“What I believe about God is the most important thing about me.”

~A.W. Tozer

“Faith will not always get for us what we want, but it will get what God wants us to have.”

~Vance Havner

 

“We say that we depend upon the Holy Spirit, but actually we are so wired up with our own devices that if the fire does not fall from heaven, we can turn on a switch and produce false fire of our own. If there is no sound of a rushing, mighty wind, we have the furnace all set to blow hot air instead. God save us from a synthetic Pentecost.”

~Vance Havner

 

 

Moral Madness

By A.W. Tozer

 

“At the same time,” added the humbled king [Nebuchadnezzar], “my reason returned unto me.” This whole passage is apt to be overlooked, occurring as it does in one of the less popular books of the Bible, but is it not of great significance that humility and reason returned together? “Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment: and those that walk in pride he is able to abase.” The king’s pride was to him a kind of insanity that drove him at last into the fields to dwell with the beasts. While he saw himself large and God small he was insane; sanity returned only as he began to see God as all and himself as nothing.

Such moral madness as Nebuchadnezzar suffered is now upon the nations. Men of reputed learning have long been chanting with Swinburne, “Glory to man in the highest,” and the masses have picked up the chant. A strange amentia has resulted, marked by acute self-importance and delusions of moral grandeur. Men who refuse to worship the true God now worship themselves with tender devotion. A return to spiritual sanity waits for repentance and true humility. God grant that we may soon know again how small and how sinful we are.

Verse

At the same time that my sanity was restored, my honor and splendor were returned to me for the glory of my kingdom.

Daniel 4:36

Thought

Men who refuse to worship the true God now worship themselves with tender devotion. A return to spiritual sanity waits for repentance and true humility.

Prayer

Return our hearts to spiritual sanity, Father, and lead us then to true repentance.

 

 

 

Prepared Places for Prepared People

By Vance Havner

 

I go to prepare a place for you.
John 14:2

Be ye also ready.
Matthews 24:44

Even in this present world there is always “room at the top,” and the man who prepares himself will find a place prepared. There are never enough to go around and there are vacancies always for the man who can really do the job.

In the service of God the harvest is plenteous but the laborers are few, and the eyes of the Lord run to and fro looking for a man with a heart perfect toward Him. Samuel prepared himself and God made ready for Samuel. There is a place ready for you if you are ready for the place.

And there is a place hereafter for those who make ready. There is an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven. But it is reserved for those who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation. God not only prepares the place, He prepares His people for the place.

“Lord, prepare me for what Thou art preparing for me.”

 

 

 

The Majesty on High

By A.W. Tozer

 

While few would dare thus to voice their secret feelings, there are millions who have imbibed the notion that they hold in their hands the keys of heaven and hell. The whole content of modern evangelistic preaching contributes to this attitude. Man is made large and God small; Christ is placed in a position to excite pity rather than respect as He stands meekly, lantern in hand, outside a vine-covered door.

How deeply do men err who conceive of God as subject to our human will or as standing respectfully to wait upon our human pleasure. Though He in condescending love may seem to place Himself at our disposal, yet never for the least division of a moment does He abdicate His throne or void His right as Lord of man and nature. He is that Majesty on high. To Him all angels cry aloud, the heavens and all the powers therein: to Him cherubim and seraphim continually do cry, “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth, heaven and earth are full of the majesty of thy glory.” He is the Fear of Isaac and the Dread of Jacob, and before Him prophet and patriarch and saint have knelt in breathless awe and adoration.

Verse

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; / the whole earth is full of his glory.”

Isaiah 6:3

Thought

How deeply do men err who conceive of God as subject to our human will or as standing respectfully to wait upon our human pleasure.

Prayer

We kneel in breathless awe and adoration, Holy Father!

 

 

Conquer First, Bless Second

By A.W. Tozer

 

The experiences of men who walked with God in olden times agree to teach that the Lord cannot fully bless a man until He has first conquered him. The degree of blessing enjoyed by any man will correspond exactly with the completeness of God’s victory over him. This is a badly neglected tenet of the Christian’s creed, not understood by many in this self-assured age, but it is nevertheless of living importance to us all. This spiritual principle is well illustrated in the Book of Genesis.

