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/
Prayer is not a work that can be allocated to one or another group in the church. it is everybodys responsibility; it is everybodys privilege.
Prayer is the respiratory function of the church; without it we suffocate and die at last, like a living body deprived of the breath of life.
Prayer knows no sex, for the soul has no sex, and it is the soul that must pray. Women can pray, and their prayers will be answered; but so can man, and so should men if they are to fill the place God has given them in the church.
Let us watch that we do not slide imperceptibly to a state where the women do the praying and the men run the churches.
Men who do not pray have no right to direct church affairs.
We believe in the leadership of men within the spiritual community of the saints, but that leadership should be won by spiritual worth.
verse
Epaphras . . . is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully asssured.
— Colossians 4:12-13
thought
Prayer is never the least we can do, it is always the most! Epaphras, a man, was always wrestling in prayer for the Colossians that they might progress to full spiritual maturity. Would that every church had an Epaphras!
prayer
Make me an Epaphras, Lord.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
It might be a humbling experience for some of us men to be allowed to see just how much of lasting spiritual value is being done by the women of the churches.
As in the days of His flesh, Christ still has devout women who follow Him gladly and minister unto Him. The masculine tendency to discount these Select ladies does not speak too well for the male members of the spiritual community.
A little humility might better become us, and a bit of plain gratitude as well. If prayer is (as we believe it is) an integral part of the total divine scheme of things and must be done if the will of God is to be done, then the prayers of the thousands of women who meet each week in our churches is of inestimable value to the kingdom of God.
More power to them, and may their number increase tenfold. Let us beware, as men, however, that we do not fall into the weak habit of depending upon the women of the church to do our praying for us.
If our work prevents us, as it normally does, from having prayer meetings during the day, let us make up for it in some way and see to it that we pray as much as we should.
verse
There was also a prophetess, Anna, . . . She was very old; . . . a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying.
— Luke 2:36-37
thought
Praying Anna! Was it the praying of a godly mother that God used to impact you? Why mothers and not fathers, women and not men? Men, too, may be faithful pray-ers.
prayer
Thank You, Lord, for those praying women who have faithfully prayed for me over the years.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
From Adam we inherit the instinct to meet our enemies head on, to try to win by direct assault, and it is only after many shocking failures that we learn that victories are not so won in the realm of the spiritual.
The carnal approach usually does little more than to alienate the enemy still further from us and, worse than all, it puts us in a position where God cannot help us.
The enemy never quite knows how to deal with a humble man; he is so used to dealing with proud, stubborn people that a meek man upsets his timetable. And furthermore, the man of true humility has God fighting on his side who can win against God? S
trange as it may seem, we often win over our enemies only after we have first been soundly defeated by the Lord Himself.
God often conquers our enemies by conquering us. He defeated Esau by defeating Jacob the night before on the bank of the Jabbok.
The conquest of Esau took place in his brother Jacob.
It is often so. When God foresees that we must meet a deadly opponent, he assures our victory by bringing us down in humbleness at His own feet.
After that, everything is easy. We have put ourselves in a position where God can fight for us, and in a situation like that, the outcome is decided from eternity.
verse
For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
— Matthew 23:12
thought
Until we are convinced of our weakness, humility eludes us. Yet in utter humility we are candidates for the display of God's power and are not tempted to steal His glory.
prayer
Deliver me from pride, Lord, even if the means is crushing defeat.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/