. . . All these examples point up to a grave modern evil, permitting temporal consequences to decide eternal issues.
A word of caution should be added.
Sometimes an act, though good in itself, may, in a given set of circumstances, be better held in abeyance.
Only be sure the reason for waiting is the desire to promote the glory of God and bless mankind.
Sometimes a word, though true, would be out of season and injurious to someone. Better be silent than to speak a harmful word.
Only let the reason for silence be love and not fear. To sum up: no act, however noble it may seem to be, done from fear of consequences can be good in itself. A good deed done for earthly gain is an evil deed at bottom.
Motive imparts moral quality, and without a holy motive there cannot be a holy act.
.
Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
— Psalm 51:10
thought
How clever is the god of this world into deceiving us into thinking that bowing to temporal consequences can be clothed in moral quality. God knows our hearts. We had better know them, too.
prayer
O Father, give me clear understanding of consequences. May I discern the eternal from the temporal and not compromise.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
The temptation to gear our lives to social consequences is frightfully strong in a world like ours, but it must be overcome all the way down the line.
The Christian businessman when faced with a moral choice must never ask, How much will this cost me? The moment he regards consequences, he dethrones Christ as Lord of his life. His only concern should be with the will of God and the moral quality of the proposed act. To consult anything else is to sin against his own soul.
Again, the pastor when facing his congregation on Sunday morning, dare not think of the effect his sermon may have on his job, his salary or his future relation to the church.
Let him but worry about tomorrow and he becomes a hireling and no true shepherd of the sheep. No man is a good preacher who is not willing to lay his future on the line every time he expounds the Word.
He must let his job and his reputation ride on each and every sermon or he has no right to think that he stands in the prophetic tradition.
And the same principle is binding upon the religious writer and editor.
The scribe who will trim his copy to hold his job is unworthy of public confidence.
The editor who will reject an article or a paragraph of an article because he is afraid to accept it is standing in the shadow of the fear of consequences.
The publisher who allows desire for profit or the fear of losing sales to decide what books he shall print is on a moral level not too far above the money-changers Christ drove out of the Temple.
All these examples point to a grave modern evil, permitting temporal consequences to decide eternal issues.
verse
Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin. As a result, he does not live the rest of his earthly life for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God.
— 1 Peter 4:1-2
thought
God's will extends into every area of life public and private, secular and sacred, temporal and eternal.
There can be no compromise when it comes to the clear will of God. We obey it or we disobey it.
prayer
"I choose Thee, blessed will of God! In Thee alone my heart can rest." Those words of May Stephens are my prayer, Father.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
Moral decisions should be made in view of moral consequences, never in fear of the effect such decisions may have upon our economic or social future.
The wisest of the Greeks said, A man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong.
It is more than a little embarrassing that an uninspired Stoic should see what so few of us Christians, with all our claims to superior religious experience, seem unable to understand.
It is doubtful whether we can be Christian in anything unless we are Christian in everything.
To obey Christ in one or two or ten instances and then in fear of consequences to back away and refuse to obey in another is to cloud our life with the suspicion that we are only fair-weather followers and not true believers at all.
To obey when it costs us nothing and refuse when the results are costly is to convict ourselves of moral trifling and gross insincerity.
verse
And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.
— Second John 1:6
thought
Obedience to God, whatever the cost, is nonnegotiable. It is an expression of our faith, our trust in Him. Selective obedience, based on earthly consequences, is an expression of moral trifling.
prayer
Forgive me, Lord, for sometimes compromising full obedience to You. It is You who know what is best for me.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
There is a close cause-and-effect relationship between deeds and consequences.
No right-thinking person would try to deny this.
The whole scheme of rewards and punishment is a solid and substantial part of the belief of both Jews and Christians, as well as of many moral philosophers and of religions other than the Judeo-Christian.
The human race at first was put on probation with the words, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die(Genesis 2:17).
This is truth so generally accepted by Christians everywhere as to call for no further comment here. To live our lives reverently in the fear of God and in view of eternal consequences is right and good, but to live our moral lives in fear of temporal consequences is an evil, a great and injurious evil for which not one shred of justification can be found.
Yet the shadow of the fear of consequences lies dark across the church today and its blight is seen almost everywhere.
verse
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
— Second Corinthians 4:18
thought
Living with unseen eternal consequences in mind enables us to more accurately understand temporal consequences.
Temporal consequences are relatively momentary.
Eternal consequences affect eternal living.
prayer
Lord, help me to live with eternal consequences in mind rather than temporal ones. It is the eternal that counts.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
However unpopular we may become as a result, we must cling to the knowledge that all men are heretics by nature and can never know redeeming truth till they are enlightened from above by and through the inspired revelation we call the Scriptures.
We are never kind to our neighbor when for the sake of sweet charity we smile away his perilous error and let him go unrebuked and uncorrected.
The sons of light have an overwhelming obligation to the children of darkness.
The lighthouse keeper dare not compromise with the storm; neither dare the light become friendly with the darkness.
The temptation to create our own creed and settle religious questions out of our own heads is as great in the pastor's study as in the corner tavern. 'No man knows enough to be sure he is right about divine things until he has submitted his ideas to the test of the Scriptures.
Intelligence is not enough, nor experience nor brilliance. The Word of God is the final court of appeal. I gain understanding from your precepts; therefore I hate every wrong path (Psalm 119:104).
verse
The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.
— First Corinthians 2:14
thought
Access to the Scriptures does not insure encounter with God. One may commit the entire contents of Scripture to memory and continually meditate upon it without personally experiencing God. Imperative to any divine encounter is the illumination of the Holy Spirit.
prayer
O God, forgive me for trying to share the Good News with others while losing sight of the fact that only the Holy Spirit can illuminate that truth and open the minds of people to understand it.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
It is more than a little strange that persons who modestly decline to risk an opinion on matters that do not touch them at all closely, such as philosophy or science for instance, are often ready and eager to pronounce with finality on religion which above all else is vital to their welfare for this world and that which is to come.
