A.W. Tozer Quotes - Page 2

We can never know who or what we are till we know at least something of what God is.

We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts

The Bible is a whole series of highways, all leading toward God. And when the text has been illuminated and the believer of the text knows that God is the end toward which he is moving, then that man has real faith.

I am positive that much that passes for the gospel in our day is very little more than a very mild case of orthodox religion grafted on to a heart that is sold out to the world in its pleasures and tastes and ambitions.

You can see God from anywhere if your mind is set to love and obey Him.

Too often, we give God only the tired remnants of our time. If Jesus Christ had given us only the remnant of His time, we would all be on our way to that darkness that knows no morning. Christ gave us not the tattered leftovers of His time; He gave us all the time He had. But some of us give Him only the leftovers of our money and of our talents and never give our time fully to the Lord Jesus Christ who gave us all. Because He gave us all, we have what we have; and He calls us "as He is, so are we in this world." (1 John 4:17)

Jesus calls us to his rest, and meekness is His method. The meek man cares not at all who is greater than he, for he has long ago decided that the esteem of the world is not worth the effort.

Eschatology is the dustbin into which we sweep everything we don't want. To believe. We believe that the Lord will manifest Himself to men, but He'll do it tomorrow, or the day after, or the next millennium.

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.

The "layman" need never think of his humbler task as being inferior to that of his minister. Let every man abide in the calling wherein he is called and his work will be as sacred as the work of the ministry. 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. Let a man sanctify the Lord God in his heart and he can thereafter do no common act.

The world is perishing for lack of the knowledge of God and the Church is famishing for want of His Presence.

Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long, in vain.

We might be wise to follow the insight of the enraptured heart rather than the more cautious reasoning of the theological mind.

The heart of the world is breaking under this load of pride and pretense. There is no release from our burden apart from the meekness of Christ.

I can safely say, on the authority of all that is revealed in the Word of God, that any man or woman on this earth who is bored and turned off by worship is not ready for heaven.

It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until he has hurt him deeply." God actually rises up storms of conflict in relationships at times in order to accomplish that deeper work in our character. We cannot love our enemies in our own strength. This is graduate-level grace. Are you willing to enter this school? Are you willing to take the test? If you pass, you can expect to be elevated to a new level in the Kingdom. For He brings us through these tests as preparation for greater use in the Kingdom. You must pass the test first.

The moment the Spirit has quickened us to life in regeneration our whole being sense its kinship to God and leaps us in joyous recognition. That is the heavenly birth without which we cannot see the Kingdom of God.

The filling of the Holy Spirit brings a sharp separation between the believer and the world.Actually, after Pentecost, they were looking at another world. They really saw another world.Nowadays, we perceive that even a large part of evangelical Christianity is trying to convert this world to the church. We are bringing the world in head over heels--unregenerated, uncleansed, unshriven, unbaptized, unsanctified. we are bringing the world right into the church. If we can get some big shot to say something nice about the church, we rush into print and tell about this fellow and what nice things he said. I don't care at all about big shots because I serve a living Saviour, and Jesus Christ is Lord of lords and King of kings. I believe every man ought to know this ability to see another world.

I recommend to you Jesus Christ, the unchanging One. I recommend to you God's answer to your questions, God's solution to your problems, God's life for your dying soul, God's cleansing for your sin-cursed spirit, God's rest for your restless mind, and God's resurrection for your dying body. For advocate above, I recommend Him to you. You will find Him to be all He ever was--the very same Jesus.

The best book is not one that informs merely, but one that stirs the reader up to inform himself.

Of one thing we may be sure, we can never escape the external stimuli that cause vexation. The world is full of them, and though we were to retreat to a cave and live the remainder of our days alone, we still could not lose them. The rough floor of the cave would chafe us, the weather would irritate us and the very silence would cause us to fret

It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.

Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshipers met together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be, were they to become 'unity' conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship.

The author relates by way of illustration that the human heart contains both a throne and a cross. If we occupy the one, Jesus occupies the other.

The average man has no central core of moral assurance, no spring within his breast, no inner strength to place him above the need for repeated psychological shots to give him the courage to go on living. He has become a parasite on the world, drawing his life from his environment, unable to live a day apart from the stimulation which society affords him.

Unfortunately, the ten-cent-store Jesus being preached now by many men is not the Jesus that will come to judge the world. This plastic, painted Christ who has no spine and no justice, but is a soft and pliant friend to everybody, if He is the only Christ, then we might as well close our books, bar our doors and make a bakery or garage out of our church buildings. The popular Christ being preached now is not the Christ of God nor the Christ of the Bible nor the Christ we must deal with finally. For the Christ that we deal with has eyes as a flame of fire. And His feet are like burnished brass; and out of His mouth cometh a sharp two-edged sword (see Rev. 1:14-16). He will be the judge of humanity. You can leave your loved ones in His hands knowing that He Himself suffered, knowing that He knows all, no mistakes can be made, there can be no miscarriage of justice, because He knows all that can be known... Jesus Christ our Lord, the judge with the flaming eyes, is the one with whom we must deal. We cannot escape it.

A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so.

