the character and word of the living God is accepted
by faith as the last and final truth from which there must never be any
appeal. Faith never asks questions when it has been established that God has
spoken. 'Yea, let God be true, but every man a liar' (Rom. 3:4). Thus faith
honors God by counting Him righteous and accepts His testimony against the
very evidence of its own senses. That is faith, and of such we can never
have too much.

"Credulity, on the other hand, never honors God, for it shows as great a
readiness to believe anybody as to believe God Himself. The credulous person
will accept anything as long as it is unusual, and the more unusual it is
the more ardently he will believe. Any testimony will be swallowed with a
straight face if it only has about it some element of the eerie, the
preternatural, the unearthly...." 

The Root of the Righteous, Chapter 34

"Whatever a man wants badly and persistently enough will determine the man's
character." 

The Root of the Righteous, p. 116.
 

   _____  


 

 The Pursuit of God,

"To great sections of the Church the art of worship has been lost entirely,
and in its place has come that strange and foreign thing called the
`program.' This word has been borrowed from the stage and applied with sad
wisdom to the type of public service which now passes for worship among us. 

"Sound Bible exposition is an imperative must in the Church of the living
God. Without it no church can be a New Testament church in any strict
meaning of that term. But exposition may be carried on in such way as to
leave the hearers devoid of any true spiritual nourishment whatever. For it
is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself...."

Preface, 1948. 

"The way to deeper knowledge of God is through the lonely valleys of soul
poverty and abnegation of all things. The blessed ones who possess the
Kingdom are they who have repudiated every external thing and have rooted
from their hearts all sense of possessing. These are the 'poor in spirit.'"
Page 23

"To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love,
scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in
happy experience by the children of the burning heart." Page 14

   _____  

 

Alone with God

 

"And when He had sent the multitudes away, He went up on the mountain by
Himself to pray. Now when evening came, He was alone there." Matthew 14:23

"Modern civilization is so complex as to make the devotional life all but
impossible. It wears us out by multiplying distractions and beats us down by
destroying our solitude, where otherwise we might drink and renew our
strength before going out to face the world again.

"The thoughtful soul to solitude retires," said the poet of other and
quieter times; but where is the solitude to which we can retire today?
Science, which has provided men with certain material comforts, has robbed
them of their souls by surrounding them with a world hostile to their
existence.

"Commune with your own heart upon your bed and be still" is a wise and
healing counsel, but how can it be followed in this day of the newspaper,
the telephone, the radio and the television? These modern playthings, like
pet tiger cubs, have grown so large and dangerous that they threaten to
devour us all. What was intended to be a blessing has become a positive
curse. No spot is now safe from the world's intrusion." 

Of God and Men, 125

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Falling down before God

"Then Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying: 'As for Me,
behold, My covenant is with you...'" Genesis 17:3-4

"The Scriptures declare, 'Abram fell on his face' as the Lord talked with
him (Genesis 17:3). Abraham was reverent and submissive. Probably there is
no better picture anywhere in the Bible of the right place for mankind and
the right place for God. God was on His throne speaking, and Abraham was on
his face listening!

"Where God and man are in relationship, this must be the ideal. God must be
the communicator, and man must be in the listening, obeying attitude. If men
and women are not willing to assume this listening attitude, there will be
no meeting with God in living, personal experience....

"Yes, Abraham was lying face down in humility and reverence, overcome with
awe in this encounter with God. He knew that he was surrounded by the
world's greatest mystery. The presence of this One who fills all things was
pressing in upon him, rising above him, defeating him, taking away his
natural self-confidence. God was overwhelming him and yet inviting and
calling him, pleading with him and promising him a great future as a friend
of God!" 

Men Who Met God, 21-22.

   _____  

 


Why We Must Think Rightly About God
 

"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. ...
 

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 spiritual future of that man. Were we able to know exactly
what our most influential religious leaders think of God today, we might be
able with some precision to foretell where the Church will stand tomorrow.
...

