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Daily Devotionals September 2010 1

Daily Devotionals September 2010

A.W. Tozer "A 20

th century prophet" they called him even in his own lifetime. For 31 years he was pastor of

Southside Alliance Church in Chicago, where his reputation as a man of God was citywide. Concurrently, he became editor of Alliance Life, a responsibility he fulfilled until his death in 1963. His greatest legacy to the Christian world has been more than 40 books, including this one. Charles Hadden Spurgeon (1834-1892) began his career as a minister at the age of 19. His excellent sermons soon drew thousands to his church every Sunday morning. These sermons were transcribed and printed throughout England and in many major U.S. newspapers. His devotional Morning and Evening is a series of two new devotional readings for each day of the year, to be read and meditated on every morning and evening.

Wednesday September 1 The Halfway Christian Life A.W. Tozer – Mornings with Tozer John 12:26 (NASB) "If anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him." Dear Lord, when I meet You at the gate of heaven, I don't want my name to be listed under the column entitled: "Halfway Christians." For the rest of my life, I want You next to me, encouraging and exhorting me, as we scale the peak together. Amen. The word mediocre comes from two Latin words and literally means "halfway to the peak." This makes it an apt description of the progress of many Christians. They are halfway up to the peak. They are not halfway to heaven but halfway up to where they ought to be, halfway between the valley and the peak. They are morally above the hardened sinner but they are spiritually beneath the shining saint. Many have settled down right there, and the tragedy is that years ago some of you said, "I am not going to fail God. I am going to push my way up the mountain until I am at the top of the peak, at the highest possible point of experience with God in this mortal life!" But you have done nothing about it. If anything, you have lost spiritual ground since that day. You are now a halfway Christian! You are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold. You are halfway up to the peak, halfway to where you could have been if you had pressed on. Do we really think that this halfway Christian life is the best that Christ offers—the best that we can know? In the face of what Christ offers us, how can we settle for so little? Do we not one day wish to hear those wonderful words of our Lord, Matthew 25:21 (NIV) " Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!"

Thursday September 2 Our Confidence Before God A.W. Tozer – Mornings with Tozer


1 John 3:21 (AMP) Beloved, if our consciences (our hearts) do not accuse us [if they do not make us feel guilty and condemn us], we have confidence (complete assurance and boldness) before God. Lord, in this world there are not many "sure" things. But You, O Lord, are 100 percent unchangeable. Your love is unfailing towards us. Your patience is undying. I praise You, Lord. This is surely one of the great realizations that can come to us in the Christian life—we can put our complete confidence in the God who has revealed Himself to us! It was a gracious day in my early Christian experience when I realized that it was not in God's character to pounce upon me in judgment. He knows that we are dust, and as our God He is loving and patient towards us. If it were true that the Lord would put the Christian on the shelf every time he failed or blundered or did something wrong, I would have been a piece of statuary by this time! It is surely true that God will bring judgment when judgment is necessary, but the Scriptures say that judgment is God's strange work. Where there is a lifetime of rebellion, hardened unbelief and love of sin, judgment will come. But God watches over us for spiritual growth and maturity, trying to teach us the necessity for fully trusting Him and coming to the place of complete distrust of ourselves. We have met God and can now say with Paul, 2 Corinthians 4:7 (NLT) That our great power is from God, not from ourselves.

Friday September 3 The War Never Ends A.W. Tozer – Tozer on the Holy Spirit John 15:18 (NASB) "If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you." It is the Spirit of Christ in us that will draw Satan's fire. The people of the world will not much care what we believe and they will stare vacantly at our religious forms, but there is one thing they will never forgive us—the presence of God's Spirit in our hearts. They may not know the cause of that strange feeling of antagonism which rises within them, but it will be nonetheless real and dangerous. Satan will never cease to make war on the Man-child, and the soul in which dwells the Spirit of Christ will continue to be the target for his attacks. 1 Peter 5:8 (NASB) Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Immediately after a person has received the witness of the Spirit,...the adversary charges down upon the soul....It is well for all such assaulted individuals to remember that just as soon as the Son of God received the...baptism of the Holy Ghost on the banks of the Jordan, that He was immediately afterwards driven into the wilderness and there tempted forty days by the devil. He conquered by faith and in the use of the Word of God. We can do the same.


Matthew 4:11 (NASB) Then the devil *left Him; and behold, angels came and began to minister to Him.

