. . . We may be known by the following:
7. What we laugh at. No one with a due regard for the wisdom of God would argue that there is anything wrong with laughter, since humor is a legitimate component of our complex nature.
Lacking a sense of humor we fall that much short of healthy humanity. But the test we are running here is not whether we laugh or not, but what we laugh at. Some things lie outside the field of pure humor. No reverent Christian, for instance, finds death funny, nor birth nor love.
No Spirit-filled man can bring himself to laugh at the Holy Scriptures, or the Church which Christ purchased with His own blood, or prayer or righteousness or human grief or pain. And surely no one who has been even for a brief moment in the presence of God could ever laugh at a story involving the Deity.
These are a few tests. The wise Christian will find others.
verse
Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving.
— Ephesians 5:4
thought
God gives us grace to laugh at ourselves and there is much to laugh at. Other targets of humor are subject to restriction because humor can degenerate into mockery of other people and the things of God.
prayer
Thank You for the gift of humor, Lord. Make me sensitive to its misuse and misdirection. For Jesus' sake.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
. . . We may be known by the following:
4. What we do with our leisure time. A large share of our time is already spoken for by the exigencies of civilized living, but we do have some free time. What we do with it is vital. Most people waste it staring at the television, listening to the radio, reading the cheap output of the press or engaging in idle chatter. What I do with mine reveals the kind of man I am.
5. The company we enjoy. There is a law of moral attraction that draws every man to the society most like himself. ?Being let go, they went to their own company? (Acts 4:23). Where we go when we are free to go where we will is a near-infallible index of character.
6. Whom and what we admire. I have long suspected that the great majority of evangelical Christians, while kept somewhat in line by the pressure of group opinion, nevertheless have a boundless, if perforce secret, admiration for the world.
We can learn the true state of our minds by examining our unexpressed admirations. Israel often admired, even envied, the pagan nations around them, and so forgot the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the law and the promises and the fathers. Instead of blaming Israel let us look to ourselves.
verse
And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
— Colossians 3:17
thought
Our use of leisure, the company we enjoy and our secret objects of admiration disclose much about who we are. Have we subjected those areas to the Spirit's review?
prayer
Can I engage in these things in the name of the Lord Jesus giving thanks to You? O God, show me.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
. . . We may be known by the following:
1. What we want most. We have but to get quiet, recollect our thoughts, wait for the mild excitement within us to subside, and then listen closely for the faint cry of desire. Ask your heart, What would you rather have than anything else in the world? Reject the conventional answer. Insist on the true one, and when you have heard it you will know the kind of person you are.
2. What we think about most. The necessities of life compel us to think about many things, but the true test is what we think about voluntarily. It is more than likely that our thoughts will cluster about our secret heart treasure, and whatever that is will reveal what we are. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also? (Matt. 6:21).
3. How we use our money. Again we must ignore those matters about which we are not altogether free. We must pay taxes and provide the necessities of life for ourselves and family, if any.
That is routine, merely, and tells us little about ourselves.
But whatever money is left to do with as we please that will tell us a great deal indeed.
Better listen to it.
verse
But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. . . .
— 1 Peter 3:15a
thought
Those secret desires, what we think about when free to think what we will, our use of finances?revelators of who we are. Well, who are we?
prayer
O God, there is so much of me yet to be changed into what You want me to be. Increase my sensitivity to Your Spirit's promptings in those areas of life that I may surrender them to Christ's Lordship.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
Now, our true moral and spiritual state can be disclosed only by the Spirit and the Word. The final judgment of the heart is Gods.
There is a sense in which we dare not judge each other (Matt. 7:1-5), and in which we should not even try to judge ourselves ( 1 Cor. 4:3).
The ultimate judgment belongs to the One whose eyes are like a flame of fire and who sees quite through the deeds and thoughts of men. I for one am glad to leave the final word with Him. There is, nevertheless, a place for self-judgment and a real need that we exercise it (1 Cor. 11:31-32).
While our self-discovery is not likely to be complete and our self-judgment is almost certain to be biased and imperfect, there is yet every good reason for us to work along with the Holy Spirit in His benign effort to locate us spiritually in order that we may make such amendments as the circumstances demand.
That God already knows us thoroughly is certain (Psa. 139:1-6).
It remains for us to know ourselves as accurately as possible.
For this reason I offer some rules for self-discovery; and if the results are not all we could desire they may be at least better than none at all. . . .
verse
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
— Psalm 139:23-24
thought
In discovering who I am I will also be finding whom I am not and whom I can be through Christ. Revealed will be those areas where I most need to submit to the Spirit's transforming power.
prayer
Only by Your power, O Lord, can I be changed into what You desire me to be.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
Hardly anything else reveals so well the fear and uncertainty among men as the length to which they will go to hide their true selves from each other and even from their own eyes.
Almost all men live from childhood to death behind a semiopaque curtain, coming out briefly only when forced by some emotional shock and then retreating as quickly as possible into hiding again.
The result of this lifelong dissimulation is that people rarely know their neighbors for what they really are, and worse than that, the camouflage is so successful that mostly they do not quite know themselves either.
Self-knowledge is so critically important to us in our pursuit of God and His righteousness that we lie under heavy obligation to do immediately whatever is necessary to remove the disguise and permit our real selves to be known.