A right conception of God is basic not only to systematic theology but to
practical Christian living as well. It is to worship what the foundation is
to the temple; where it is inadequate or out of plumb the whole structure
must sooner or later collapse. I believe there is scarcely an error in
doctrine or a failure in applying Christian ethics that cannot be traced
finally to imperfect and ignoble thoughts about God....

It is my opinion that the Christian conception of God current in these
middle years of the twentieth century is so decadent as to be utterly
beneath the dignity of the Most High God and actually to constitute for
professed believers something amounting to a moral calamity.


All the problems of heaven and earth, though they were to confront us
together and at once, would be nothing compared with the overwhelming
problem of God: That He is; what He is like; and what we as moral beings
must do about Him....

 

The idolatrous heart assumes that God is other than He is - in itself a
monstrous sin - and substitutes for the true God one made after its own
likeness. Always this God will conform to the image of the one who created
it and will be base or pure, cruel or kind, according to the moral state of
the mind from which it emerges....

 

The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are
unworthy of Him. It begins in the mind and may be present where no overt act
of worship has taken place. 'When they knew God,'wrote Paul, 'they glorified
him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their
imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.'


Then followed the worship of idols fashioned after the likeness of men and
birds and beasts and creeping things. But this series of degrading acts
began in the mind. Wrong ideas about God are not only the fountain from
which the polluted waters of idolatry flow; they are themselves idolatrous.
The idolater simply imagines things about God and acts as if they were true.
 

Perverted notions about God soon rot the religion in which they appear. The
long career of Israel demonstrates this clearly enough, and the history of
the Church confirms it. So necessary to the Church is a lofty concept of God
that when that concept in any measure declines, the Church with her worship
and her moral standards declines along with it. The first step down for any
church is taken when it surrenders its high opinion of God.

Before the Christian Church goes into eclipse anywhere there must first be a
corrupting of her simple basic theology. She simply gets a wrong answer to
the question, 'What is God like?' and goes on from there. Though she may
continue to cling to a sound nominal creed, her practical working creed has
become false. The masses of her adherents come to believe that God is
different from what He actually is; and that is heresy of the most insidious
and deadly kind.

 

The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian Church today is to purify
and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him - and of
her. In all her prayers and labors this should have first place. We do the
greatest service to the next generation of Christians by passing on to them
undimmed and undiminished that noble concept of God which we received from
our Hebrew and Christian fathers of generations past. This will prove of
greater value to them than anything that art or science can devise.
 

The Knowledge of the Holy by A. W. Tozer, Chapter 1

 

   _____  

Our wonderful Lord and King

"Christianity today is man-centered, not God-centered. God is made to wait
patiently, even respectfully, on the whims of men. The image of God
currently popular is that of a distracted Father, struggling in heartbroken
desperation to get people to accept a Savior of whom they feel no need and
in whom they have very little interest. To persuade these self-sufficient
souls to respond to His generous offers God will do almost anything, even
using salesmanship methods and talking down to them in the chummiest way
imaginable. This view of things is, of course, a kind of religious
romanticism which, while it often uses flattering and sometimes embarrassing
terms in praise of God, manages nevertheless to make man the star of the
show." Man: The Dwelling Place of God, 27.

“We need to improve the quality of our Christianity and we never will until
we raise our concept of God back to that held by apostle, sage, prophet,
saint and reformer. When we put God back where he really belongs, we will
instinctively and automatically move up again; the whole spiral of our
religious direction will be upward." The Attributes of God, 195.

"Nobody ever got anything from God on the grounds that he deserved it. Haven
fallen, man deserves only punishment and death. So if God answers prayer
it's because God is good. From His goodness, His lovingkindness, His
good-natured benevolence, God does it! That's the source of everything." The
Attributes of God, 47.

The Church

"I Thank God that the kingdom of God is not divided into areas for big,
important people and areas for little, unimportant people. Every one is just
as needful in God's sight as any other!"  "Who Put Jesus On the Cross", 161
 

Ashamed of the Gospel?