Saturday September 4 Born After Midnight A.W. Tozer –Tozer on Christian Leadership: A 366-Day Devotional Luke 11:9-10 (HCSB) “So I say to you, keep asking, and it will be given to you. Keep searching, and you will find. Keep knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who searches finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” Lord, give me this kind of longing after revival. Help me to give myself to this serious prayer for revival. Amen. Among revival-minded Christians I have heard the saying, "Revivals are born after midnight." This is one of those proverbs which, while not quite literally true, yet points to something very true. If we understand the saying to mean that God does not hear our prayer for revival made in the daytime, it is of course not true. If we take it to mean that prayer offered when we are tired and worn-out has greater power than prayer made when we are rested and fresh, again it is not true. Yet there is considerable truth in the idea that revivals are born after midnight, for revivals (or any other spiritual gifts and graces) come only to those who want them badly enough. No, there is no merit in late hour prayers, but it requires a serious mind and a determined heart to pray past the ordinary into the unusual. Most Christians never do. And it is more than possible that the rare soul who presses on into the unusual experience reaches there after midnight.

Sunday September 5 What Really Matters After All? A.W. Tozer – Tozer on the Almighty God: A 366-Day Devotional Mark 8:36 (NASB) "For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?" Lord, we have so much, yet that "much" so often gets in the way of our finding the only thing that matters. Keep me uncluttered and focused on eternity, I pray. Amen. It has been suggested here before that life, for all its apparent complexities, is at bottom very simple indeed if we could only realize it. Thank God, only a few things matter. The rest are incidental and unimportant.... What really matters after all? My personal relation to God matters. That takes priority over everything else. A man may be born in a sanitary hospital, receive his education in progressive schools, ride in an air-conditioned car, sleep on a foam rubber mattress, wear synthetic clothing, eat vitamin-enriched food, read by fluorescent lights, speak across 12,000 miles of empty space to a friend on the other side of the world, lose his anxieties by taking tranquilizing pills, die without pain by the aid of some new drug and be laid to rest in a memorial park as lovely as a country garden; yet what will all this profit him if he must later rise to face in judgment a God who knows him not and whom he does not know?


To come at last before the bar of eternal justice with no one to plead his cause and to be banished forever from the presence of the great Judge—is that man any better off than if he had died a naked savage in the hinterlands of Borneo?

Monday September 6 The Attributes of God – How Great Thou Art! A.W. Tozer – Mornings with Tozer Acts 2:3 (NLT) Then, what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them. What a day it will be, Lord, when Your children see You in all Your glory and share in Your eternal riches. While we wait for Your return, Father, help us to remain faithful to You. Amen. What a broad world in which to roam; what an expansive sea in which to swim—and I speak of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! He is eternal, which means He is wholly independent of time. Time began in Him and will end in Him. He is immutable, which means that He has never changed and can never change in any smallest measure. Being perfect, He cannot become more perfect. If He were to become less perfect, He would be less than God. He is omniscient, which means that He knows in one free and effortless act all matter, all spirit, all relationships, all events. He is infinite and none of the limiting terms of creatures can apply to Him. Love and mercy and righteousness are His, and holiness so ineffable that no comparisons or figures will avail to express it. In the pillar of fire, He dwelt. The fire that glowed in the "holy place" was called the Shekinah, the Presence. Then when the Old gave way to the New, He came at Pentecost as a fiery flame and rested upon each disciple!

Tuesday September 7 Love God? – Delight in True Witness and Service for Him! A.W. Tozer – Renewed Day by Day: Volume 1 Ephesians 3:19 (NLT) May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. The Bible instructs the Christian believer that he should be dedicated to the glory of the One whom we have not yet seen, because we love Him. That is the sum of Christianity—to know Him and to love Him! "This is eternal life, that they might know me," Jesus taught (John 17:3). So, the knowledge of God is eternal life and the knowledge of setting forth the life of God in man (i.e., witnessing) is the business of the church. It is a wonderful facet of love that we always take pleasure and delight in doing those things that are pleasing to the one we love.


I find that the believing Christian who really loves his Lord is never irked or irritated in the service he is giving to Jesus Christ. The Lord will give him delight in true service for God—and I say it this way because generally the irksome and boring features of Christian service are some of the things that people and organizations have added on. I refer to things that have no scriptural validity. It is always pleasant and delightful to set forth the praises of someone you really love. Those who truly love Jesus Christ find it one of the greatest pleasures in life to be able simply to describe how we discovered His great love for us, and how we are trying to return that love and devotion as we witness and serve Him in faith each day!

