Mans nature indicates that he was created for three things: To think, to worship and to work.
But thinking is not enough.
Men are made to worship also, to bow down and adore in the presence of the Mystery inexpressible. Mans mind is not the top peak of his nature. Higher than his mind is his spirit, that something within him which can engage the supernatural, which under the breath of the Spirit can come alive and enter into conscious communion with heaven, can receive the divine nature and hear and feel and see the ineffable wonder that is God.
When, therefore, an institution dedicated to the growth and development of the thinking person seeks at the same time to turn this thinker into a worshiper, our debt to that institution becomes all the greater.
So many schools on every level are content to train the intellect, forgetting that they are dealing with but part of the man-an important part certainly, but a part only. The wise of the world who have not learned to worship are but demi-men, unformed and rudimentary.
Their further development awaits the life-giving touch of Christ to wake them to spiritual birth and life eternal.
verse
Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.
— Psalm 95:6-7
thought
We are made to be worshipers-worshipers of God from the heart. Thinking worshipers. Working worshipers.
prayer
Teach me to worship, Lord. Not the emotionally ecstatic or feel good-but heart worship of You, my spirit with Your Spirit.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
Though human nature as we know it now is fallen and morally degenerate, it yet stands at the top in the order of Gods creation.
Of no other being was it said, In the image of God created he him.
Mans nature indicates that he was created for three things: To think, to worship and to work.
Under think may be included everything that the intellect can do, from the simplest act to the creation of an oratorio or the founding of an empire. In his ability to observe, to inquire, to collect data and to reason from it to causes, laws and principles, man stands easily supreme above all other creatures.
The domestication of the wild forces of nature, the conquest of disease, the amelioration of the pains and woes of our physical organism-all has been done by the thinking man riding on the wings of his imagination out into the unknown and daring to entertain notions no one had entertained before.
To make out of the raw material that is a man a thinking man, an imaginative, dreaming man, is one of the most urgent tasks of society. This task begins in the nursery and goes on through to the university.
Whatever institution, large or small, famous or obscure, dedicates itself to the necessary and heavy job of teaching men to think deserves the gratitude of the whole human race.
verse
Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your minds on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.
— Colossians 3:1-2
thought
What an amazing ability is that of thinking. What we set our minds on, to a large degree, charts our course and determines whether our fallen nature or the Holy Spirit dictates our living.
prayer
Thank You, Father, for the gift of thinking. By Your Sprit remind me to set my mind on things above. Too often I concentrate on the earthly.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
The truth is, dedication of the life to any thing or anyone short of God Himself, is a prostitution of noble powers and must bring a harvest of grief and disappointment at last. Only God is worthy of the soul He has made in His own image.
To devote our lives to any cause, however worthy, is to sell ourselves short.
Not money, position, fame, can justly claim our devotion.
Art, literature, music also fall short.
And, if God is forgotten, even the loftiest and most unselfish task is unworthy of the souls full surrender.
Complete dedication unto death in the cause of freedom, for instance, is a touching thing and has given to history many of her greatest heroes, but only the God of freedom should have our last full measure of devotion.
These are strenuous times and men are being recruited everywhere to devote themselves to one or another master.
Let us be careful.
No one has any true right to claim my life except the One who gave His own life for my redemption.
If He gets my full dedication then I may engage in any good and worthy cause under His Spirit's guidance.
But anything short of complete devotion to Christ is inadequate and must end in futility and loss.
verse
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
— Psalm 139:23-24
thought
Complete dedication to Christ. We feel it in those highly emotional crises of life. But full dedication lived out by is often elusive. Yet to know Him fully we must give ourselves fully to Him.
prayer
O God, forgive me for dedication that is thin and limited. I want to surrender myself wholly to You. Show me those areas still unsurrendered.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
It is one of the ironies of modern life that after a word has been dropped from the Christian vocabulary because it no longer expresses any vital content in current church religion, it is often taken up by the world and made to mean not the same thing but something close to what it once meant in its original Christian usage.
Such a word is dedicate.
