The cure for superstition is an increased appreciation of the being of God: not names only, but character and being.
The idea that the devil is afraid of a word or a gesture is pure superstition. He is not afraid of any name, not even the name Jesus.
There are thousands of little boys in Latin America who bear that name, and surely Satan does not stand in fear of them. No, it is not a combination of letters that strikes terror to the heart of Satan. It is the glorious Person who bears the name Jesus whom he fears. To the name Jesus God has added the titles Lord and Christ, and this means that all power has been given unto Him in heaven and in earth.
Back of the name is the sovereign Person of God's Son, our Savior.
From this Person Satan flees, but it is a waste of time and effort to try to impress him with mere words and phrases.
In the degree that we know God Himself, we shall be free from superstitious fears; and in the degree that we are affected by signs, gestures, phrases and religious objects (as they are naively called), we are in the bonds and snares of superstition.
verse
That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
— Philippians 2:10-11:
thought
The more we come to know the person of Christ the less drawn to superstition we shall be. Christ is the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords exalted to the highest place to the glory of the Father. All power is His!
prayer
I want to know You, O Christ, not just about You but know You. It is for You I hunger in heart.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
But someone may say, it is not God people fear, but demons the devil himself and evil spirits generally. The answer is that the whole business is still superstition, for it makes God a party to all this supernatural carryings-on, and even if He is on our side He is unable to help us without certain magic passes on our part, such as knocking on wood, throwing salt over our shoulder or making the sign of the cross.
God is therefore subject in some measure to these evil powers and helpless against them unless we play along with the cruel game by staying off the thirteenth floor of hotels, looking at the new moon over our right shoulder, wearing a charm that has been blessed by a priest or reciting a religious phrase that is supposed to have some special power to terrify the devil.
This is all unworthy of God and altogether beneath the dignity of the Majesty in the heavens.
Some persons also think of God as being vindictive, churlish and quick to take vengance on anyone who is careless about words or gestures or customs, no matter how innocent he may be or how unintentional his error.
Of course this is simply a case of judging God by ourselves and thinking that He is altogether such a one as we are. How utterly grateful we should be that when we sinned and fell away from grace in the beginning, God did not act like us. Our eternal hope lies in the fact that at that tragic hour God acted like Himself. His conduct sprang out of His own holy nature and led Him to send His only begotten Son to die for the very ones who had been guilty of such an awful affront to His Person.
For this the redeemed shall sing forever, Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain(Revelation 5:12).
verse
'I am the Alpha and the Omega,' says the Lord God, 'who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.'
— Revelation 1:8
thought
It is for us to come to know God as God. Through the Word and the illumination of the Spirit we can come to know Him. To know Him as He is will brush away the superstitions and misconceptions.
prayer
Thank You, O God. You are God and You act like God.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
. . . at the root of all superstition is an inaccurate and unworthy conception of the character of God.
Character determines expectation. We manage to predict with reasonable exactness the actions of our friends in any given situation because we know what kind of persons they are. It is so with our ideas of God. Our notions of how God will act follow very closely our estimate of His character.'
God once complained through the psalmist, You thought I was altogether like you (Psalm 50:21). Superstition springs out of confusing Gods character with mans, a kind of reversal of the original act of God in making man in His own image. Fallen men believe that God is very much like themselves and expect Him to act accordingly.
To be more explicit, men believe God to be whimsical, and consequently expect Him to be impulsive and unpredictable in His dealings with mankind.
Out of this notion comes a score of superstitious fancies that have gotten themselves accepted through the years. Various fears originate here.
Fear of black cats, omens, signs and magic numbers results from the ignoble idea that God is a kind of playful Puck who delights in practical jokes and Halloween tricks.
The only defense against this is to know some word or sign that will protect the victim from the celestial prankster, hence the thousand and one marriage customs, funeral usages, and practices touching birth, death, travel, food, clothing, sleep, planting, harvesting, illness and almost every other phase of our life on earth.
verse
And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
— 2 Corinthians 3:18
thought
There is the unconscious tendency on our part to form God into our image rather than rejoicing that He is transforming us into the image of Christ.