Wednesday September 8 Do You Burn with a Steady, Inward Fire? A.W. Tozer – Tozer on the Holy Spirit Acts 2:18 (AMP) Yes, and on My menservants also and on My maidservants in those days I will pour out of My Spirit, and they shall prophesy [telling forth the divine counsels and predicting future events pertaining especially to God's kingdom]. God dwells in a state of perpetual enthusiasm. He is delighted with all that is good and lovingly concerned about all that is wrong. He pursues His labors always in a fullness of holy zeal. No wonder the Spirit came at Pentecost as the sound of a rushing mighty wind and sat in tongues of fire on every forehead. In so doing He was acting as one of the Persons of the blessed Godhead. Whatever else happened at Pentecost, one thing that cannot be missed by the most casual observer was the sudden up surging of moral enthusiasm. Those first disciples burned with a steady, inward fire. They were enthusiastic to the point of complete abandon. With [the disciples'] baptism in the Spirit, their whole demeanor changed. The sadness left their hearts. The minor key left their worship. Their self-imposed righteousness was turned into life in the Spirit.

Thursday September 9 Death Sorts Us Out A.W. Tozer – Tozer on the Almighty God: A 366-Day Devotional Matthew 13:30 (NASB) “Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, "First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn.” Thank You, Father, for the surety I have of heaven through the blood of Jesus Christ, which is mine regardless of my position in the eyes of the world. Amen. Right now we live in a mixed-up world. Some people get the headlines who, if the truth were known, should be getting a striped suit in a prison somewhere.


There are other worthy persons who are completely ignored in this world and, if the truth were known, they would be on the front covers of the news magazines next week. God is not mixed up, though. He has His own process for sorting things out. Many a person receiving the praise and plaudits of the world today will be sorted out when God's time comes. He does not sort them out down here in our time. He did not even sort them when His twelve disciples were with Him. Peter was a coward and Judas was a lover of money and a betrayer, but not until the last minute did He even mention it. But when Judas died he was sorted out. He died and went to his own place. Death sorts us out and if we go to heaven it is because we have a nature that belongs there. It is not hard for the sovereign God to sort out all the natures that belong in heaven and take them there.

Friday September 10 A Purified Church A.W. Tozer – Tozer on Christian Leadership: A 366-Day Devotional Philippians 3:7-8 (NLT) I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ. Help us not to water down the message and make our teaching so shallow that we don't challenge our people to holy living. Amen. Our most pressing obligation today is to do all in our power to obtain a revival that will result in a reformed, revitalized, purified church. It is of far greater importance that we have better Christians than that we have more of them. Each generation of Christians is the seed of the next, and degenerate seed is sure to produce a degenerate harvest not a little better than but a little worse than the seed from which it sprang. Thus the direction will be down until vigorous, effective means are taken to improve the seed. To carry on these activities [evangelism, missions] scripturally the church should be walking in fullness of power, separated, purified and ready at any moment to give up everything, even life itself, for the greater glory of Christ. For a worldly, weak, decadent church to make converts is but to bring forth after her own kind and extend her weakness and decadence a bit further out. So vitally important is spiritual quality resulting in moral purity that it is hardly too much to suggest that attempts to grow larger might well be suspended until we have become better.

Saturday September 11 Holiness - Not an Option A.W. Tozer – Mornings with Tozer Romans 14:17-18 (NLT) For the Kingdom of God is … a matter of … living a life of goodness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. If you serve Christ with this attitude, you will please God, and others will approve of you, too. Dear Lord, I truly desire to obey all of Your commandments. Yet in my flesh I sometimes waver and fall short of Your holy standard. Forgive me, Lord. Empower me by Your Spirit to gain victory over my weak areas.


Many believers in our day seem to consider the expression of true Christian holiness to be just a matter of personal option: "I have looked it over and considered it, but I don't buy it!" But the Apostle Peter clearly exhorts every Christian to holiness of life and conversation: 1 Peter 1:15-16 (NLT) But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.” God's children ought to be holy because God Himself is holy! I am of the opinion that New Testament Christians do not have the privilege of ignoring such apostolic injunctions. There is something basically wrong with our Christianity and our spirituality if we can carelessly presume that if we do not like a biblical doctrine and choose to ignore it, there is no harm done. God has never instructed us that we should weigh His desires for us and His commandments to us in the balance of our own judgments—and then decide what we want to do about them. We have the power within us to reject God's instruction—but where else shall we go? If we turn away from the authority of God's Word, to whose authority do we yield?