Jacob was the wily old heel-catcher whose very strength was to him a near-fatal weakness. For two-thirds of his total life, he had carried in his nature something hard and unconquered. Not his glorious vision in the wilderness nor his long bitter discipline in Haran had broken his harmful strength. He stood at the ford of Jabbok at the time of the going down of the sun, a shrewd, intelligent old master of applied psychology learned the hard way. The picture he presented was not a pretty one. He was a vessel marred in the making. His hope lay in his own defeat. This he did not know at the setting of day, but had learned before the rising of the sun. All night he resisted God until in kindness God touched the hollow of his thigh and won the victory over him. It was only after he had gone down to humiliating defeat that he began to feel the joy of release from his own evil strength, the delight of God’s conquest over him. Then he cried aloud for the blessing and refused to let go till it came. It had been a long fight, but for God (and for reasons known only to Him) Jacob had been worth the effort. Now he became another man, the stubborn and self-willed rebel was turned into a meek and dignified friend of God. He had “prevailed” indeed, but through weakness, not through strength.

Verse

Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.” Genesis 32:28

Thought

The degree of blessing enjoyed by any man will correspond exactly with the completeness of God’s victory over him.

Prayer

Holy Father, let us bury our strength and allow You to prevail in us through our weakness.

 

 

 

Between Two Fires

By Vance Havner

 

And when they had kindled a fire…Peter sat down among them.
Luke 22:55

As soon as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals there.
John 21:9

Peter warmed himself at the enemy’s fire-and denied His Lord. The devil always has a convenient fire for saints who are about to slip. Taking it easy is often the prelude to backsliding. Comfort precedes collapse.

Days later, Peter warmed at another fire, the coals His Master had kindled on the beach. There he met the question, “Lovest thou me?” and received the commission, “Feed my sheep.”

Many Christians are living in an interim between Satan’s Fire and the Saviour’s Fire. If you have fallen because you warmed yourself when you should have warned yourself, the Lord seeks an interview. Peter, the backslider, was marked Special: “Go tell his disciples and Peter (Mk. 16:7). He does not want to fire you out but to fire you up!

If you have collapsed at Satan’s Fire, you may be converted at the Saviour’s Fire. Do not live “between fires.”

 

 

 

“The miseries in the Book of Judges can be traced to the mistakes in the Book of Joshua. Peaceful coexistence and peace without victory, then as now, paved the way for disaster.”

~Vance Havner

 

 

 

The Disposer of Destinies

By A.W. Tozer

 

The gradual disappearance of the idea and feeling of majesty from the Church is a sign and a portent. The revolt of the modern mind has had a heavy price, how heavy is becoming more apparent as the years go by. Our God has now become our servant to wait on our will. “The lord is my shepherd,” we say, instead of “The Lord is my Shepherd,” and the difference is as wide as the world.

We need to have restored again the lost idea of sovereignty, not as a doctrine only but as the source of a solemn religious emotion. We need to have taken from our dying hand the shadow scepter with which we fancy we rule the world. We need to feel and know that we are but dust and ashes, and that God is the disposer of the destinies of men. How ashamed we Christians should be that a pagan king should teach us to fear the Majesty on high. For it was the chastened Nebuchadnezzar who said, “I lifted up mine eyes unto heaven and mine understanding returned unto me, and I blessed the most High, and I praised and honored him that liveth forever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation. And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing, and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?”

Verse

His dominion is an eternal dominion; / his kingdom endures from generation to generation. / All the peoples of the earth / are regarded as nothing. / He does as he pleases / with the powers of heaven / and the peoples of earth. / No one can hold back his hand / or say to him: “What have you done?” Daniel 4:34–35

Thought

We need to feel and know that we are but dust and ashes, and that God is the disposer of the destinies of men.

Prayer

Let us acknowledge, like that king of old, that You, Holy God, are all powerful and that no one can stay Your hand.