"Many of us Christians have become extremely skillful in arranging our lives
so as to admit the truth of Christianity without being embarrassed by its
implications. We arrange things so that we can get on well enough without
divine aid, while at the same time ostensibly seeking it. We boast in the
Lord but watch carefully that we never get caught depending on Him." The
Root of the Righteous, page 39.

Spiritual Gifts

"I say that a Christian congregation can survive and often appear to prosper
in the community by the exercise of human talent and without any touch from
the Holy Spirit! All that religious activity and the dear people will not
know anything better until the great and terrible day when our self-employed
talents are burned with fire and only that which was wrought by the Holy
Ghost will stand forever!"  Tragedy in the Church: The Missing Gifts, 30.

Faith:

"Faith as Paul saw it, was a living flaming thing leading to surrender and
obedience to the commandments of Christ. Faith in our day often means no
more than a meek assent to a doctrine." Paths to Power, 56-57.

Complacency:
"Complacency is the deadly enemy of spiritual progress. The contented soul
is the stagnant soul." The Size of the Soul, 22.


God's will & my obedience:

The only fear I have is to fear to get out of the will of God. Outside of
the will of God, there's nothing I want, and in the will of God there's
nothing I fear, for God has sworn to keep me in His will. If I'm out of his
will that's another matter. But if I'm in His will, He's sworn to keep me."
Success and the Christian, 80.

"Whatever a man wants badly and persistently enough will determine the man's
character." The Root of the Righteous, 116.

"It is impossible to keep our moral practices sound and our inward attitudes
right while our idea of God is erroneous or inadequate." 
The Knowledge of the Holy, viii



"The New Christian is like a man who has learned to drive a car in a country
where the traffic moves on the left side of the highway and suddenly finds
himself in another country and forced to drive on the right. He must unlearn
his old habit and learn a new one and more serious than all, he must learn
in heavy traffic." 
Of God and Men, 63.

"The notion that the careless sinner is the smart fellow and the
serious-minded Christian, though well-intentioned, is a stupid dolt
altogether out of touch with life will not stand up under scrutiny. Sin is
basically an act of moral folly, and the greater the folly the greater the
fool." 
Man The Dwelling Place of God, 48.


"What does this word holiness really mean? Is it a negative kind of piety
from which so many people have shied away? No, of course not! Holiness in
the Bible means moral wholeness-- a positive quality which actually includes
kindness, mercy, purity, moral blamelessness and godliness. It is always to
be thought of in a positive, white intensity of degree." 
I Call it Heresy, 63



History will show that the church has prospered most when blessed with
strong leaders and suffered the greatest decline when her leaders were weak
and time serving. The sheep rarely go much farther than the shepherd. 
The Warfare of the Spirit, 191-192



What Christian when faced with a moral problem goes straight to the Sermon
on the Mount or other New Testament Scripture for the authoritative answer?
Who lets the words of Christ be final. The causes back of the decline in our
Lord’s authority are many. I name only two. 
One is the power of custom, precedent and tradition within the older
religious groups. These like gravitation affect every particle of religious
practice within the group, exerting a steady and constant pressure in one
direction. Of course that direction is toward conformity to the status quo.
Not Christ but custom is lord in this situation…. 
The second cause is the revival of intellectualism among the evangelicals.
This, if I sense the situation correctly, is not so much a thirst for
learning as a desire for a reputation of being learned……. 

One sign of His diminishing authority is that many churches have for years
baptized professing Christians in the name of the Father, and of the Son and
of the Holy Spirit without even asking them to commit themselves to learn to
obey all that Christ commanded (Matthew 28:18-20). Consequently Christ’s
supreme authority is ignored at the entrance into the membership and
fellowship of His church. A disciple is a person who is committed to learn
to obey all that Christ commanded, but the majority of Christians spend a
lifetime in church and never even know that they should become a disciple.


A.W. Tozer said, "I am a Bible Christian and if an archangel with a
wingspread as broad as a constellation shining like the sun were to come and
offer me some new truth, I'd ask him for a reference. If he could not show
me where it is found in the Bible, I would bow him out and say, I'm awfully
sorry, you don't bring any references with you"



"We must face today as children of tomorrow. We must meet the uncertainties
of this world with the certainty of the world to come."
-- Of God and Men, 132-133 –



"Modern civilization is so complex as to make the devotional life all but
impossible. It wears us out by multiplying distractions and beats us down by
destroying our solitude, where otherwise we might drink and renew our
strength before going out to face the world again."
Of God and Men, 103.



