It is important that we trace our benefits back to their source and express our thanks to the One from whom all blessings flow, rather than merely to feel a vague stirring of gratefulness that results in nothing real. I once lived with a fine old couple, neither of whom was a Christian, and I was impressed with the profound sense of gratitude they felt for everything they possessed.
When the winter winds moaned through the trees and made the old house tremble, the old man would smile and say, Ah! How good it is to have a warm place to sleep on a night like this. And the mother would often speak of her large family, now grown and scattered: How grateful I am that they are all healthy and all mentally sound. I am so thankful. Their gratitude was genuine.
Of that there could be no trace of a doubt, but I often wondered who was the recipient of it. Whom were they thanking They never said.
The irreligious world has its own way of reacting. When things break fortunately for a businessman, an athlete or a politician he will slap his hands together and shout, Great! Wonderful! He is thanking someone; but whom?
It could be that the old couple of whom I speak were actually meaning to express their thankfulness to God, and that the modern man who shouts his pleasure at his lot in life secretly feels his indebtedness to God; the trouble is that they were and are ashamed to direct their gratitude pointedly to One with whom they are not acquainted.
They flee like Adam and hide among the trees of the garden rather than face up to the God they know they have offended.
Fear of being thought queer sometimes leads people to express religious ideas in generalities instead of in concrete terms.
verse
Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
— Ephesians 5:19-20
thought
It is not always sufficient to thank God for "everything." What do we mean by "everything"? From time to time we need to meaningfully enumerate those blessings and give Him thanks for each one.
prayer
Forgive me, Lord, I'm prone to take for granted those blessings from You. For each one I give thanks. It is from You that all blessings flow.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
There is probably no such thing as a wholly thankless heart.
Everyone at some time feels a sense of gratitude for benefits received.
This seems to be instinctive, or if not instinctive then surely acquired at a very early age. That a great many persons fail in the degree of their thankfulness we all know too well. Hardly anyone but has known remorse for his failure to express proper gratitude to father or mother or friend till it was too late. And most of us have felt the chill that comes to those who do acts of kindness for persons who receive them as matters of course without so much as a word of thanks.
Even Christ appears to have suffered from such treatment, for after He had healed ten lepers and only one returned to give Him thanks, He asked rather sadly, Where are the other nine? (Luke 17:17).
We dare not read too much into this, but it seems fair to assume that He wanted the cleansed lepers to thank Him, and was disappointed when they did not.
But even here we must not conclude that these men were wholly thankless. They may quite easily have been grateful to friends and relatives, or even to total strangers who might have helped them in the past, and still have failed to express their thanks to the One who deserved it most.
This habit of thanking everyone but God is not confined to those nine lepers.
Enter a plane, a train, a restaurant or any other place where modern civilized men and women meet and mingle and you will see evidences of the same spirit. You will hear thanks given and acknowledged right and left without so much as a mention of God. Somewhere I read of the Christian farm boy who went to college and who in the dining room always bowed his head to thank God before beginning to eat.
When some of his fellow students ribbed him for it, he grinned and said, Hogs dont thank anybody either when they eat their swill.
It might have been a bit direct, but I am sure everyone got the point.
verse
One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him ? and he was a Samaritan.
— Luke 17:15-16
thought
The only one of the ten lepers who returned to thank Jesus was a Samaritan ? a foreigner, looked down upon by the Jews. He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked Him. When was the last time we fell at Jesus' feet and thanked Him?
prayer
Thank You, Lord, for cleansing me; for holding me in Your arms; for feeding me and leading me. Thank You!
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
I have noticed lately among so-called evangelicals a renewed interest in the religious gadgets that our Protestant fathers once threw away to make room for the Holy Spirit.
It is becoming more common now to see in our churches (and in some Alliance churches, I regret to say) huge pictures of Christ, crosses on the altar, candles and other symbolic objects.
This is the sure way back to formalism and death.
In proportion as the Presence of Christ is felt in a congregation these things will be unnecessary, even offensive.
And as the Presence lifts and withdraws, these symbols are brought in as poor substitutes.
The human heart must have something to love and fear. If it misses the true God it will make a god of its own.
A crowd of persons who pray to a false god is not a church in any sense of the word, even if the word Christian or church appears on the front of the building.
verse
'But what about you?' he asked. 'Who do you say I am?' Simon Peter answered, 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.'
— Matthew 16:15-16
thought
Symbols of Christ's presence hardly substitute for that presence. Do we sense His presence among us and within us? If we experience the genuine there is no reason to resort to representations.
prayer
Today may I take the time to be quiet before You and recognize Your presence, O Holy One.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
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/