Long after we have learned from the Scriptures that we cannot, by fasting or the wearing of a hair shirt or the making of many prayers, atone for the sins of the soul, we still tend by a kind of pernicious natural heresy to feel that we can please God and purify our souls by the penance of perpetual regret.
This latter is the Protestants unacknowledged penance.
Though he claims to believe in the doctrine of justification by faith he still secretly feels that what he calls godly sorrow will make him dear to God.
Though he may know better he is caught in the web of a wrong religious feeling and betrayed.
verse
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions?it is by grace you have been saved.
— Ephesians 2:4-5
thought
It seems that when we have repeatedly been forgiven for a particular sin and then fall again that asking forgiveness does not seem enough. We feel that we have to do something for God. What we have to do is to ask forgiveness, receive it and then walk by
prayer
Thank You for forgiveness and cleansing, Lord. I trust You for enablement to live for You as I walk by Your Spirit day by day.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
The human heart is heretical by nature.
Popular religious beliefs should be checked carefully against the Word of God, for they are almost certain to be wrong.
Legalism, for instance, is natural to the human heart.
Grace in its true New Testament meaning is foreign to human reason, not because it is contrary to reason but because it lies beyond it.
The doctrine of grace had to be revealed; it could not have been discovered.
The essence of legalism is self-atonement.
The seeker tries to make himself acceptable to God by some act of restitution, or by self-punishment or the feeling of regret.
The desire to be pleasing to God is commendable certainly, but the effort to please God by self-effort is not, for it assumes that sin once done may be undone, an assumption wholly false.
verse
Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the LORD does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit.
— Psalm 32:1-2
thought
O the blessedness of sins forgiven, knowing that God no longer counts them against us. The amazing grace of God!
prayer
O Christ, I could never atone for my sins. You have done it. I receive the forgiveness You give. I glory in Your grace.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
We must think of the surrounding world of people and things against the background of our thoughts of God.
The experienced Christian will never think of anything directly; his thoughts go first to God and from God out to His creation.
His thoughts, like the angels of Jacobs ladder, ascend and descend, but ever God stands above them presiding over all.
To be heavenly-minded we must think heavenly thoughts. So let us return to ourselves, brothers, . . . for it is impossible for us to be reconciled and united with God if we do not first return to ourselves . . . striving constantly to keep attention on the kingdom of heaven which is within us.
So wrote Nicephorus, a father of the Greek Orthodox Church, in the fourteenth century, and nothing since has changed. God must have all our thoughts it we would experience the sanctification of our minds.
verse
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
— Psalm 139:23
thought
What are my thoughts toward God, myself, other people, circumstances and situations? Is my thinking faith-focused or mired in doubt? Do I see other people as God sees them? For many of us, basic changes are needed in our thinking.
prayer
Father, purify my thinking. Increase my sensitivity to what I think. Transform my mind. For Christ's sake.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
We must think of the surrounding world of people and things against the background of our thoughts of God.
The experienced Christian will never think of anything directly; his thoughts go first to God and from God out to His creation.
His thoughts, like the angels of Jacobs ladder, ascend and descend, but ever God stands above them presiding over all.
To be heavenly-minded we must think heavenly thoughts. So let us return to ourselves, brothers, . . . for it is impossible for us to be reconciled and united with God if we do not first return to ourselves . . . striving constantly to keep attention on the kingdom of heaven which is within us.
So wrote Nicephorus, a father of the Greek Orthodox Church, in the fourteenth century, and nothing since has changed. God must have all our thoughts it we would experience the sanctification of our minds.
verse
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
— Psalm 139:23
thought
What are my thoughts toward God, myself, other people, circumstances and situations? Is my thinking faith-focused or mired in doubt? Do I see other people as God sees them? For many of us, basic changes are needed in our thinking.
prayer
Father, purify my thinking. Increase my sensitivity to what I think. Transform my mind. For Christ's sake.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
Thinking is a kind of living.
To think and to be aware that we think is to be conscious; life without consciousness is but a shadow of life, having no meaning and being of no value to the individual.
Our thoughts are the product of our thinking, and since these are of such vast importance to us it is imperative that we learn how to think rightly. I am not concerned here with that kind of profound cerebration known as heavy thinking.
Few of us have the intellectual equipment to enable us, or the will power to compel us, to engage in such heroic mental exercise. I am dealing here with that kind of thinking done by every normal person every waking moment from birth to death. After all, it is not our heavy thinking that shapes our characters, but the quiet attention of the mind to the surrounding world day after day throughout our lives.
Men are influenced more by their common, everyday thinking than by any rare intellectual feat such as writing a great poem or painting a famous picture. Feats of thinking may create reputation, but habits of thinking create character The incredible mental accomplishments of an Einstein, for instance, had almost nothing to do with the kind of human being he was; the constant, undramatic, moment-by-moment interplay of his mind with his environment, on the other hand, had almost everything to do with it.