"Wisdom, among other things, is the ability to devise perfect ends and to
achieve those ends by the most perfect means....All God's acts are done in
perfect wisdom, first for His own glory, and then for the highest good of
the greatest number for the longest time. And all His acts are as pure as
they are wise, and as good as they are wise and pure. Not only could His
acts not be better done: a better way to do them could not be imagined."
The Knowledge of the Holy, 60-61



"Without doubt the emphasis in Christian teaching today should be on
worship. There is little danger that we shall become merely worshipers and
neglect the practical implications of the gospel. No one can long worship
God in spirit and in truth before the obligation to holy service becomes too
strong to resist. Fellowship with God leads straight to obedience and good
works. That is the divine order and it can never be reversed."
Born After Midnight, 126.



"We modern Christians are long on talk and short on conduct."
Born After Midnight, 32.



"The idea that God will pardon a rebel who has not given up his rebellion is
contrary both to the Scriptures and to common sense."
The Root of the Righteous, 43.



"The man that believes will obey; failure to obey is convincing proof that
there is no true faith present. To attempt the impossible God must give
faith or there will be none, and He gives faith to the obedient heart only."
Man the Dwelling Place of God, 33.



"The average Christian is so cold and so contented with His wretched
condition that there is no vacuum of desire into which the blessed Spirit
can rush in satisfying fullness."
Born After Midnight, 7.



"In the Book of Acts faith was for each believer a beginning, not an end; it
was a journey, not a bed in which to lie while waiting for the day of our
Lord's triumph. Believing was not a once-done act; it was more than an act,
it was an attitude of heart and mind which inspired and enabled the believer
to take up his cross and follow the Lamb whithersoever He went."
Born After Midnight, 16.



"Too many of our religious convictions are negative. We act not from a
positive conviction that something is right, but from a feeling that the
opposite is wrong."
-- Of God and Men, 94. –



"The greatness of God rouses fear within us, but His goodness encourages us
not to be afraid of Him. To fear and not be afraid -- that is the paradox of
faith.
The Knowledge of the Holy, 84



"When I am praying the most eloquently, I am getting the least accomplished
in my prayer life. But when I stop getting eloquent and give God less
theology and shut up and just gaze upward and wait for God to speak to my
heart He speaks with such power that I have to grab a pencil and a notebook
and take notes on what God is saying to my heart."
Success and the Christian, 46-47



"Worship, I say, rises or falls with our concept of God .... and if there is
one terrible disease in the Church of Christ, it is that we do not see God
as great as He is."
Worship: The Missing Jewel of the Evangelical Church, 25.



Actually, I do find Christians these days who seem to have largely wasted
their lives. They were converted to Christ but they have never sought to go
on to an increasing knowledge of God. There is untold loss and failure
because they have accepted the whole level of things around them as being
normal and desirable.
The Counselor, 130.



"The best book is not one that informs merely, but one that stirs the reader
up to inform himself."
Man the Dwelling Place of God, 149.



We may as well face it: the whole level of spirituality among us is low. We
have measured ourselves by ourselves until the incentive to seek higher
plateaus in the things of the Spirit is all but gone."
Of God and Men, 12.



"We must do something about the cross, and one of two things only we can
do--flee it or die upon it."
The Root of the Righteous, 63.



"Faith never means gullibility. The man who believes everything is as far
from God as the man who refuses to believe anything."
The Root of the Righteous, 120.