Sunday September 12 The World Is Scared A.W. Tozer – Mornings with Tozer. Luke 21:27-28 (AMP) And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with great (transcendent and overwhelming) power and [all His kingly] glory (majesty and splendor). Now when these things begin to occur, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption (deliverance) is drawing near. Lord, I pray that Your peace will show through my behavior today. Give me an opportunity to help someone who is dealing with fear or sorrow. A fear-stricken church cannot help a scared world; and it needs to be said that surely a fear-ridden Christian has never examined his or her defense! No one can blame humans for being afraid. Beyond the continuing times of crisis and terror and violence, God has also warned that the world will be in a baptism of fire, sooner or later. God has declared this by the voice of all of the holy prophets since time began—there is no escaping it! Bible-reading Christians should be the last persons on earth to give way to hysteria. We have been given a prophetic preview of all those things that are to come to pass upon the earth. Can anything take us unaware? We who are in God's secret place of safety must begin to talk and act like it! We, above all who dwell on the earth, should be calm, hopeful, buoyant and cheerful. We will never convince the scared world that there is peace and assurance at the cross if we continue to exhibit the same fears as those who make no profession of Christianity!

Monday September 13 Theology is Dead – Without Divine Illumination A.W. Tozer – Renewed Day by Day: Volume 1 1 Corinthians 2:5 (NASB) That your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God. Surely God has something to say to the pure in heart which He cannot say to the man of sinful life. But what He has to say is not theological, it is spiritual, and spiritual truths cannot be received in the ordinary way of nature!


1 Corinthians 2:14 (AMP) But the natural, nonspiritual man does not accept or welcome or admit into his heart the gifts and teachings and revelations of the Spirit of God, for they are folly (meaningless nonsense) to him; and he is incapable of knowing them [of progressively recognizing, understanding, and becoming better acquainted with them] because they are spiritually discerned and estimated and appreciated. So wrote the Apostle Paul to the believers at Corinth. Our Lord referred to this kind of Spirit-enlightened knowledge many times. To Him it was the fruit of a divine illumination, not contrary to but altogether beyond mere intellectual light. The necessity for spiritual illumination before we can grasp spiritual truths is taught throughout the entire New Testament and it is altogether in accord with the teachings of the Psalms, the Proverbs and the Prophets. The New Testament draws a sharp line between the natural mind and the mind that has been touched by divine fire. When Peter made his good confession, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God," our Lord replied, "Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven" Matt.16:16-17) The sum of what I am saying is that there is an illumination, divinely bestowed, without which theological truth is information and nothing more. While this illumination is never given apart from theology, it is entirely possible to have theology without the illumination!

Tuesday September 14 Be Careful Whose Counsel You Follow A.W. Tozer – Renewed Day by Day: Volume 1 Proverbs 1:5 (NASB) A wise man will hear and increase in learning, And a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel. No man has any right to offer advice who has not first heard God speak. No man has any right to counsel others who is not ready to hear and follow the counsel of the Lord! This rule of listening only to those who have first listened to God will save us from many a snare, for in any group of ten persons at least nine are sure to believe that they are qualified to offer advice to others. It seems that in no other field of human interest are people as ready to offer advice as in the field of religion and morals. Yet it is precisely in this field that the average person is least qualified to speak wisely and is capable of the most harm when he does speak. Proverbs is right when it informs us that, Proverbs 12:15 (NASB) The way of a fool is right in his own eyes. For this reason, we should select our counselors carefully, and selection inevitably carries with it the idea of rejection. David warns against the counsel of the ungodly and Bible history gives examples of men who made a failure of their lives because they took wrong advice.


Psalm 1:1 (NIV) Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. It is especially important that young people learn whose counsel to trust. Having been in the world for such a short time they have not had much experience and must look to others for advice. Those young people who boast the loudest of their independence, for example, have picked up from someone the idea that independence is a virtue rather than submission, and their very eagerness to be individualistically independent is the result of the unwise influence of others. They are what they are because of the foolish counsel they have followed.