We all live in two environments, the one being the world around us, the other our thoughts about that world.
The larger world cannot affect us directly; it must be mediated to us by our thoughts, and will be to us at last only what we allow it to be.
verse
Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking.
— 2 Peter 3:1
thought
We all think. All day long we think. What we think has so much to do with what we are and what we are becoming. It strongly influences our living. Are we disciplining ourselves in wholesome thinking?
prayer
Holy Spirit, guide me in my thinking. How I perceive and interpret the world around me, the words and actions of people. Stimulate me to wholsome thinking. In Jesus' name.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
Truth cannot aid us until we become participators in it.
We only possess what we experience. St. Gregory of Sinai, who lived in the fourteenth century, taught that understanding and participation were inseparable in the spiritual life. He who seeks to understand commandments without fulfilling commandments, and to acquire such understanding through learning and reading, is like a man who takes a shadow for truth.
For the understanding of truth is given to those who have become participants in truth (who have tasted it through living).
Those who are not participants in truth and are not initiated therein, when they seek this understanding, draw it from a distorted wisdom. Of such men the apostle says ?the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit, even though they boast of their knowledge of truth.
Here is a simple but neglected doctrine that should be restored to its rightful place in the thinking and teaching of the Church. It would work wonders.
verse
The Lord says: 'These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship is made up only of rules taught by men.'
— Isaiah 29:13
thought
Some of us measure our commitment to Christ by the truth we mouth and the rules we keep?rules which may be man-made and not from God. But truth must be tasted through living if we are to be participants in it.
prayer
Lord, teach me what it means to participate in Your truth that through it I may be free.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
We must be willing to obey if we would know the true inner meaning of the teachings of Christ and the apostles.
I believe this view prevailed in every revival that ever came to the Church during her long history.
Indeed a revived Church may be distinguished from a dead one by the attitude of its members toward the truth.
The dead church holds to the shell of truth without surrendering the will to it, while the church that wills to do Gods will is immediately blessed with a visitation of spiritual powers.
Theological facts are like the altar of Elijah on Carmel before the fire came, correct, properly laid out, but altogether cold. When the heart makes the ultimate surrender, the fire falls and true facts are transmuted into spiritual truth that transforms, enlightens, sanctifies.
The church or the individual that is Bible taught without being Spirit taught (and there are many of them) has simply failed to see that truth lies deeper than the theological statement of it.
verse
Teach me your way, O LORD, and I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.
— Psalm 86:11
thought
God does teach us His way. Are we walking in His truth? Unless we do our heart is divided and our faith reduced to intellectual affirmations without full heart commitment.
prayer
Show me, Lord, those areas of Your truth to which I have not yet surrendered. I want to walk in Your truth with an undivided heart.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
In His conflict with the religious textualists of His day our Lord often uttered short statements that serve as keys to unlock vast and precious storehouses of truth.
In the Gospel according to John these may be found in something amounting to profusion.
One such is found in John 7: If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself? (7:17).
A. T. Robertson, in his Word Pictures in the New Testament, explains he shall know as being experimental knowledge from willingness to do Gods will.
Then he quotes Westcott: if there be no sympathy there can be no understanding. Obviously these words of Christ were understood by the great British biblical scholar Westcott and the brilliant American expositor Robertson as teaching that truth can be understood only by the mind that has surrendered to it.
The average evangelical Bible teacher today finds such a radical interpretation too revolutionary to be comfortable and so just ignores it.
verse
I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.
— Ephesians 1:17
thought
How is it that the Great God deigns to allow you and me, out of the billions on earth, to know Him in measure and to know His truth? I dont't know why but He does.
prayer
I want to know You, Lord, experientially know You, know You better than I know You now. Open my eyes!
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
The essence of my belief is that there is a difference, a vast difference, between fact and truth.
Truth in the Scriptures is more than a fact.
A fact may be detached, impersonal, cold and totally disassociated from life.
Truth on the other hand, is warm, living and spiritual.
A theological fact may be held in the mind for a lifetime without its having any positive effect upon the moral character; but truth is creative, saving, transforming, and it always changes the one who receives it into a humbler and holier man.
At what point, then, does a theological fact become for the one who holds it a life-giving truth?
At the point where obedience begins.
When faith gains the consent of the will to make an irrevocable committal to Christ as Lord, truth begins its saving, illuminating work; and not one moment before.
verse
To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, 'If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.'
— John 8:31-32
thought
Truth sets free! Truth embraced, clung to, integrated into everyday living. Truth changes the heart not just the mind.
prayer
Father, forgive me for sometimes holding Your truth at arm's length ? examining it, analyzing it, exegeting it?but failing to fully live it. Your truth sets free.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/