"The notion that hostile persons or unfavorable circumstances can prevent
the will of God from being fulfilled in a human life is altogether
erroneous. Nothing, no one, can hinder God or a good man."
The Root of the Righteous, 128



"We Christians must simplify our lives or lose untold treasures on earth and
in eternity."
The Pursuit of God, 103



"We cannot grasp the true meaning of the divine holiness by thinking of
someone or something very pure and then raising the concept to the highest
degree we are capable of. God's holiness is not simply the best we know
infinitely bettered. We know nothing like the divine holiness. It stands
apart, unique, unapproachable, incomprehensible and unattainable. The
natural man is blind to it. He may fear God's power and admire His wisdom,
but His holiness he cannot even imagine."
The Knowledge of the Holy, 111.



"Prayer is never an acceptable substitute for obedience. The sovereign Lord
accepts no offering from His creatures that is not accompanied by obedience.
To pray for revival while ignoring or actually flouting the plain precept
laid down in the Scriptures is to waste a lot of words and get nothing for
our trouble."
Of God and Men, 52.



'...Faith is not a once-done act, but a continuous gaze of the heart at the
Triune God. Believing, then, is directing the hearts' 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.'
The Pursuit of God, 90.



" I find that many men and women are troubled by the thought that they are
too small and inconsequential in the scheme of things. But that is not our
real trouble -- we are actually too big and too complex, for God made us in
His image and we are too big to be satisfied with what the world offers us!
....Man is bored, because he is too big to be happy with that which sin is
giving him. God has made him too great, his potential is too mighty."
Who Put Jesus on the Cross, 170. 



"When our Lord looked at us, He saw not only what we were -- He was faithful
in seeing what we could become! He took away the curse of being and gave us
the glorious blessing of becoming.
Who Put Jesus on the Cross, 166"



"Truth is a glorious but hard mistress. She never consults, bargains or
compromises."
Of God and Men, 39



"I think that most Christians would be better pleased if the Lord did not
inquire into their personal affairs too closely. They want Him to save them,
keep them happy and take them to heaven at last, but not to be too
inquisitive about their conduct or service. But He has searched us and known
us; He knows our downsitting and our uprising and understands our thoughts
afar off. There is no place to hide from those eyes that are as a flame of
fire and there is no way to escape from the Judgment of those feet that are
like fine brass. It is the part of wisdom to live with these things in
mind." 
That Incredible Christian, 105-106.



"To be right with God has often meant to be in trouble with men."
Man the Dwelling Place of God, 114.



"God dwells in eternity but time dwells in God. He has already lived all our
tomorrows as He has lived all our yesterdays."
The Knowledge of the Holy, 45.



"We have become so engrossed in the work of the Lord that we have forgotten
the Lord of the work." 
The Banner, Dec. 4, 70, p. 2



"If God is the Supreme good then our highest blessedness on earth must lie
in knowing Him as perfectly as possible."
That Incredible Christian, 65



"God being who He is must always be sought for Himself, never as a means
toward something else."
"Whoever seeks God as a means toward desired ends will not find God. The
mighty God, the maker of heaven and earth, will not be one of many
treasures, not even the chief of all treasures. He will be all in all or He
will be nothing. God will not be used."
Man the Dwelling Place of God, 56-57 



For a long time I have believed that truth, to be understood must be lived;
that Bible doctrine is wholly ineffective until it has been digested and
assimilated by the total life. 
That Incredible Christian, 92.



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. 
The Knowledge of the Holy, 9.



All things being equal, our prayers are only as powerful as our lives. In
the long pull we pray only as well as we live. Some prayers are like a fire
escape, used only in times of critical emergency -- never very enjoyable,
but used as a way of terrified escape from disaster. They do not represent
the regular life of the one who offers them; rather are the unusual and
uncommon acts of the spiritual amateur.
The Root of the Righteous, 81.



God formed us for His pleasure, and so formed us that we as well as He can
in divine communion enjoy the sweet and mysterious mingling of kindred
personalities. He meant us to see Him and live with Him and draw our life
from His smile.
The Pursuit of God, p. 34.