Have you noticed that those images ours and Christ's radically differ?
prayer
Thank You, O God, You are not like me. You are Almighty God. Hallelujah!
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
. . . if superstition dishonors God, is it not an evil thing and is not the Christian who harbors it guilty of serious sin against the Majesty in the heavens?
The answer to these questions is not as pat as we could desire it to be.
An unqualified yes or no would both be wrong.
Here is the reason:
When we first come to God through Christ, we are pagans at heart and our ideas of God are likely to be a mixture of truth, half-truth, ignorance and error. Conversion lifts the veil of darkness in some measure from our minds and allows the light to shine in, but no one who is capable of self-analysis will deny that there still remains a great many shadowy images that have not yet come into clear focus.
The newborn child knows God in the deeply spiritual meaning of the word know as found in John 17:3, Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
But this intimate, vital knowledge does not immediately result in a perfect conception of God. The mind may yet suffer from imperfect religious teaching, prejudices, mistaken judgments and faulty theological instruction; and in the exact measure that these things are present there will be unworthy and superstitious notions of God and spiritual things. This kind of error is inevitable at first encounter with God.
Let the Christian follow on to know the LORD(Hosea 6:3, KJV) and the margin of error will become narrower day by day and year by year as the body of truth becomes greater. So at any given moment in the Christian's life, he may be entertaining imperfect or even unworthy ideas of the Deity, but the Spirit working unseen like a miner in the depths of the earth is laboring to purge away the error and fill the heart with pure and lofty notions of the Triune God. While this is going on the patient heavenly Father bears with our imperfection, for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust
But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. . . .
— Second Peter 3:18a
thought
None of us has a pure conception of God. The Holy Spirit, through the Word, ministers to us in a purifying process which, as it proceeds, will expose and remove misconceptions.
prayer
Purify my concept of You, O Lord, as I grow in Your grace and knowledge.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
Faith honors God by accepting the biblical revelation of the divine character.
Faith lets God be what He says He is and adjusts its concepts accordingly.
Superstition degrades the reputation of God by believing things unworthy of Him.
One rests upon fact and the other upon fancy.
As I said before, there is probably a streak of superstition in everyone, even in the genuine Christian. Any notions we may have of God that have not been corrected and purified by the Word and the Spirit are likely to have some element of error in them, and the religious beliefs resulting from them will of necessity contain a certain amount of superstition.
The Christian who flares indignant at such a statement as this and denies that it describes him is not therefore free from superstition; he merely compounds his faults by adding bigotry and anger to the rest.
But if superstition dishonors God, is it not an evil thing and is not the Christian who harbors it guilty of serious sin against the Majesty in the heavens? . . .
verse
Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives' tales; rather, train yourself to be godly.
— First Timothy 4:7
thought
Faith accepts God as He is revealed in Scripture and changes thought and action accordingly. Superstition seeks to change God to fit superstitious thought and action.
prayer
Sharpen my understanding of who You are, Lord, and expose any superstitious shadows.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
The truth is that faith and obedience are two sides of the same coin and are always found together in the Scriptures.
As well try to pry apart the two sides of a half-dollar as to separate obedience from faith.
The two sides, while they remain together and are taken as one, represent good sound currency and constitute legal tender everywhere in the United States.
Separate them and they are valueless.
Insistence upon honoring but one side of the faith-obedience coin has wrought frightful harm in religious circles. Faith has been made everything and obedience nothing. The result among religious persons is moral weakness, spiritual blindness and a slow but constant drift away from New Testament Christianity.
Our Lord made it very plain that spiritual truth cannot be understood until the heart has made a full committal to it. If anyone chooses to do God's will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own (John 7:17).
The willing and the doing (or at least the willingness to do) come before the knowing.
Truth is a strict master and demands obedience before it will unveil its riches to the seeking soul. For those who want chapter and verse here are a few, and there are plenty more:
Matthew 7:21; John 14:21; First John 2:4, 3:24, 5:2; First Peter 1:2; James 2:14-26; Romans 1:5; and Acts 5:32.
To sum it up, saving faith is impossible without willing obedience.
