There are areas in our lives where in our effort to be right we may go wrong, so wrong as to lead to spiritual deformity.
To be specific let me name a few:
4. When we seek to be serious and become somber.
The saints have always been serious, but gloominess is a defect of character and should never be equated with godliness. Religious melancholy may indicate the presence of unbelief or sin and if long continued may lead to serious mental disturbance.
Joy is a great therapeutic for the mind. "Rejoice in the Lord alway" (Phil. 4:4).
5. When we mean to be conscientious and become overscrupulous.
If the devil cannot succeed in destroying the conscience he will settle for making it sick.
I know Christians who live in a state of constant distress, fearing that they may displease God.
Their world of permitted acts becomes narrower year by year till at last they fear to engage in the common pursuits of life.
They believe this self-torture to be a proof of godliness, but how wrong they are.
These are but a few examples of serious imbalance in the Christian life. I trust the remedy has been suggested as we went along.
verse
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace . . .
— Galatians 5:22
thought
There is a freedom of spirit we may experience as believers. Joy and peace are part of the fruit of the Spirit. Gloom and inner turmoil are not!
prayer
Lord, may Your joy and peace spill out of me and splash those around me. For Jesus' sake.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
There are areas in our lives where in our effort to be right we may go wrong, so wrong as to lead to spiritual deformity.
To be specific let me name a few:
1. When in our determination to be bold we become brazen.
Courage and meekness are compatible qualities: both were found in perfect proportion in Christ and both shone in beauty in His conflict with His enemies. Peter before the Sanhedrin and Paul before Agrippa demonstrated both qualities, though on another occasion when Paul's boldness temporarily lost its charity and became carnal he said to the high priest, "God shall smite thee, thou whited wall."
It is to the credit of the apostle that when he saw what he had done he immediately apologized (Acts 25:1-5).
2. When in our desire to be frank we become rude.
Candor without rudeness was always found in the man Christ Jesus. The Christian who boasts that he always calls a spade a spade is likely to end by calling everything a spade.
Even the fiery Peter learned that love does not blurt out everything it knows (1 Peter 4:8)
3. When in our effort to be watchful we become suspicious.
Because there are many adversaries the temptation is to see enemies where none exist.
Because we are in conflict with error we tend to develop a spirit of hostility to everyone who disagrees with us on anything.
Satan cares little whether we go astray after a false doctrine or merely turn sour.
Either way he wins.
verse
Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins.
— 1 Peter 4:8
thought
Meekness, graciousness and trust consistently expressed in resisting ungodliness is God's pattern for us. Satan is delighted when we resort to unkind negativism paraded as godliness.
prayer
O Lord, teach me more of love living.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
The true Christian is a saint in embryo.
The heavenly genes are in him and the Holy Spirit is working to bring him on into a spiritual development that accords with the nature of the heavenly Father from whom he received the deposit of divine life.
Yet he is here in this mortal body subject to weakness and temptation, and his warfare with the flesh sometimes leads him to do extreme things. "For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would" (Gal. 5:17).
The work of the Spirit in the human heart is not an unconscious or automatic thing.
Human will and intelligence must yield to and cooperate with the benign intentions of God. I think it is here that many of us go astray.
Either we try to make ourselves holy and fail miserably, as we certainly must; or we seek to achieve a state of spiritual passivity and wait for God to perfect our natures in holiness as one might sit down and wait for a robin egg to hatch or a rose to burst into bloom.
So we work feverishly to do the impossible or we do not work at all; and there lies the asymmetry about which I write.
The New Testament knows nothing of the working of the Spirit in us apart from our own moral responses.
Watchfulness, prayer, self-discipline and intelligent acquiescence in the purposes of God are indispensable to any real progress in holiness.
verse
So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.
— Galatians 5:16
thought
Growing up in Christ is not automatic. God provides full enablement. Our part is to consciously appropriate that enablement?living day by day by the Spirit.
prayer
Today, Lord, I want to live for You; to walk by Your Spirit; to do Your will. I freely confess that only by Your enablement can I so live.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
It is a thin and rather smooth coin of common knowledge that the human race has lost its symmetry and tends to be lopsided in almost everything it is and does.
Religious philosophers have recognized this asymmetry and have sought to correct it by preaching in one form or another the doctrine of the "golden mean."