Worship means "to feel in the heart"....Worship also means to "express in
some appropriate manner" what you feel....and what will be expressed? "A
humbling but delightful sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder."
Worship The Missing Jewel of the Evangelical Church 8, 9



In the New Testament there is no contradiction between faith and obedience.
Between faith and law-works, yes; between law and grace, yes; but between
faith and obedience, not at all. The Bible recognizes no faith that does not
lead to obedience, nor does it recognize any obedience that does not spring
from faith.
Paths to Power, 24

"...no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. Worship is pure
or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God." 
The Knowledge of the Holy, 9.



"Our pursuit of God is successful just because He is forever seeking to
manifest Himself to us." 
Pursuit of God, 65.
"It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or
secular, it is why he does it. The motive is everything." 
The Pursuit of God, 127



"There is scarcely anything so dull and meaningless as Bible doctrine taught
for its own sake. Truth divorced from life is not truth in its Biblical
sense, but something else and something less."
Of God and Men, 26



"The abuse of a harmless thing is the essence of sin." 
A.W. Tozer



"Men who refuse to worship the true God now worship themselves with tender
devotion."
A.W. Tozer The Divine Conquest, 52.



"One of the Most stinging criticisms made against Christians is that their
minds are narrow and their hearts small."
The Root of the Righteous, 113.



"We are called to an everlasting preoccupation with God."
That Incredible Christian, 46.



"Every man is as holy as he really wants to be."
Man: the Dwelling Place of God, 40



Much of our difficulty as seeking Christians stems from our unwillingness to
take God as He is and adjust our lives accordingly. We insist upon trying to
modify Him and to bring Him nearer to our own image. 
The Pursuit of God, 101.



"What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important
thing about us." 
The Knowledge of the Holy, 7.


Time
"God never hurries. There are no deadlines against which He must work. "
"God never hurries. There are no deadlines against which He must work." 
The Knowledge of the Holy, 53.


 

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The following quotes (attributed to Tozer) have no specific reference yet.

Hypocrisy or honesty?

"Of all forms of deception self-deception is the most deadly, and of all
deceived persons the self-deceived are the least likely to discover the
fraud."

"Christians don't tell lies they just go to church and sing them." 

"Much that passes for New Testament Christianity is little more that
objective truth sweetened with song and made palatable by religious
entertainment." 

"It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or
secular, it is why he does it. The motive is everything." 

"God being who He is must always be sought for Himself, never as a means
toward something else." 

"Whoever seeks God as a means toward desired ends will not find God. The
mighty God, the maker of heaven and earth, will not be one of many
treasures, not even the chief of all treasures. He will be all in all or He
will be nothing. God will not be used."

"It is doubtful we can be Christian in anything unless we are Christian in
everything."

Pride: 

"It appears that too many Christians want to enjoy the thrill of feeling
right but are not willing to endure the inconvenience of being right." 

 

"Creatures that have been saved by the sovereign grace of the Creator, put
into the service of their fellow creatures and commanded to herald the good
news of Divine pardon and deliverance may all too quickly forget that they
are but clay pots made out of 'proud dust' (to note Thomas Watson's apt
description). We must be reminded that we hold our office by our Master's
pleasure, to do His bidding, to further His Kingdom, and to build up His
children. ...

     "Humble shepherds remember that even the Great Shepherd of the sheep
patiently endured the misunderstanding, scolding and fleshly second-guessing
of His slow-to-learn sheep (cf. Matt. 16:22; Mark 4:38; 1 Pet. 2:21-23).
Prideful shepherds, however, react to every real or perceived slight to
their 'noble personage'. How unlike their Master!  

     "Shepherds must learn that they cannot be conformed to the image of
Christ as long-suffering and forgiving unless they are first 'long-bothered'
and wronged."
 

God's sovereignty:
"The notion that hostile persons or unfavorable circumstances can prevent
the will of God from being fulfilled in a human life is altogether
erroneous. Nothing, no one, can hinder God or a good man." 

"God dwells in eternity but time dwells in God. He has already lived all our
tomorrows as He has lived all our yesterdays."

Righteousness or depravity:

"One of our greatest tasks is to demonstrate to the young people of this
generation that there is nothing stupid about righteousness." 

"It is doubtful we can be Christian in anything unless we are Christian in
everything."

"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."