Wednesday September 15 Meet God First A.W. Tozer – Tozer on the Almighty God: A 366-Day Devotional Mark 6:31 (NASB) And He *said to them, "Come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest a while." (For there were many people coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat.) Lord, I am going to meet the enemy not only tomorrow, but even today. Prepare my heart as I come apart to meet with You first, before I go to meet the day. Amen. The whole Bible and all past history unite to teach that battles are always won before the armies take the field. The critical moment for any army is not the day it engages the foe in actual combat; it is the day before or the month before or the year before. It did not take Moses long to lead the children of Israel out through the Red Sea to deliverance and freedom; but his fittedness to lead them out was the result of years of hard discipline. It took David only a few minutes to dispose of Goliath; but he had beaten the giant long before in the person of the lion and the bear. Christ stood silent in the presence of Pilate and for our sake went calmly out to die. He could endure the anguish of the cross because He had suffered the pains of Gethsemane the night before; there was a direct relationship between the two experiences. One served as a preparation for the other. Preparation is vital! We can seek God today and get prepared to meet temptation tomorrow; but if we meet the enemy without first having met God, the outcome is not conjectural; the issue is already decided. We can only lose.

Thursday September 16 Lord – Deliver Me from Carnal Ways A.W. Tozer – Tozer on Christian Leadership: A 366-Day Devotional 1 Corinthians 3:1 (NLT) Dear brothers and sisters, when I was with you I couldn’t talk to you as I would to spiritual people. I had to talk as though you belonged to this world or as though you were infants in the Christian life.


Oh Lord, deliver me from carnal attitudes, actions and desires. Give me this morning a divine visitation to purify and cleanse me. Let me sense today the majesty and awesomeness of the "mysterium tremendium" as I wait upon You. Amen. I believe that it might be well for us if we just stopped all of our business and got quiet and worshiped God and waited on Him. It doesn't make me popular when I remind you that we are a carnal bunch, but it is true, nevertheless, that the body of Christians is carnal. The Lord's people ought to be a sanctified, pure, clean people, but we are a carnal crowd. We are carnal in our attitudes, in our tastes and carnal in many things. Our young people often are not reverent in our Christian services. We have so degraded our religious tastes that our Christian service is largely exhibitionism. We desperately need a divine visitation—for our situation will never be cured by sermons! It will never be cured until the Church of Christ has suddenly been confronted with what one man called the mysterium tremendium—the fearful mystery that is God, the fearful majesty that is God. This is what the Holy Spirit does. He brings the wonderful mystery that is God to us, and presents Him to the human spirit.

Friday September 17 We Need a Revival A.W. Tozer – Tozer on Christian Leadership: A 366-Day Devotional Luke 12:19-21 (NLT) And I’ll sit back and say to myself, “My friend, you have enough stored away for years to come. Now take it easy! Eat, drink, and be merry!” But God said to him, ‘You fool! You will die this very night. Then who will get everything you worked for?’ “Yes, a person is a fool to store up earthly wealth but not have a rich relationship with God.” Lord, make me today one of those "who will consult their pleasures less and the great need more." Amen. We need a revival! We need a revival of consecration to death, a revival of happy abandonment to the will of God that will laugh at sacrifice and count it a privilege to bear the cross through the heat and burden of the day. We are too much influenced by the world and too little controlled by the Spirit. We of the deeper life persuasion are not immune to the temptations of ease and we are in grave danger of becoming a generation of pleasure lovers. Any who disagree with these conclusions are within their rights, and I would be the last to deny them the privilege. But in the name of a thousand struggling churches and disheartened pastors, may I not plead for a little more loyalty to the local church during this season of difficulty? May God raise up a people who will consult their pleasures less and the great need more!

Saturday September 18 Be Holy as God is Holy A.W. Tozer – Mornings with Tozer


1 Peter 1:15 (NASB) But like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior. Dear Lord, if we seriously desired to be "holy," the only way we could do so is through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. By our own efforts, this would not be possible, for the Bible says, "No one is righteous" (Rom. 3:10). What is the Apostle Peter saying to us in relaying to us God's exhortation: "Be ye holy as I am holy, and because I am holy"? First is our own responsibility to bring our spiritual lives into line so that God may settle upon us with the Holy Spirit—with that quality of the Wonderful and the Mysterious and the Divine. This is not something that can be humanly cultivated. This is something that we will not even be conscious we have. It is this quality of humility invaded by the presence of God which the church of our day lacks. Oh, that we might yearn for the knowledge and presence of God in our lives from moment to moment, so that without human cultivation and without toilsome seeking, there would come upon us this enduement, this sweet and radiant fragrance that gives meaning to our witness! I am willing to confess in humility that we need this in our day.

