Faith is at the foundation of all Christian living, and because faith has to do with the character of God, it is safe from all vacillations of mood.
A man may be believing soundly and effectively even when his mood is low, so low that he is hardly aware that he is alive emotionally at all. That is one thing, and it is good to know and still better to put in practice. But like every other truth, it has two sides.
Our trouble today is that we tend to forget the other side, that is, that elevated spiritual mood is a tremendous aid to victorious living. The relation of faith to mood may be stated by means of a number of metaphors: if faith is the tree, mood is the blossom; if faith is the flower, mood is the fragrance; if faith is the instrument, mood is the melody.
And who will deny the vital place of the blossom, the fragrance and the music in human life? Mood is a kind of mental weather.
There is weather in which nothing will grow. The farmer knows the damage done by prolonged periods of cold, wet weather in the spring after the seed has been planted. Sometimes the seed will rot in the ground, requiring a new planting with all the loss and extra work this entails.
Weather may be too hot, too cold, too dry, too wet to favor good crops, and the Christian's moods, in like manner, may be unfavorable to spiritual growth and fruitfulness. Christian service carried on during prolonged heaviness of heart may be as good as wasted.
verse
We live by faith, not by sight.
— 2 Corinthians 5:7
thought
We walk by faith not by sight, mood or feeling. There are times when faith is all we have in the midst of darkness. There are also times when faith lifts mood and elevates feeling.
prayer
Thank You, Lord, for the bright moods and joyfulness. Keep me from becoming unduly dependent upon them.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
No one need feel ashamed if he has come to God as a last resort, especially if he has found the help he sought "in the bosom of his Father and his God."
God has received a great army of such persons, and if He is satisfied, we should be.
Billy Sunday once testified that he had been scared into the kingdom of God. "But," said he, "by the grace of God I'm not going to be scared out."
But be all this as true as it may be, still it is a bad habit for us as Christians to get into-the habit of trying everything before taking our problems to God. God should come first. If in our sinful ignorance we once knew no better, there is no reason for our continuing in the same rut now that we are children of the kingdom. It cheats us out of many a victory and leaves us for long periods in a state of perplexity and distress when we might be walking in freedom without a care in the world. Going to God first will head off many a bad situation.
A young man falls in love and without as much as a word of counsel from God plunges into marriage.
A few years later he finds that he has made a bad mistake. Then he goes to God to seek a way out, and learns that he is too late.
God will still help him even in such circumstances, but the sacred vows have been taken, and the die is cast. It would have been better to go to God first. Our chastenings come when we look somewhere else for help and neglect the one real source of all help and comfort. It's always best to go to God first.
verse
He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way.
— Psalm 25:9
thought
What pain and regret we cause ourselves when we fail to go to God first. When we are sure we are in God's will then trial and sorrow change drastically in color. We know that out of His infinite riches in Christ Jesus, grace God gives and gives and gives
prayer
Thank You for Your guidance and Your grace, Lord. I am such a debtor to Your grace which is mine through Christ.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
It is characteristic of human nature to turn to God only after every other avenue of help has been explored and been found useless.
This is one of the many evils which sin has visited upon us the bent to look everywhere for aid but in the right place, and if we do look in the right place, to look there last. No one likes to think that he has been a second choice, but our patient Heavenly Father lies under the shadow of always being at least second, and often third or fifth or tenth choice.
For most of us will have to confess that we sought God only after all else had failed. When one friend after another had rejected our pleas, we turned in despair to the God who never rejects anyone who comes to Him in sincerity and faith. The old country woman "lowed" that it was no use to pray in a crisis if you hadn't been in the habit of praying before. "For," said she, "God doesn't hear skeered prayers."
There may be a certain logic about her reasoning, but her conclusion is all at variance with the facts and with the gentle ways of God with erring men. For since our fathers fell asleep, the kingdom of heaven has continued to receive "skeered" persons of all ages and conditions who found the world too much for them and who in their grief and despair sought help where help can indeed be found.
verse
Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory.
— Psalm 73:23-24
thought
Why don't we turn to God first? Is it because we are not ready to bend to His will? Do we reason that other entities might be faster with remedies more to our liking? Or have we restricted God to a secondary place in daily living?
prayer
Father, thank You for Your patience when I act so stupidly, trying every supposed remedy but You. What unfailing love You have shown to me.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
It may shock some people to be told that Christ is not an American.
Nor was He a Jew merely.
He was born of the seed of Abraham of the line of David, and His mother was a Jewess of the tribe of Judah.