 

 

Sifting and Strengthening

By Vance Havner

 

And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.
Luke 22:31, 32

Here we have the Triangle of Spiritual Conflict: “Satan-you-I.” Satan would sift us, but we have an Advocate. The devil asked God for permission to try Job. Here it is Simon Peter he puts through the sifter. And never have more saints been in his hands than today. But he can go only so far. There is one praying for us who defeated Satan, who came to destroy the works of the devil. The Adversary is not in the first two chapters of the Bible, nor is he in the last two. Thank God for a Book that ends with devil out of business!

But he is very much in business now in the mighty tug-of-war for the souls of men. It is Christ or Antichrist and we are the prize. Peter’s faith was eclipsed but not extinct. And when he was converted, he certainly strengthened the brethren and fed the sheep-and does so to this day.

Sometimes we must go through the Sifter before we are of much use for Strengthening.

 

 

“Spurgeon wrote something to the effect that it is better to be a lean bird in the woods than a fat bird in a cage. Today’s young minister is tempted to feather his nest in a comfortable parish with plenty of security. A caged eagle is a sad sight but sadder still is a caged preacher. Gypsy Smith used to say, “I was born in a field; don’t put me in a flowerpot!” “

~Vance Havner

 

 

The Liberty of the Lord

By Vance Havner

 

Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
II Corinthians 3:17

Of course we must understand this to mean, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is in control, there is liberty.” He indwells every believer, but not every believe has come out into the glorious liberty of the children of God. He is present in the churches, even where two or three gather in Christ’s Name, but often He is hindered. He is often resident where He is not president!

But wherever He is recognized and obeyed there is no longer a spirit of bondage. In church history the great revival periods have been the blessed liberations in which the Spirit has loosed all bonds and the church has recovered her early freedom. In local churches, what glorious liberty follows when the Spirit is Lord! Read How Christ Came to Church and transformed both A. J. Gordon and his Boston pastorate. And the individual Christian “gets loose” only when he is controlled by the Spirit. “Lord” and “liberty” may seem contradictory, but the free man is a controlled man. He has the liberty of the Lord. We have “deliberations” aplenty these days, but what we need is liberation!

 

 

Making Yours Your Own

By Vance Havner

 

How long are ye slack to go to possess the land, which the Lord God of your fathers hath given you?
Joshua 18:3

The Promised Land was theirs but they had not possessed their possessions. It is not what we have but what we know we have that determines our actual wealth. Many a poor man has had an oil well on his farm and didn’t know it. If he found that he did have such a treasure he would lose no time tapping his resources. He would not merely brag, “There is oil on my place.” Such boasts would not pay bills. He must possess his possessions.

Yet Christians know what they have, but often get no farther than merely boasting of what is potentially but not experientially theirs. Jesus said, “I will give you rest,” but He added, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, and ye shall find rest.” God gives us oil wells but He does not pump the oil for us. All things are ours in Christ, but we must make what is ours factually our very own actually.

Appreciating what is yours never makes you rich, but appropriating it will. “The Lord is rich unto all that call upon him.”

 

 

 

The Author of Our Faith

By A.W. Tozer

 

God has indeed lent to every man the power to lock his heart and stalk away darkly into his self-chosen night, as He has lent to every man the ability to respond to His overtures of grace, but while the “no” choice may be ours, the “yes” choice is always God’s. He is the Author of our faith as He must be its Finisher. Only by grace can we continue to believe; we can persist in willing God’s will only as we are seized upon by a benign power that will overcome our natural bent to unbelief.

So keenly do we men enjoy dominion that we like to think that we hold in our own hands the power of life and death. We love to think that hell will be easier to bear from the fact of our having gone there in defiance of some power that sought to rule us. He knew this well who put into the mouth of Satan that speech of proud defiance:

What though the field be lost?

All is not lost; the unconquerable will,

The study of revenge, immortal hate,

And courage never to submit or yield,

And what is else not to be overcome;

That glory never shall his wrath or might

Extort from us.

Verse

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12:2

Thought

So keenly do we men enjoy dominion that we like to think that we hold in our own hands the power of life and death.

Prayer

Help us, Father, to bow our wills toward Your’s, to surrender totally all of our self to Your control.