Confucius taught the "middle way"; Buddha would have his followers avoid both asceticism and bodily ease; Aristotle believed that the virtuous life is the one perfectly balanced between excess and defect.
Christianity, being in full accord with all the facts of existence, takes into account this moral imbalance in human life, and the remedy it offers is not a new philosophy but a new life. The ideal to which the Christian aspires is not to walk in the perfect way but to be transformed by the renewing of his mind and conformed to the likeness of Christ.
The regenerate man often has a more difficult time of it than the unregenerate, for he is not one man but two. He feels within him a power that tends toward holiness and God, while at the same time he is still a child of Adam's flesh and a son of the red clay.
This moral dualism is to him a source of distress and struggle wholly unknown to the once-born man.
Of course the classic critique upon this is Paul's testimony in the seventh chapter of his Roman epistle.
verse
So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.
— Romans 7:21
thought
God has given the Holy Spirit to believers not just to be our moral compass but our spiritual power. Submitting to the Spirit's control in daily life enables us to overcome the evil nature and live consistent with the new.
prayer
In Your strength, O Holy Spirit, I dare to battle foes within and foes without. Only in Your strength.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
Hard, serious thought and the illumination of the Holy Spirit.
6. Then we must think. Human thought has its limitations, but where there is no thinking there is not likely to be any large deposit of truth in the mind. Evangelicals at the moment appear to be divided into two camps :
those who trust the human intellect to the point of sheer rationalism, and those who are shy of everything intellectual and are convinced that thinking is a waste of the Christian's time.
Surely both are wrong.
Self-conscious intellectualism is offensive to man and, I am convinced, to God also, but it is significant that every major revelation in the Scriptures was made to a man of superior intellect.
It would be easy to marshal an imposing list of Biblical quotations exhorting us to think, but a more convincing argument is the whole drift of the Bible itself.
The Scriptures simply take for granted that the saints of the Most High will be serious-minded, thoughtful persons. They never leave the impression that it is sinful to think.
7. But thinking apart from the inward illumination of the Holy Spirit is not only futile, it is likely to be dangerous as well.
The human intellect is fallen and can no more find its way through the broad expanse of truth, half-truth and downright error than a ship can find its way over the ocean alone. God has given us the Holy Spirit to illuminate our minds.
He is eyes and understanding to us. We dare not try to get on without Him.
verse
Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law.
— Psalm 119:18
thought
Illumination of the inspired scriptures is a continuing ministry of the Holy Spirit. So, too, is His teaching, His convicting and His opening of our minds to understand God's truth and His will. It is for us to immerse ourselves in the Word and listen fo
prayer
Open my mind, illumine me, Holy Spirit divine!
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
Faith, constant meditation on the Scriptures, obedience, humility, . . .
3. "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Romans 10:17). The Scriptures purify, instruct, strengthen, enlighten and inform. The blessed man will meditate in them day and night.
4. To be entirely safe from the devil's snares the man of God must be completely obedient to the Word of the Lord. The driver on the highway is safe, not when he reads the signs but when he obeys them. So it is with the Scriptures. To be effective they must be obeyed.
5. Again, there is a close relation between humility and the perception of truth. "The meek will he guide in judgment: and the meek will he teach his way" (Psa. 25:9).
In the Scriptures I find no shred of encouragement for the proud.
Only the tame sheep can be led; only the humble child need expect the guidance of the Father's hand.
When all the evidence is in it may well be found that none but the proud ever strayed from the truth and that self-trust was behind every heresy that ever afflicted the church.
verse
Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.
— Romans 10:17
thought
Knowing God's Word and obediently applying it in daily life is God's provision for us. Humility before Him is the only reasonable posture of heart. He is Godness. We are creatureliness.
prayer
Thank You for Your Word in a language I can understand. Thank You for Your enablement to do Your will as Your Spirit reveals it. Thank You, O God, for all of Your provision for me, little, insignficant, weak me.
malliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
It is . . . critically important that the Christian take full advantage of every provision God has made to save him from delusion.
These are prayer, faith, constant meditation on the Scriptures, obedience, humility, hard, serious thought and the illumination of the Holy Spirit.
1. Prayer is not a sure fire protection against error for the reason that there are many kinds of prayer and some of them are worse than useless.
The prophets of Baal leaped upon the altar in a frenzy of prayer, but their cries went unregarded because they prayed to a god that did not exist.