It is one of the supreme tragedies in religion that so many of us think so highly of ourselves when the evidence lies all on the other side; and our self-admiration effectively blocks out any possible effort to discover a remedy for our condition.
Only the man who knows he is sick will go to a physician.
verse
. . . All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because 'God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.'
— 1 Peter 5:5
thought
Do I know the real me? Our tendency is to refuse to admit what God shows us to be. Yet accurate self-identification is necessary if we are to escape the enemy's deception and to grow in Christ.
prayer
Father, deliver me from religious pretense and self-deception. You know the real me. Help me to know also that I may trust You for inner healing.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
Regret frets the soul as tension frets the nerves and anxiety the mind. I believe that the chronic unhappiness of most Christians may be attributed to a gnawing uneasiness lest God has not fully forgiven them, or the fear that He expects as the price of His forgiveness some sort of emotional penance which they have not furnished.
As our confidence in the goodness of God mounts, our anxieties will diminish and our moral happiness rise in inverse proportion.
Regret may be no more than a form of self-love.
A man may have such a high regard for himself that any failure to live up to his own image of himself disappoints him deeply. He feels that he has betrayed his better self by his act of wrongdoing, and even if God is willing to forgive him he will not forgive himself.
Sin brings to such a man a painful loss of face that is not soon forgotten. He becomes permanently angry with himself and tries to punish himself by going to God frequently with petulant self-accusations. This state of mind crystallizes finally into a feeling of chronic regret which appears to be a proof of deep penitence but is actually proof of deep self-love. Regret for a sinful past will remain until we truly believe that for us in Christ that sinful past no longer exists.
The man in Christ has only Christs past and that is perfect and acceptable to God.
In Christ he died.
In Christ he rose, and in Christ he is seated within the circle of Gods favored ones.
He is no longer angry with himself because he is no longer self-regarding, but Christ-regarding; hence there is no place for regret.
verse
For Christ died for our sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit.
— 1 Peter 3:18
thought
We don't have to tell God how bad we are. He knows. He also knows that He has provided for us new life in Christ. Let's live in His grace today, not in our sinful past.
prayer
There is grace with You to cover all my sin. I turn from regret and self-love. Into Your healing stream I plunge.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
It may be argued that the absence of regret indicates a low and inadequate view of sin, but the exact opposite is true.
Sin is so frightful, so destructive to the soul that no human thought or act can in any degree diminish its lethal effects.
Only God can deal with it successfully; only the blood of Christ can cleanse it from the pores of the spirit.
The heart that has been delivered from this dread enemy feels not regret but wondrous relief and unceasing gratitude.
The returned prodigal honors his father more by rejoicing than by repining.
Had the young man in the story had less faith in his father he might have mourned in a corner instead of joining in the festivities.
His confidence in the lovingkindness of his father gave him the courage to forget his checkered past.
verse
How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God.
— Hebrews 9:14
thought
Christ's death for us removes our sin and scrubs clean our consciences. It is time to bury regret and serve the living God!
prayer
Lord, I turn from that regret that refuses to accept Your Word and Your promise. May praise to You fill my heart as I serve You.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
There is indeed a godly sorrow that worketh repentance (2 Cor. 7:10), and it must be acknowledged that among us Christians this feeling is often not present in sufficient strength to work real repentance; but the persistence of this sorrow till it becomes chronic regret is neither right nor good.
Regret is a kind of frustrated repentance that has not been quite consummated.
Once the soul has turned from all sin and committed itself wholly to God there is no longer any legitimate place for regret.
When moral innocence has been restored by the forgiving love of God the guilt may be remembered, but the sting is gone from the memory.
The forgiven man knows that he has sinned, but he no longer feels it. The effort to be forgiven by works is one that can never be completed because no one knows or can know how much is enough to cancel out the offense; so the seeker must go on year after year paying on his moral debt, here a little, there a little, knowing that he sometimes adds to his bill much more than he pays.
The task of keeping books on such a transaction can never end, and the seeker can only hope that when the last entry is made he may be ahead and the account fully paid. This is quite the popular belief, this forgiveness by self-effort, but it is a natural heresy and can at last only betray those who depend upon it.
verse
Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.
— 2 Corinthians 7:10
thought
Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation. Godly sorrow leaves no regret because genuine repentance has occurred. Perpetual regret is not from God. It only leads to endless effort to earn God's grace.
prayer
I know, Lord, that I can never earn Your forgiveness or merit Your grace. Forgive me for trying.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
Long after we have learned from the Scriptures that we cannot, by fasting or the wearing of a hair shirt or the making of many prayers, atone for the sins of the soul, we still tend by a kind of pernicious natural heresy to feel that we can please God and purify our souls by the penance of perpetual regret.
This latter is the Protestants unacknowledged penance.
Though he claims to believe in the doctrine of justification by faith he still secretly feels that what he calls godly sorrow will make him dear to God.
Though he may know better he is caught in the web of a wrong religious feeling and betrayed.
verse
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions?it is by grace you have been saved.
— Ephesians 2:4-5
thought
It seems that when we have repeatedly been forgiven for a particular sin and then fall again that asking forgiveness does not seem enough. We feel that we have to do something for God. What we have to do is to ask forgiveness, receive it and then walk by
prayer
Thank You for forgiveness and cleansing, Lord. I trust You for enablement to live for You as I walk by Your Spirit day by day.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/