Sunday September 19 Unbelief – A Luxury No Person Can Afford A.W. Tozer – Renewed Day by Day: Volume 1 Matthew 19:22 (NLT) But when the young man heard this, he went away very sad, for he had many possessions. Jesus could not have made it any plainer in His teachings that every man during his lifetime must decide for himself whether or not he can afford the terrible luxury of unbelief! When the rich young ruler learned the cost of discipleship he went away sorrowing. He could not give up the sunny side of the brae. But thanks be to God, there are some in every age who refuse to go back! The Acts of the Apostles is the story of men and women who turned their faces into the stiff wind of persecution and loss and followed the Lamb whithersoever He went. They knew that the world hated Christ without a cause and hated them for His sake; but for the glory that was set before them they continued steadfastly on the way. What is it that Christ has to offer us that is sound, genuine and desirable? He offers forgiveness of sins, inward cleansing, peace with God, eternal life, the gift of the Holy Spirit, victory over temptation, resurrection from the dead, a glorified body, immortality and a dwelling place in the house of the Lord forever! These are a few of the benefits that come to us as a result of faith in Christ and total committal to Him. To accept the call of Christ changes the returning sinner indeed, but it does not change the world. The wind still blows toward hell and the man who is walking in the opposite direction will have the wind in his face. We had better take this into account: If the unsearchable riches of Christ are not worth suffering for, we should know it now and cease to play at religion!


Monday September 20 Give Myself in Poured-Out Devotion to Christ A.W. Tozer – Tozer on Christian Leadership: A 366-Day Devotional Philippians 2:29-30 (TEV) Receive him, then, with joy, as a believer in the Lord. Show respect to all such people as he, because he risked his life and nearly died for the sake of the work of Christ, in order to give me the help that you yourselves could not give. Lord, give me that "zealous hunger for God," that "avid thirst after righteousness," that "painfilled longing to be Christlike and holy." I want to give myself in "poured-out devotion" for Your glory. Use me as Your servant, for Jesus' sake, Amen. That many Christians in our day are lukewarm and somnolent will not be denied by anyone with an anointed eye, but the cure is not to stir them up to a frenzy of activity. That would be but to take them out of one error and into another. What we need is a zealous hunger for God, an avid thirst after righteousness, a pain-filled longing to be Christlike and holy. We need a zeal that is loving, self-effacing, and lowly. No other kind will do. That pure love for God and men which expresses itself in a burning desire to advance God's glory and leads to poured-out devotion to the temporal and eternal welfare of our fellowmen is certainly approved of God; but the nervous, squirrel-cage activity of self-centered and ambitious religious leaders is just as certainly offensive to Him and will prove at last to have been injurious to the souls of countless millions of human beings.

Tuesday September 21 To the Individual Only A.W. Tozer – Tozer on Christian Leadership: A 366-Day Devotional 2 Corinthians 5:10 (AMP) For we must all appear and be revealed as we are before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive [his pay] according to what he has done in the body, whether good or evil [considering what his purpose and motive have been, and what he has achieved, been busy with, and given himself and his attention to accomplishing]. Lord, make me sensitive this morning to my "own individual place in the desired awakening." Whatever work needs to be done to this "isolated, single person"—do it today, I pray. Amen. No church is any better or worse than the individual Christians who compose it. One consequence of our failure to see clearly the true nature of revival is that we wait for years for some supernatural manifestation that never comes, overlooking completely our own individual place in the desired awakening. Whatever God may do for a church must be done in the single unit, the one certain man or woman. Some things can happen only to the isolated, single person; they cannot be experienced en masse. Statistics show, for instance, that 100 babies are born in a certain city on a given day. Yet the birth of each baby is for that baby a unique experience, an isolated, personal thing. Three thousand persons were converted at Pentecost, but each one met his sin and his Savior alone. The spiritual birth, like the natural one, is for each one a unique, separate experience shared in by no one else.


And so with that up-rush of resurgent spiritual life we call revival. It can only come to a church through the individual! 1 Corinthians 12:27 (NASB) Now you are Christ's body, and individually members of it. 1 Corinthians 12:25 (AMP) So … there should be no division or discord or lack of adaptation [of the parts of the body to each other], but the members all alike should have a mutual interest in and care for one another.

