Tozer Devotional

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

A. W. Tozer, a modern day prophet, was a key figure in The Christian and Missionary Alliance. His legacy reaches through time and has impacted countless millions. A prolific author and pastor, Tozer was known for his emphasis on the deeper life movement. His message, informed as it was by A.B. Simpson the founder of The Alliance, brought the missionary call to a massive audience. A series of his sermons are available as audio files.

His books have been published around the world and in many languages.

Love in Action

The comfortable drone of the Gloria Patri or the Lord's Prayer repeated in unison has a marvelously tranquilizing effect upon . . . A man. He may sleep through the sermon, or if he remains alert enough to hear it he will never apply it to his own life in a practical way; yet the sonorous sound of the benediction followed by the sweet choral response gives him the feeling that he has profited immeasurably by his attendance at church. On the way out he will smile, shake hands, congratulate the preacher and go his way completely unchanged. Tomorrow he will drive just as hard a bargain in his business, tell the same shady stories, cheat on his income tax, shout at the driver ahead of him, bark at his wife, overeat and otherwise live like the son of this world that he in fact is.

The next Sunday he will go to church again and for a few moments experience the same radiant feeling of well-being and good will toward men that he has enjoyed once a week for years. He simply cannot relate religion to life. To him Christianity has no necessary bearing upon present conduct. It is only a pleasant thing like, say, a sunset or a Swedish massage, and it is nothing more.

The romantic attitude was not unknown in Bible times. The apostle John warned against one of its manifestations when he wrote, "Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence" (1 John 3:18–19). Kierkegaard wisely said that there is nothing in the Holy Scriptures about loving man in the mass, only about loving our neighbor as yourself. Yet there is among us much evidence of love for mankind and little evidence of love for the individual. The idea of love for our brother is a beautiful thing as long as it does not demand that we put it into practice on some particular person; then it becomes a nuisance.

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