To try to have one without the other is to be not a Christian, but a student of Christianity merely.
verse
Through him and for his name's sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith.
— Romans 1:5
thought
Genuine faith generates obedience to the one in whom our faith rests.
prayer
Lord, I trust You. Who else is worthy of my trust? Help me to extend that trust to areas of life where my trust is weak or nonexistent.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
No one has any right to believe that he is indeed a Christian unless he is humbly seeking to obey the teachings of the One whom he calls Lord.
Christ once asked a question (Luke 6:46) that can have no satisfying answer, Why do you call me, `Lord, Lord,and do not do what I say?
Right here we do well to anticipate and reply to an objection that will likely arise in the minds of some readers. It goes like this: We are saved by accepting Christ, not by keeping His commandments. Christ kept the law for us, died for us and rose again for our justification, and so delivered us from all necessity to keep commandments.
Is it not possible, then, to become a Christian by simple faith altogether apart from obedience? Many honest persons argue in this way, but their honesty cannot save their argument from being erroneous. Theirs is the teaching that has in the last fifty years emasculated the evangelical message and lowered the moral standards of the Church until they are almost indistinguishable from those of the world. It results from a misunderstanding of grace and a narrow and one-sided view of the gospel, and its power to mislead lies in the element of truth it contains. It is arrived at by laying correct premises and then drawing false conclusions from them.
verse
Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say?
— Luke 6:46
thought
If Christ is really our Lord we will submit to His Lordship, not just in selected areas of life but in all we are.
For Christ to be Lord there can be no restrictions placed on His Lordship.
prayer
O Christ, I acknowledge You as Lord and I bow to Your Lordship in all of my life.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
. . . the snare Epictetus warned against is the very one into which multitudes of professed Christians are falling, viz., mistaking the word for the deed and falsely assuming that if they know the teaching of the Christian faith they are therefore in that faith.
The One who said, Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways, and be wise?(Proverbs 6:6), would hardly be displeased if we were to humble ourselves to learn an important lesson from an old Greek philosopher.
It will help us to locate ourselves spiritually if we face up to the rather ungracious question: Are you a Christian in fact or merely a student of Christianity? A lot will depend upon the answer, and if ever we should be frank, it is when we examine ourselves to see if we be in the faith.
Multitudes tread a hazy path to death because they will not bring themselves under the searching eye of God.
They prefer to assume everything is all right, though so to assume is always dangerous and may be deadly.
verse
In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
— James 2:17
thought
Are we living out our faith?
If not, is ours genuine faith? In Christ there is enablement but it has to be appropriated and exercised.
prayer
O God, may I increasingly live my faith in You by trusting You for Your power in daily living.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
The genuine philosopher, Epictetus used to say, was not one who had read Chrysippus and Diogenes and so could discourse learnedly on the teachings of these men, but one who had put their teachings into practice.
Nothing else would satisfy him.
He refused to call any man a philosopher who showed evidence of pride, covetousness, self-love or worldly ambition.
Epictetus was not impressed by eloquence or learning. It was a waste of time for the student to recite the list of books he had read. What has your reading done for you he asked his students, and looked not to their words but to their lives for the answer.
He required of the young men who sought him out that they bring their lives into immediate harmony with the Stoic doctrines. If you don't intend to live like a philosopher, don't come back, he told them bluntly. He drew a sharp distinction between a philosopher in fact and a student of philosophy, and would have nothing to do with the mere student.
With him it was all or nothing. There was no middle ground.
This is not to advocate the teachings of the Stoics, but to assert that many of the heathen in their blindness appear to have more light than some Christians and that the children of this world often show more real wisdom than some of the children of God.
For the snare Epictetus warned against is the very one into which multitudes of professed Christians are falling, viz., mistaking the word for the deed and falsely assuming that if they know the teaching of the Christian faith they are therefore in that faith.
verse
As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.
— James 2:26
thought
Speaking "church" language, even quoting Scripture, is not the same as practicing it.
Faith will express itself in faith deeds not just words.
Is our practice consistent with our profession?
prayer
Lord, keep me from falling into the habit of "talking the talk" but not "walking the talk." In Jesus' name.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/