Wednesday September 22 A.W. Tozer – Repeat last week

Thursday September 23 The Moral Relation Between Words and Deeds A.W. Tozer – Renewed Day by Day: Volume 1 James 1:22 (NLT) But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves. I am afraid we modern Christians are long on talk and short on conduct. We use the language of power but our deeds are the deeds of weakness. Our Lord and His apostles were long on deeds. The Bible depicts a Man walking in power, Acts 10:38 (NASB) "You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him." The moral relationship between words and deeds appears quite plainly in the life and teachings of Christ. In the Sermon on the Mount Christ placed doing before teaching: Matthew 5:19 (HCSB) Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commands and teaches people to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever practices and teaches ⌊these commands⌋ will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Since in one of its aspects religion contemplates the invisible it is easy to understand how it can be erroneously made to contemplate the unreal. The praying man talks of that which he does not see, and fallen human minds tend to assume that what cannot be seen is not of any great importance and probably not even real, if the truth were known. So religion is disengaged from practical life and retired to the airy region of fancy where dwell the sweet insubstantial nothings which everyone knows do not exist but which they nevertheless lack the courage to repudiate publicly. I could wish that this were true only of pagan religions; but candor dictates that I admit it to be true also of much that passes for evangelical Christianity.


Friday September 24 Warm Hearts – Cool Heads A.W. Tozer – Tozer on the Holy Spirit Ephesians 2:6 (AMP) And God raised us up together with Christ and made us sit down together [giving us joint seating with Him] in the heavenly sphere [by virtue of our being] in Christ Jesus (the Messiah, the Anointed One). The warmest hearts and the coolest heads anywhere at any time should always belong to the Christians. There are sound reasons for this. The Christian is seated "above." His fortunes do not depend upon earthly circumstances, but upon Christ who has conquered everything. For the warmth of his heart the Christian has the love of God which is "shed abroad" by the Holy Ghost, while from his vantage point in the "heavenly places" he is able to look down calmly upon the excited happenings of men. In his flesh he may be a part of the human scene, but in his spirit he is far above it all and is never at any time too much moved by what he sees. Since he is a part of God's eternal purpose, he knows he must win at last, and he can afford to be calm even when the battle seems to be temporarily going against him. The world has no such "blissful center" upon which to rest and is therefore constantly shifting about, greatly elated today, terribly cast down tomorrow and wildly excited the next day. We know that in the natural world the mightiest forces are those we do not see. So in the spiritual world faith is the power to attach ourselves to God.

Saturday September 25 Being Who I Was Created to Be – Doing What I Was Created to Do A.W. Tozer – Tozer on the Almighty God: A 366-Day Devotional. Philippians 1:6 (NASB) For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. Lord, do the work that must be done in Your power, through Your Holy Spirit, to bring Your work to completion in my life. Amen. There comes a time when the true believer must take his stand on the oath and covenant of God and refuse to be shaken. He must lift high his happy affirmation, not in arrogance, but in faith and in deep humility. Perhaps his declaration of independence will go something like this: I am not yet perfect, but I thank God and my Lord Jesus Christ that I am done with the past and I do now trust in my Savior for full deliverance from all sins. I cannot pray like Daniel, but I shall never cease to praise God that He inclines His ear to me. I am not as wise as Solomon, but I glory in this, that 2 Timothy 1:12 (AMP) For I know (perceive, have knowledge of, and am acquainted with) Him Whom I have believed (adhered to and trusted in and relied on), and I am [positively] persuaded that He is able to guard and keep that which has been entrusted to me and which I have committed [to Him] until that day.


I have not the gifts of Moses or Isaiah or John, but I'll be everlastingly grateful that I have been given the moral perception to understand and appreciate such men as these. I am not what I want to be, but thanks be to God that I do want to be better than I am; and I am sure that Philippians 1:6 (NASB) He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. Here I stand being and doing what I was created to be and do. I can do nothing else, so help me God.