This word in its various forms was once used to express a sacred idea deriving straight from the Scriptures. . . . Now I have no quarrel with mere words. Whatever current usage and an up-to-date dictionary declare a word to mean, that is what it means, whatever it may have meant before. But I am concerned when men mistake earth for heaven, confuse this world with the world to come and borrow sacred words to describe secular things-without knowing what they have done.
That is precisely what has happened to the word dedication. Through a radical change of meaning it has been lost to the language of worship. And it is highly significant that up to this moment Christians have not felt sufficient inward pressure to create a new word that would mean what the old word once meant. Apparently not only the word is gone from us but the idea as well. One reason for this is the current imperfect understanding of the Christian message.
Scarcely anyone catches the imperious note in Christs words.
The Christian message has ceased to be a pronouncement and has become a proposition. Its invitational element has been pressed far out of proportion in the total scriptural scheme. Christ with His lantern, His apologetic stance and His weak pleading face has taken the place of the true Son of Man whom John saw clothed with a garment down to the foot, girt with a golden girdle, whose head and hair are white like wool, whose eyes are as a flame of fire, whose feet are like burnished brass and whose voice is as the sound of many waters.
The Christ of the tentative smile and air of puzzlement is not the Christ of God. The artists have been guilty of inadvertent idolatry in presenting to the world a false image of Christ. Only the Holy Spirit can reveal our Lord as He really is, and He does not paint in oils. He manifests Christ to the human spirit, not to our physical eyes.
verse
He [the Holy Spirit] will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.
— John 16:14
thought
Only the Holy Spirit can reveal Christ to us as He really is because only the Spirit can take what is Christs and make it known to us. When we know Christ as He is in His person and glory, then we will give ourselves wholly to Him.
prayer
O Christ, we humans have cheapened You. We have sought to reduce You to our level. Forgive us! Forgive me! May Your Spirit reveal You to me.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
The irrepressible urge to share spiritual blessings can explain a great many religious phenomena.
It even goes so far as to create a kind of vicarious transfer of interest from one person to another, so that the blessed soul would if necessary give up its own blessing that another might receive. Only thus can that prayer of Moses be understood, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin-; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written (Exodus 32:31, 32).
His great care for Israel had made him incautious, almost rash, before the Lord in their behalf.
Moses felt that for Israel to be forgiven was reward enough for him. This impulsive uprush of vicarious love can hardly be defended before the bar of pure reason. But God understood and complied with Moses request. The intense urge to have others enjoy the same spiritual privileges as himself once led Paul to make a statement so extreme, so reckless, that reason cannot approve it; only love can understand: I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh (Romans 9:1-3).
In the light of this it is quite easy to understand why all great Christian teachers have insisted that true spiritual experience must be shared. The careless person who remarks that he does not need to go to church to serve God is far from understanding the most elementary spiritual truths. By cutting himself off from the religious community he proves that he has never felt the deep urge to share-and for the very reason that he has nothing to share. He has never felt the constraining love of Christ, so he can go his way in silence. His withdrawal from the believing fellowship tells us more about him than he knows about himself.
Being let go, they went to their own company.
So it was in the Early Church and so it has always been when men meet God in saving encounter. They want to share the blessed benefits.
verse
On their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said to them. When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. . . .
— Acts 4:23-24a
thought
Sharing with other believers serious needs is fuel for prayer to God. Sharing what God has done in answer to prayer lights the fire of joy and praise. These are family celebrations!
prayer
Lord, when I hear of what You have done and are doing in the lives of brothers and sisters I am encouraged to trust You for my heart needs. May I, too, be sharer with Your family.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
The impulse to share, to impart, normally accompanies any true encounter with God and spiritual things.
The woman at the well, after her soul-inspiring meeting with Jesus, left her water pots, hurried into the city and tried to persuade her friends to come out and meet Him. Come, see a man, she said, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?
Her spiritual excitement could not be contained within her own heart. She had to tell someone. Is it not possible that our Lord had this in mind when He spoke about the impossibility of secret discipleship?
Have we misunderstood the true relationship between faith and testimony?