"One mark of the low state of affairs among us is religious boredom."
 

Tolerating the unholy

"Not only are we all in process of becoming; we are becoming what we love."

"We may as well face it: the whole level of spirituality among us is low. We
have measured ourselves by ourselves until the incentive to seek higher
plateaus in the things of the Spirit is all but gone."

"Grace will save a man but it will not save him and his idol. 

"Any nation which for an extended period puts pleasure before liberty is
likely to lose the liberty it misused." 

"It is hard to focus upon a better world to come when a more comfortable one
than this can hardly be imagined."


Separation and persecution"

"To be right with God has often meant to be in trouble with men."

Truth

"Truth is a glorious but hard mistress. She never consults, bargains or
compromises."

"What Christian when faced with a moral problem goes straight to the Sermon
on the Mount or other New Testament Scripture for the authoritative answer?
Who lets the words of Christ be final on giving, buying, selling and other
important matters?"

 

True or false worship (self-focused or God-focused)"

"Men who refuse to worship the true God now worship themselves with tender
devotion." 

"The Lordship of Jesus Christ is not quite forgotten among Christians, but
it has been relegated to the hymnal where all responsibility toward it may
be comfortably discharged in a glow of religious emotion. Or if it is taught
as a theory in the classroom it is rarely applied to practical living. The
idea that the Man Christ Jesus has absolute final authority over the whole
church and over its members in every detail of their lives is simply not now
accepted as true by the rank and file of evangelical Christians."

"In the conduct of our public worship where is the authority of Christ to be
found? The truth is that today the Lord rarely controls a service, and the
influence He exerts is very small. We sing of Him and preach about Him, but
He must not interfere; we worship our way, and it must be right because we
have always done it that way, as have the other churches in our group."

"The things that are closest to our hearts are the things we talk about, and
if God is close to your heart, you will talk about Him."

"You can be a hypocrite and love the world. You can be a deceived ruler in
the religious system and love the world. You can be a cheap, snobbish,
modern Christian and love the world. But you cannot be a genuine Bible
Christian and love the world."

"Without doubt the emphasis in Christian teaching today should be on
worship. There is little danger that we shall become merely worshipers and
neglect the practical implications of the gospel. No one can long worship
God in spirit and in truth before the obligation to holy service becomes too
strong to resist. Fellowship with God leads straight to obedience and good
works. That is the divine order and it can never be reversed."

Leadership:

"A true and safe leader is likely to be one who has no desire to lead, but
is forced into a position of leadership by the inward pressure of the Holy
Spirit and the press of the external situation." 

"Pseudo faith always arranges a way out to serve in case God fails it."

"What church board consults our Lord's words to decide matters under
discussion? Let anyone reading this who has had experience on a church board
try to recall the times or time when any board member read from the
Scriptures to make a point, or when any chairman suggested that the brethren
should see what instructions the Lord had for them on a particular question.
Board meetings are habitually opened with a formal prayer or a "season of
prayer"; after that the Head of the Church is respectfully silent while the
real rulers take over." 

Small (Christian) groups or cells:

"What we do is this: We accept the Christianity of our group as being
identical with that of Christ and His apostles. The beliefs, the practices,
the ethics, the activities of our group are equated with the Christianity of
the New Testament. Whatever our group thinks or says or does is scriptural,
no questions asked. It is assumed that all our Lord expects of us is that we
busy ourselves with the activities of the group. In doing so we are keeping
the commandments of Christ."

HYPERLINK
"http://www.crossroad.to/Excerpts/books/faith/tozer-quotes.htm"http://www.cr
ossroad.to/Excerpts/books/faith/tozer-quotes.htm

 

 

Charis, 
  
Mike Abendroth 
  
"Make us choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to
be contented with half truth when whole truth can be won.  Endow us with
courage that is born of loyalty to all that is noble and worthy, that scorns
to compromise with vice and injustice and knows no fear when right and truth
are in jeopardy."

 - West Point Military Academy Cadet Prayer 

 

HYPERLINK "http://www.bbcchurch.org"www.bbcchurch.org 
  

 


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