Still Christ is vastly more than a Jew.
His dearest name for himself was "the Son of man."
He came through the Jewish race, but he came to the human race. He is Everyman's countryman and Everyman's contemporary. He is building a kingdom of all nations and tribes and tongues and peoples. He has no favorites, "but in every nation he that fearest him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him."
Let us remember that the gospel is a divine thing. It receives no virtue from any of man's religions or philosophies. It came down to us out of heaven, a separate thing, like Peter's sheet, wholly on its own. It is something given of God. It operates in the individual heart wherever that heart may be found. Any form of human government, however lofty, deals with the citizen only as long as he lives. At the graveside it bids him adieu.
It may have made his journey a little easier, and, if so, all lovers of the human race will thank God for that. But in the cool earth, slaves and free men lie down together. Then what matter the talk and the turmoil? Who was right and who was wrong in this or that political squabble doesn't matter to the dead. Judgment and sin and heaven and hell are all that matter then.
So, let's keep cool, and let's think like Christians. Christ will be standing upright, tall and immortal, after the tumult and the shouting dies and the captains and the kings lie stretched side by side, the "cause" that made them famous forgotten and their whole significance reduced to a paragraph in a history book.
verse
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
— John 1:14a
thought
Christ did not come to a particular people in a particular area of the world. He assumed a certain ethnicity. He took on full humanity. But He came to be the Savior and Lord of every man and woman. He belongs to all peoples who will open their hearts to Him.
prayer
O Christ, You are praised and worshiped today in hundreds of languages and cultural forms. You are no more my Lord than the Lord of other believers around the world. But You are my Lord and my God
.ttps://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
One thing must be kept in mind: We Christians are Christians first and everything else after that.
Our first allegiance is to the kingdom of God. Our citizenship is in heaven. We are grateful for political freedom. We thank God for democracy as a way of life. But we never forget that we are sons of God and citizens of another city whose builder and maker is God.
For this reason, we must not identify the gospel with any political system or make Christianity to be synonymous with any form of government, however noble.
Christ stands alone, above and outside of every ideology devised by man. He does not join any of our parties or take sides with any of our great men except as they may come over on His side and try to follow Him in righteousness and true holiness. Then He is for them, but only as individuals, never as leaders of some political faction.
The true Christian will be loyal to his country and obedient to those in authority, but he will never fall into the error of confusing his own national culture with Christianity.
Christianity is bigger than any country, loftier than any civilization, broader than any human ideology.
verse
Then he said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."
— Matthew 22:21b
thought
We have dual citizenship?God's kingdom and a nation of the world. To that country's government we have responsibility?laws to follow, taxes to pay, duties inherent in citizenship. Being good citizens will mean working to change what needs to be changed while remaining true to our King Jesus.
prayer
Your kingdom, Lord, includes followers of Christ from differing ethnic groups, social classes, political persuasions. Oh God, help me to accept the diversity while rejoicing in family. For Jesus' sake.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
"I'm sorry. ... I'm a stranger here myself."
That is the only honest answer. Others are sometimes given, but they are never valid answers.
They spring out of pride or error or uncritical and wishful thinking, and they are not to be trusted. It is no good asking for information of another who is as ignorant as ourselves. We are all strangers in a strange world. Is our state hopeless then?
Is no answer to be had?
Must we live in a world we do not understand and go out into a future of dark uncertainty?
No, thank God, things are not as bad as that. There is an answer. We can find light. Our questions have been answered. "From a child," wrote Paul to Timothy, "thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." It is the universal testimony of the saints of the ages that when the light of the Scriptures enters, the darkness of spiritual ignorance vanishes. God's Word giveth light. It has an answer for every question that matters. The merely curious question it ignores, but every real inquiry made by the sincere heart is met with full light.
It is important that we search the Scriptures daily, and more important still that we approach them with faith and humility, bowing our hearts to their instructions and commands. Then through faith in Christ we cease to be strangers and become sons of God.
verse
The unfolding of your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple.
— Psalm 119:130
thought
God's words give light to those most difficult of life issues. That light does not necessarily illuminate quickly nor to our full satisfaction. Imperative is careful searching of God's Word and serious listening to His voice. But God does give light!
prayer
Father, You are God. You know all things. You are from forever to forever. To You I come with those burning questions. Your answers to some I cannot yet understand. My mind is restricted and my experience limited. Yet in You I find light and peace.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
All of us at some time in our life become suddenly aware that we are in a strange place called the world.