This follows the popular notion that everyone is capable of discovering for himself the true way to heaven and that one man's belief is as good as anothers in any kind of weather.
A second tenet in this creed is that no one has the right to question the belief of anyone else or to try to influence him in any way in religious matters.
This leads naturally to the third tenet which is that we should practice complete tolerance toward every expression of religious belief, however base or ill-founded it may be, and accept it as someone's way of worshiping God even if it isn't ours.
All this has about it a certain savor of charity and slips well off the lips of politicians, who are forced to try to please everyone, and liberal ministers who find it profitable to do so.
But the man who has knelt before the burning bush or heard the sound of thunder on the mount can never bring himself to sell out his soul in that manner.
The man who has walked beside the sea and has heard the voice of Jesus saying No one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6), can ever get the consent of his heart thus to trifle with religion.
He has been smitten with the love of God and the wonder of the cross and he can never again be tolerant in things that touch his soul and the souls of his fellow men.
He will live beside, be patient with, minister to, pray for and love any religionist of whatever color or creed from a cardinal to a medicine man from the long grass, but never will he compromise the truth to stay on good terms with anyone.
He may die for men, but he will never trifle with them.
verse
Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'
— John 14:6
thought
No one comes to the Father except through Jesus Christ.
No one! No one!
Because only Christ has paid the sin-debt for humankind.
We cannot acknowledge as a way to the Father anything except the only way.
prayer
Father, enable me to graciously, patiently, lovingly share with others the only way.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
Until the full light of God's inspired Word floods down upon the religious landscape, almost everything is obscure and indistinct.
The finest minds see things that are not there and fail to see the things that are.
This inability to make out the details is a frustrating thing to persons of a strong religious bent and results in a lot of guessing and theological improvising.
Such persons demand to know, and though they neglect or reject the holy Scriptures they will know, regardless, in some manner satisfying to themselves.
Bible lovers have been blamed for being excessively dogmatic and it may be that they sometimes are.
I do not wish to justify a spirit of cocksureness wherever it may be found, but the certainty of the believer may be understood when it is remembered that it springs from his faith in the Scriptures as the full and true revelation of the mind of God to men.
His dogmatism has back of it the strong thus saith the Lord of prophet and apostle.
My own experience has taught me, however, that the most stubborn dogmatism is found not among those who quote the Bible to support their convictions, but among those who quote no one and claim for their spiritual authority nothing higher than their own opinions.
verse
The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
— 2 Corinthians 4:4
thought
Satan, the great Blinder, has closed the minds of humankind through sin. God, by His Spirit, opens minds so that people may understand the scriptures and encounter God.
prayer
O God, You are the Great Mind Opener! May I be faithful in praying for those whose minds are blinded rather than treating them as if they could see.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
We are all heretics by nature and take to error as instinctively as ducks take to water.
This does not mean that natural theology is wholly false, for the heavens declare the glory of God and the visible universe shows His eternal power and Godhead.
Add to these the presence in the human heart of that light that lights every man that comes into the world, and you have the source of a certain body of truth known more or less clearly by the whole human race.
The knowledge thus received, however, is inadequate; it forms little more than a frame for the total picture.
The details are all unknown and undiscoverable, so that we must depend upon divine revelation as given in the holy Scriptures to fill in the particulars and render the picture intelligible.
The brush of the Holy Spirit labors to complete the work and to show every hill and rock and tree and blade of grass, each in its proper relation to everything else.
verse
For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualitities his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
— Romans 1:20-21
thought
There is a universal self-disclosure of God addressed to all people at all times in all places those footprints of God visible in the world in which we live. However, humankind's ability to read God in His natural revelation has been impaired by sin. As a result, humankind misreads it.
prayer
Thank You, Lord, for the Holy Spirit who illumines my mind to understand Your Word and to recognize Your footprints in all of nature.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
The notion that Christians should always be optimistic and congenial is heresy pure and simple.
An ill-founded optimism may, under certain conditions, be extremely harmful.
A Christian is not obliged to be either pessimistic or optimistic or glad or sad or positive or negative after a preconceived rule of philosophy. He should (and will if he is Spirit-taught) reflect the will of God in any given situation. His one concern is with God's will. His one question in any set of circumstances is What does God think of this? To him nothing else matters.
What the current popular attitude may be is of no importance to him.
He will approve or disapprove altogether as the written Word and the indwelling Spirit indicate. Religious vogues, passing moods or popular notions will affect him not at all. His heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord. This rather rigid attitude will, in a world like ours, quite naturally work against the one who holds it and earn him a reputation as a pessimist.
People like the man who agrees with them, even if a day later they change their minds and require him to change his, too.
This inconsistency they laugh off as an amiable weakness, and why be so pious about it anyway?
Well, the sons and daughters of eternity care very little about this maypole dance of popular favor.
Like the water bird on the shore of the lake at the approach of winter, they feel within them a strong instinct to migrate.
They expect before long to take off on a journey and they're not coming back soon. So whether they leave behind them a reputation for pessimism or optimism is of little consequence to them.
They are, however, eager to be remembered as children of God and followers of the Lamb. That's all that matters to them.
verse
Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.
— Colossians 3:2
thought
Setting our minds on things above rather than on earthly things put us in tune with eternal reality. Then with the mind of Christ we can understand more accurately what is going on around us.
prayer
Forgive me, Lord, for undue preoccupation with earthly things. Only with my eyes on You can I keep to the road through the confusion of this world.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/