Success is any field is costly, but the man who will pay the price can have it.
The concert pianist must become a slave to his instrument; four hours, five hours each day he must sit at the keyboard.
The scientist must live for his work.
The philosopher must devote himself to thought, the scholar to his books.
The price may seem excessively heavy, but there are some who consider the reward worthwhile.
The laws of success operate also in the higher field of the soul spiritual greatness has its price.
Eminence in the things of the Spirit demands a devotion to these things more complete than most of us are willing to give.
But the law cannot be escaped.
If we would be holy we know the way; the law of holy living is before us.
The prophets of the Old Testament, the apostles of the New and, more than all, the sublime teachings of Christ are there to tell us how to succeed.
verse
Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.
— Colossians 3:2
thought
Our minds are so much set on things earthly and so little on things above. To grow in Christ as God desires demands on our part priority time and devotion to things holy.
prayer
Lord, I don't want to just float along. I want to grow and I have so much growing to do.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/o.
God has also given us a wealth of opportunities.
An opportunity may be defined as a providential circumstance which permits us to turn our time, our money and our talents to account.
Of all gifts this is the most common, and it is the one which makes the other gifts of value to us and to mankind.
The wise Christian will watch for opportunities to do good, to speak the life-bringing word to sinners, to pray the rescuing prayer of intercession.
The foe of opportunity is preoccupation. Just when God sends along a chance to turn a great victory for mankind, some of us are too busy puttering around to notice it. Or we notice it when it is too late.
The old Greeks said that opportunity had a forelock but was close-shaven behind; if a man missed grabbing for her as she approached, he would reach for her in vain after she had passed. Possibly the worst effect of waste is the mental habit it creates.
To allow time or money or talents to go to waste is to do something harmful to ourselves.
It is to injure ourselves inside where it is most serious.
verse
Be very careful, then, how you live not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.
— Ephesians 5:15-16
thought
Wise living is making the most of opportunities. That means recognizing them for what they are and utilizing them without delay. How many opportunities have we already lost.
prayer
O Lord, may I be alert to opportunities You send and make the most of them while there is yet time.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
One thing taught large in the Holy Scriptures is that while God gives His gifts freely. He will require a strict accounting of them at the end of the road.
Each man is personally responsible for his store, be it large or small, and will be required to explain his use of it before the judgment seat of Christ. . . . Then there are talents. These are included in the total store granted us by our Heavenly Father.
Whether we have one talent or many, we must render up account finally, and the factor that will decide for us is not how many talents we had but what we did with them. The story of the man who hid his talent in the ground makes disquieting reading for the careless Christian who is failing to make use of his gifts. Some with modest gifts have made a brilliant record of spiritual achievement; others with far greater abilities have played through the summer of life like the grasshopper in the fable and have let their gifts lie unused while time idled by.
This, we repeat, is tragedy, and that it is common does not make it any the less tragic.
Money is another item. American Christians make so much of it and spend it so lavishly that they have unconsciously learned to take it as a matter for granted and have forgotten that they will be strictly judged for their use of it. The Lord still stands by the treasury and observes what is placed therein. This has been turned into a joke by humorists who are ready always to find something funny in every reference to money.
But it is safe to predict that there will be little laughter when the Lord with eyes like a flame of fire looks into our accounts and makes His just audit.
We might do well right now to do a little auditing ourselves while there is time to make amends for our failures.
verse
We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. . . .
— Romans 12:7a
thought
We have differing gifts, natural talents, human resources ? all grace gifts from God. They vary in degree, intensity of quality. But what counts is their faithful use for God's glory.
prayer
Father, give me wisdom in the use of resources You have given and faithful exercise of them as unto You.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
One thing taught large in the Holy Scriptures is that while God gives His gifts freely, He will require a strict accounting of them at the end of the road.
Each man is personally responsible for his store, be it large or small, and will be required to explain his use of it before the judgment seat of Christ. . . .
First, there is time. None of us has much of it. The crow that flaps across the meadow will probably live longer than the oldest one of us. The tree that shades the sleepy cow in the pasture may have looked down on our grandfather when he was a boy, and it may remain to watch the passing of our children's children. And that we have so small a store of time constitutes a powerful reason for our making the most of what we have. Yet how many hours have we spent doing nothing or doing the wrong thing.
Our cynical waste of precious time could be a reason for our not having more of it given to us, who knows Jesus once said, Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.
Time wasted is lost beyond recall. While we sympathize with the emotional content of the old song, Backward, turn backward, O time, in your flight, it is yet hard to conceive of a more futile appeal.
Time does not run backward.
The old man does not become young, the young man becomes old.
So it has always been and so it will ever be.
The bird of time flies past us and is gone; the leaves of life keep falling one by one, the wine of life keeps oozing drop by drop.
We must work while it is called today.
verse
What I mean, brothers, is that the time is short. . . .
— First Corinthians 7:29a
thought
Jesus had no more time in His sojourn on earth than most of us. He had less years than most of us have already lived. Knowing full well the brevity of His earthly life and the value of His time, He spent so much of it in discipling the Twelve.
prayer
Lord, I'm a waster of time. Forgive me. May I treat each day, each hour as a gfit from You to invest for You.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
To each of us God has issued a certain store as it has pleased Him: to one more, to another less.
And since God owes us nothing, anything He gives us may be put down to His unearned generosity.
The man with a smaller store dare not complain against God for having given him less than his neighbor received.