We do not remember coming here and we are not sure when or how we are going to leave.
A score of pressing questions fill our minds. We must have the answers.
Where did we come from?
What are we?
Why are we here?
Where do we go next?
What does God require of us?
How can we find the heaven of peace?
Such questions as these insist upon an answer. But we have no answer.
Then we approach someone who looks as if he might know. We eagerly put our question, but we get only a shake of the head and the usual, "I'm sorry. I'm a stranger here myself." At first we are frightfully disappointed, for we had hoped someone might know.
There are the great stone buildings covered with ivy where the best brains of the world hold forth day after day.
There are the great libraries piled with solemn books, each filled with learned words.
But the desired answer is nowhere.
A few attempt to direct us, but prove by their own bewilderment that they know as little as we do about the whole thing.
The philosopher seeks, but never finds.
The scientist searches, but finds no data to help us beyond the last hour and the narrow house and the shroud.
The poet soars on stubby wings, but soon comes down again, tired and confused. Each one has the same answer: "I'm sorry. . . . I'm a stranger here myself."
verse
Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit.
— Psalm 147:5
thought
God's understanding has no limit, but ours does. He is God. We are created humans. There is so much we do not understand, have not experienced, and cannot comprehend. Some of our questions will never be answered in this life. Others will not need to be. But we can trust God's sovereign plan.
prayer
Father, those burning questions for which I have found no answer I bring to You. Into Your arms I place them and I place myself. You are my Abba.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
The testimony of the true follower of Christ might well be something like this: The world's pleasures and the world's treasures henceforth have no appeal for me.
I reckon myself crucified to the world and the world crucified to me.
But the multitudes that were so dear to Christ shall not be less dear to me.
If I cannot prevent their moral suicide, I shall at least baptize them with my human tears.
I want no blessing that I cannot share.
I seek no spirituality that I must win at the cost of forgetting that men and women are lost and without hope.
If in spite of all I can do they will sin against light and bring upon themselves the displeasure of a holy God, then I must not let them go their sad way unwept.
I scorn a happiness that I must purchase with ignorance.
I reject a heaven that I must enter by shutting my eyes to the sufferings of my fellow men.
I choose a broken heart rather than any happiness that ignores the tragedy of human life and human death.
Though I, through the grace of God in Christ, no longer lie under Adam's sin, I would still feel a bond of compassion for all of Adam's tragic race, and I am determined that I shall go down to the grave or up into God's heaven mourning for the lost and the perishing.
And thus and thus will I do as God enables me. Amen
verse
"Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him." Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."
— Luke 10:36-37
thought
Good Samaritan living does not come naturally. We are afraid of rejection, of being robbed ourselves, of being taken advantage of. But intercession for those around us will eventually result in reaching out to them in Christ's name.
prayer
O Lord, help me to see people, people around me, as You see them. To pray for them. To reach out to them. To be a "Good Samaritan" to them. I can't do it myself, I've tried. Change me, for Christ's sake.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
We human beings were made for each other, and what any of us is doing at any time cannot be a matter of indifference to the rest of us.
On the human plane all men are brothers. The Son of Man never denied this sweet tie with humankind.
Over a stubborn and sinful Jerusalem He frankly shed tears and, in the hour of death, prayed for men who were so blind as to nail their God on a tree.
And Paul, who burned always to be like his Lord, wept over the unbelieving Israel with an anguish that goaded him to an utterance so daring as to cause the ages to wonder:
"I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh."
Peace of heart that is won by refusing to bear the common yoke of human sympathy is a peace unworthy of a Christian. To seek tranquility by stopping our ears to the cries of human pain is to make ourselves not Christians but a kind of degenerate stoic having no relation either to stoicism or Christianity.
We Christians should never try to escape from the burdens and woes of life among men.
The hermit and the anchorite sound good in poetry, but stripped of their artificial romance, they are not good examples of what the followers of Christ should be.
True peace comes not by a retreat from the world but by the overpowering presence of Christ in the heart.
"Christ in you" is the answer to our cry for peace.
The Salvation Army lassie distributing gospel literature in a saloon is a better example of the separated life than a prim and cold-faced saint who has long ago fled the world to take refuge in the barren caverns of her soul.
verse
The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
— 2 Peter 3:9
thought
The Lord does not want anyone to perish. Do I? Do I care enough to pray and to reach out in His name?
prayer
Father, to the extent I can bear it, will you enable me to see people as You see them?
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/