The God the Pharisees prayed to did exist, but He refused to listen to them because of their self-righteousness and pride. From them we may well learn a profitable lesson in reverse. In spite of the difficulties we encounter when we pray, prayer is a powerful and effective way to get right, stay right and stay free from error. "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him" (James 1:5).
All things else being equal, the praying man is less likely to think wrong than the man who neglects to pray. "Men ought always to pray, and not to faint" (Luke 18:1).
2. The apostle Paul calls faith a shield.
The man of faith can walk at ease, protected by his simple confidence in God. God loves to be trusted, and He puts all heaven at the disposal of the trusting soul.
But when we talk of faith let us know what we mean.
Faith is not optimism, though it may breed optimism; it is not cheerfulness, though the man of faith is likely to be reasonably cheerful; it is not a vague sense of well-being or a tender appreciation for the beauty of human togetherness.
Faith is confidence in God's self-revelation as found in the Holy Scriptures.
verse
In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. . . . And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.
— Ephesians 6:16, 18
thought
We learn to pray by praying and we learn to believe God by believing Him. There are many kinds of prayers in which to engage. There are all kinds of flaming arrows from the evil one against whom we must use the shield of faith. Are we praying and believi
prayer
Lord, You have provided so great an arsenal for spiritual defense and offense. May I have the good sense to use what You have provided!
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
There are areas of Christian thought, and because of thought then also of life, where likenesses and differences are so difficult to distinguish that we are often hard put to it to escape complete deception.
Throughout the whole world error and truth travel the same highways, work in the same fields and factories, attend the same churches, fly in the same planes and shop in the same stores. So skilled is error at imitating truth that the two are constantly being mistaken for each other.
It takes a sharp eye these days to know which brother is Cain and which Abel.
We must never take for granted anything that touches our soul's welfare.
Isaac felt Jacob's arms and thought they were the arms of Esau.
Even the disciples failed to spot the traitor among them; the only one of them who knew who he was was Judas himself.
That soft-spoken companion with whom we walk so comfortably and in whose company we take such delight may be an angel of Satan, whereas that rough, plain-spoken man whom we shun may be God's very prophet sent to warn us against danger and eternal loss.
verse
Then Isaac said to Jacob, "Come near so I can touch you, my son, to know whether you really are my son Esau or not."
— Genesis 27:21
thought
Often we encounter error disguised as truth. Crucial is our relationship to the Holy Spirit who seeks to guide into all truth. It is the Spirit who can unmask the deceiver.
prayer
O God, I am easily deceived. Thank You for the Holy Spirit to lead and guide through Satan's deceits and disguises.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
Another breakdown in the truth, feeling, act sequence comes when the heart for selfish reasons deliberately hardens itself against the Word of God.
This is the state of all who love darkness rather than light and for that reason either withdraw from the light altogether or when exposed to it stubbornly refuse to obey it.
The covetous man looks on human need and sternly refuses to be moved by it. To yield to the impulse of generosity naturally aroused by the sight of poverty would require him to give up some of his cherished hoard, and this he will not do.
So the fountain of generosity is frozen at its source.
The miser keeps his gold, the poor man suffers on in his poverty and the whole course of nature is upset.
Is it any wonder that God hates covetousness?
But be sure that human feelings can never be completely stifled. If they are forbidden their normal course, like a river they will cut another channel through the life and flow out to curse and ruin and destroy.
The Christian who gazes too long on the carnal pleasures of this world cannot escape a certain feeling of sympathy with them, and that feeling will inevitably lead to behavior that is worldly.
And to expose our hearts to truth and consistently refuse or neglect to obey the impulses it arouses is to stymie the motions of life within us and, if persisted in, to grieve the Holy Spirit into silence.
The Scriptures and our own human constitution agree to teach us to love truth and to obey the sweet impulses of righteousness it raises within us. If we love our own souls we dare do nothing else.
verse
Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.
— Hebrews 4:7c
thought
Truth arouses emotion and incites to action. So does error. If we reject the truth and embrace error the consequence is heart-hardening.
prayer
Forgive me, Father, for those times when I have rejected Your truth and the emotions aroused thus refusing to obey You. Forgive me for grieving Your Spirit and deliver me from heart-hardening. For Jesus' sake.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/