God's gifts are not debts which He pays us, but gratuities bestowed out of pure mercy.
One thing taught large in the Holy Scriptures is that while God gives His gifts freely, He will require a strict accounting of them at the end of the road.
Each man is personally responsible for his store, be it large or small, and will be required to explain his use of it before the judgment seat of Christ.
The store is nothing new, just the old familiar list of human possessions: time, talents, earthly goods, opportunities.
Though they are as common as the grass beside the path, the waste of them constitutes one of lifes most appalling tragedies.
verse
'Well done, my good servant!' his master replied. 'Because you have been trustworthy in a very small matter, take charge of ten cities.'
— Luke 19:17
thought
Deeply impressive among overseas Christians are those with such limited resources and yet who have invested them so wisely and faithfully. This, while we have wasted so much.
prayer
You have given me so much, Lord. O help me to use it all wisely.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
No doubt we grieve our Lord by thinking of ourselves as less than we are in the plan of God
In ourselves we are nothing, and the vast gulf of forgetfulness toward which we were heading was the proper place for us.
We had earned no share in God's interest, no place in His affection; our sins had forfeited any claim we might have had upon God as Creator.
But the blood of the everlasting covenant has changed all that.
Our claim now is that of a child upon his Father.
We have a right in the Father's household, and we can sit down at His table without fear or embarrassment.
In the kingdom of God we signify.
verse
For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, 'Abba, Father.' The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.
— Romans 8:15-16
thought
That intimate Aramaic term abba is perhaps best translated "daddy." God is our daddy. We are His sons and daughters!
prayer
Father, it blows my mind that I may come to You as a child to his or her daddy.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
No matter how insignificant he may have been before, a man becomes significant the moment he has had an encounter with the Son of God.
When the Lord lays His hand upon a man, that man ceases at once to be ordinary.
He immediately becomes extraordinary, and his life takes on cosmic significance.
The angels in heaven take notice of him and go forth to become his ministers (Hebrews 1:14).
Though the man had before been only one of the faceless multitude, a mere cipher in the universe, an invisible dust grain blown across endless wastes now he gets a face and a name and a place in the scheme of meaningful things. Christ knows His own sheep by name.?
A young preacher introduced himself to the pastor of a great metropolitan church with the words, I am just the pastor of a small church upcountry.
Son, replied the wise minister, there are no small churches.
And there are no unknown Christians, no insignificant sons of God.
Each one signifies, each is a sign drawing the attention of the Triune God day and night upon him.
The faceless man has a face, the nameless man a name, when Jesus picks him out of the multitude and calls him to Himself.
verse
For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority.
— Colossians 2:9-10
thought
As de Molinos put it: "he that hath God, hath everything; and he what hath Him not, hath nothing." In Christ we have God. We have everything worthwhile!
prayer
O Lord, I am Yours and You are mine. What infinite worth!
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
One of the heaviest thoughts that can visit the human heart is the insignificance of the average man.
Seen against the long procession of the ages and the countless multitudes of people who have inhabited the earth, we are each one no more than a grain of sand on the wide seashore.
It takes some reflection to make this appear to our minds as it really is.
The human ego may be counted upon to accent our individual worth and to give a false permanence to what is anything but permanent.
A man in his pride may feel himself to be so important that it is hard for him to visualize the world as continuing to endure after he is removed from the scene; but all we need to do is to wait. Time will grind him to dust and toss him to the winds; his friends will disappear one by one from their old familiar haunts, and there will be no one left to remember him.
The passing generations will sift over him layer upon layer of forgetfulness, and he will no longer have any earthly meaning. He will cease to be a name and will become merely a statistic.
This consideration, if no other, should dispose us to embrace the message of Christ. That message is so full and so comprehensive that it is never possible to state in one paragraph or one page or one volume all that it is.
It is doubtful, in fact, whether all the world could contain the books if the whole wonder of the gospel were to be written.
But not the least among the benefits of the Cross is its dignification of the individual.
verse
Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, 'Abba, Father.' So you are no longer a slave, but a son; aand since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.
— Galatians 4:6-7
thought
In ourselves we are a nothing. In Christ we have worth ? eternal worth. Through faith in Him we become children of God.
prayer
In myself I am a nothing. But in You I have eternal worth. Thank You, in Jesus' name.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
Leadership requires vision, and whence will vision come except from hours spent in the presence of God in humble and fervent prayer?
All things else being equal, a praying woman will know the will of God for the church far better than a prayerless man.
We do not here advocate the turning of the churches over to the women, but we do advocate a recognition of proper spiritual qualifications for leadership among the men if they are to continue to decide the direction the churches shall take.
The accident of being a man is not enough.
Spiritual manhood alone qualifies. Choose seven men from among you, commanded the apostles, who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom.
We will turn this responsibility over to them (Acts 6:3).
The men chosen as a consequence of this directive became the first deacons of the church.
Thus the direction of certain church affairs was put into the hands of men spiritually qualified.
Should we not maintain the same standards today?
verse
Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and widom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.
— Acts 6:3-4
thought
Interesting, isn't it, and strikingly significant that both the ministry of the word and the ministry of table-waiting in the church required men full of the Spirit and wisdom. Stephen began as a table-server.
prayer
Any service for You, Lord, requires the fullness of Your Spirit in the servers. May I remember that its value does not depend upon human recognition and status.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/