Sunday September 26 Anyone May Seek His Face A.W. Tozer – Tozer on Christian Leadership: A 366-Day Devotional Isaiah 55:7 (HCSB) Let the wicked one abandon his way and the sinful one his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, so He may have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will freely forgive. Lord, today I commit myself to "turn to God in earnest," to "begin to exercise [myself] unto godliness," and to "seek to develop [my] powers of spiritual receptivity by trust and obedience and humility." Amen. It will require a determined heart and more than a little courage to wrench ourselves loose from the grip of our times and return to biblical ways. But it can be done. Every now and then in the past Christians have had to do it. History has recorded several large-scale returns led by such men as St. Francis, Martin Luther and George Fox. Unfortunately, there seems to be no Luther or Fox on the horizon at present. Whether or not another such return may be expected before the coming of Christ is a question upon which Christians are not fully agreed, but that is not of too great importance to us now. What God in His sovereignty may yet do on a world-scale I do not claim to know. But what He will do for the plain man or woman who seeks His face I believe I do know and can tell others. Let any man turn to God in earnest, let him begin to exercise himself unto godliness, let him seek to develop his powers of spiritual receptivity by trust and obedience and humility, and the results will exceed anything he may have hoped in his leaner and weaker days.

Monday September 27 Light is Not Enough – We Need Sight A.W. Tozer – Renewed Day by Day: Volume 1 2 Corinthians 4:4 (NLT) Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God. To find the way, we need more than light; we also need sight! The Holy Scriptures are the source of moral and spiritual light. Yet I consider that I cast no aspersion upon the hallowed page when I say that its radiance is not by itself enough. Light alone is not sufficient. The coming of knowledge is like the rising of the sun. But sunrise means nothing to the unseeing eye.


Only the sighted benefit from the light of the sun. Between light and sight there is a wide difference. One man may have light without sight; he is blind. Another may have sight without light; he is temporarily blind, but the coming of the light quickly enables him to see. We have said this much to point out that religious instruction, however sound, is not enough by itself. It brings light, but it cannot impart sight. The text without the Spirit's enlightenment cannot save the sinner. Salvation follows a work of the Spirit in the heart. There can be no salvation apart from the truth but there can be, and often is, truth without salvation. How many multiplied thousands have learned Scripture by heart and still wander in moral darkness because there has been no inward illumination! The Pharisees looked straight at the Light of the World for three years, but not one ray of light reached their inner beings. Light is not enough! There must also be sight!

Tuesday September 28 A Mind to Be Taught – A Heart to Believe – A Will to Obey A.W. Tozer – Tozer on the Holy Spirit Job 36:9-12 (AMP) Then He shows to them [the true character of] their deeds and their transgressions, that they have acted arrogantly [with presumption and self-sufficiency].

10 He also opens their ears to instruction and discipline, and

commands that they return from iniquity. 11

If they obey and serve Him, they shall spend their days in prosperity and their years in pleasantness and joy.

12 But if they obey not, they shall perish by the sword [of God's destructive

judgments], and they shall die in ignorance of true knowledge. The threefold purpose of the Bible is to inform, to inspire faith and to secure obedience....The Holy Scriptures will do us good only as we present an open mind to be taught, a tender heart to believe and a surrendered will to obey. The work of God is not finished when the first act of inward adjustment has been done. The Spirit would go on from there to bring the total life into harmony with that "blissful center." This is wrought in the believer by the Word and by prayer and discipline and suffering. It could be done by a short course in things spiritual if we were more pliable, less self-willed and stubborn; but it usually takes some time before we learn the hard lessons of faith and obedience sufficiently well to permit the work to be done within us with anything near to perfection. In bringing many sons unto glory God, works with whatever He has, in whatever way He can, and by whatever means He can, respecting always His own gift to us; the freedom of our wills. But of all means He uses, the Bible is the best.

Wednesday September 29 God – Trustworthy and Able A.W. Tozer – Tozer on the Almighty God: A 366-Day Devotional Romans 4:21 (NASB) And being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform.


Lord, forgive me for my faltering faith. Remind me constantly that my hope rests on Your good character, in which I have full confidence and assurance. Amen. I must confess that in my ministry I keep repeating some of the things I know about God and His faithful promises. Why do I insist that all Christians should know for themselves the kind of God they love and serve? It is because all the promises of God rest completely upon His character. Why do I insist that all Christians should search the Scriptures and learn as much as they can about this God who is dealing with them? It is because their faith will only spring up naturally and joyfully as they find that our God is trustworthy and fully able to perform every promise He has made. God's eternal blessings do not depend on how you feel today. If my eternal hope rested on how I felt physically, I might as well begin packing for a move to some other region! Even if I do not feel heavenly, my feelings in no way change my heavenly hope and prospect. I dare not relate even a fraction of my faith and hope to my emotions of the moment and to how I feel today. My eternal hope depends on God's well-being—on whether God Himself is able to make good on His promises. And about that there is no doubt.

Thursday September 30 A.W. Tozer – Repeat last weeks

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