Sometimes I go to God and say, "God, if Thou dost never answer another prayer while I live on this earth, I will still worship Thee as long as I live and in the ages to come for what Thou hast done already. God’s already put me so far in debt that if I were to live one million millenniums I couldn’t pay Him for what He’s done for me.

The cross where Jesus died became also the cross where His apostle died. The loss, the rejection, the shame, belong both to Christ and to all who in very truth are His. the cross that saves them also slays them, and anything short of this is a pseudo-faith and not true faith at all.

The only cross in all of history that was turned into an altar was the cross on which Jesus Christ died. It was a Roman cross. They nailed Him on it, and God, in His majesty and mystery, turned it into an altar. The Lamb who was dying in the mystery and wonder of God was turned into the Priest who offered Himself. No one else was a worthy offering.

Jesus Christ came not to condemn you but to save you, knowing your name, knowing all about you, knowing your weight right now, knowing your age, knowing what you do, knowing where you live, knowing what you ate for supper and what you will eat for breakfast, where you will sleep tonight, how much your clothing cost, who your parents were. He knows you individually as though there were not another person in the entire world. He died for you as certainly as if you had been the only lost one. He knows the worst about you and is the One who loves you the most. If you are out of the fold and away from God, put your name in the words of John 3:16 and say, “Lord, it is I. I’m the cause and reason why Thou didst on earth come to die.” That kind of positive, personal faith and a personal Redeemer is what saves you. If you will just rush in there, you do not have to know all the theology and all the right words. You can say, “I am the one He came to die for.” Write it down in your heart and say, “Jesus, this is me—Thee and me,” as though there were no others. Have that kind of personalized belief in a personal Lord and Savior.

Holiness, as taught in the Scriptures, is not based upon knowledge on our part. Rather, it is based upon the resurrected Christ in-dwelling us and changing us into His likeness.

Lord, how excellent are Thy ways, and how devious and dark are the ways of man. Show us how to die, that we may rise again to newness of life. Rend the veil of our self-life from the top down as Thou didst rend the veil of the Temple. We would draw near in full assurance of faith. We would dwell with Thee in daily experience here on this earth so that we may be accustomed to the glory when we enter Thy heaven to dwell with Thee there. In Jesus' name, Amen.

We now demand glamour and fast-flowing dramatic action. A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals...The tragic results of this spirit all all about us: shallow lives, hollow religious philosophies...the glorification of men, trust is religious externalities....salesmanship methods, the mistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit. These and such of these are the symptoms of an evil disease.

Whatever comes into your heart and mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you.

The reason why many are still troubled, still seeking, still making little forward progress is because they haven't yet come to the end of themselves. We're still trying to give orders, and interfering with God's work within us.

When God justifies a sinner, everything in God is on the sinner's side. All the attributes of God are on the sinner's side. It isn't that mercy is pleading for the sinner and justice is trying to beat him to death. All of God does all that God does.

True faith rests upon the character of God and asks no further proof than the moral perfections of the One who cannot lie.

The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God.

If I understand this correctly Christ taught here the alarming doctrine that the desire for honor among men made belief impossible.

A superior brain without the saving essence of godliness may turn against the human race and drench the world in blood, or worse, it may loose ideas into the earth which will continue to curse mankind for centuries after it has turned to dust again.

I find that when people haven't found God and do not know the new birth and the Spirit is not on them, yet they have the ancient impulse to worship something. If they're not educated they kill a chicken and put a funny thing on their head and dance around. If they are educated they write poetry.

What made Jesus' death uncommon, unusual? It was the dying of the just for the unjust. It was His sacrificial dying, His vicarious dying. He paid a debt He did not owe in behalf of the others too deeply in debt ever to pay.

Whenever you see confusion, you can be sure that something is wrong. Disorder in the world implies that something is out of place. Usually, at the heart of all disorder you will find man in rebellion against God. It began in the Garden of Eden and continues to this day.

[D]on't try to know everything. You can't. Find Him in the Word, for the Holy Ghost wrote this Book. He inspired it, and He will be revealed in its pages.

Let every man abide in the calling wherein he is called and his work will be as sacred as the work of the ministry. It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it.

This is the tragedy and woe of the hour--that we neglect the most important One who could possibly be in our midst--the Holy Spirit of God. Then, in order to make up for His absence, we have to do something to keep up our own spirits.

Many people are caught up with the toys of contemporary society. Because of great advancements in our culture, some have cultivated an attitude of “comfortability.” They may be going to hell, but it is going to be a comfortable ride for them.

Millions call themselves by His name, it is true, and pay some token homage to Him, but a simple test will show how little He is really honored among them. Let the average man be put to the proof on the question of who or what is ABOVE, and his true position will be exposed. Let him be forced into making a choice between God and money, between God and men, between God and personal ambition, God and self, God and human love, and God will take second place every time. Those other things will be exalted above. However the man may protest, the proof is in the choice he makes day after day throughout his life.

What we think about when we are free to think about what we will – that is what we are or will soon become.

When we try to focus our thought upon One who is pure uncreated being we may see nothing at all, for He dwelleth in light that no man can approach unto. Only by faith and love are we able to glimpse Him as He passes by our shelter in the cleft of the rock.