Christ made it clear that there could be no such thing as secret discipleship and Paul said, With the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. This is usually understood to mean that God has laid upon us an arbitrary requirement to open our mouth in confession before salvation can become effective within us.
Maybe that is the correct meaning of these verses. Or could it be that the confession is an evidence of the salvation which has come by faith to the heart, and where there is no impulse to impart, no outrushing of words in joyous testimony, there has been no true inward experience of saving grace?
verse
A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. Give glory to God, they said. We know this man is a sinner. He replied, Whether he is a sinner or not, I dont know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see.
— John 9:24-25
thought
If once we were blind but now we see, the evidence ought to be in our daily life. And if we once were blind but now we can see, ought we not share with other blind people the Good News about the One who opens blinded eyes?
prayer
Lord, I cant open the eyes of the blind but You can! Shine Your light through me to those in darkness. In Jesus name.Sharing the Good News
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
Spiritual experiences must be shared. It is not possible for very long to enjoy them alone. The very attempt to do so will destroy them.
The reason for this is obvious. The nearer our souls draw to God the larger our love will grow, and the greater our love the more unselfish we shall become and the greater our care for the souls of others.
Hence increased spiritual experience, so far as it is genuine, brings with it a strong desire that others may know the same grace that we ourselves enjoy.
This leads quite naturally to an increased effort to lead others to a closer and more satisfying fellowship with God.
The human race is one. God made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and He made the individual members of society for each other. Not the hermit but the man in the midst of society is in the place best to fulfill the purpose for which he was created.
There may be circumstances when for a time it will be necessary for the seeker after God to wrestle alone like Jacob on the bank of the river, but the result of his lonely experience is sure to flow out to family and friend, and on out to society at last. In the nature of things it must be so.
verse
Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
— Ephesians 5:1-2
thought
What encouragement and challenge exudes from that believer who lives in the fullness of Christ even in the face of this worlds chilling winds; who demonstrates peace and joy of heart even in severe pain and suffering. Such believers show us the way.
prayer
Thank You, Lord, for those of Your people who live a life of love in the most adverse circumstances. In doing so, they provide a model to the rest of us of what You can do when we give ourselves wholly to You.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
God is concerned with the whole man and has designed that Christian experience should embrace the entire personality.
The Christian faith deals not with the spiritual only but with the moral and the rational as well.
The rational and moral elements in religion are the proper objects of thought and willingly yield their rich treasures to prayerful meditation. The Christian faith deals with God and man and what can be known about them and their relation one to the other.
It contemplates creation, redemption, righteousness, sacred history, the destiny of mankind and the future of the world.
Such truths, once they have been revealed by divine inspiration, lie where they can be got at by the redeemed intellect and wait to be exploited by the sons of the kingdom. Under the illumination and guidance of the Holy Spirit the prayerful, studious believer can become a Christian philosopher, a sage, a doctor of divine things. More than that, he can become a man of God and a light to his generation.
I repeat, we cannot know God by thinking alone, but we can never know Him very well without a lot of hard thinking.
verse
Then He opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.
— Luke 24:45
thought
As the Spirit illumines our minds we can understand truth and know God. Heart lights go on! We can see! He is the difference between closed minds and open ones.
prayer
Open my mind, Spirit of God, to understand the Scriptures and the One who speaks through them.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
To know God in the scriptural meaning of the term is to enter into experience of Him.
It never means to know about. It is not a knowledge mediated by the intellect, but an unmediated awareness experienced by the soul on a plane too high for the mind to reach.
Where then is the place of the intellect in Christian experience?
And why waste time thinking when we know beforehand that thought cannot bring us to the knowledge that is most of all to be desired, the knowledge of God?
The answer is that the whole biblical revelation is addressed to the intellect and through the intellect reaches the will, the seat of the moral life; if the will responds in repentance and obedience, the Holy Spirit illuminates the penitent heart and reveals Christ, the image of God, to it.
What began as an appeal to reason (Isaiah 1:18) ends in a spiritual experience wholly above reason.
verse
But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mind and making it known
— John 16:13-14
thought
The Holy Spirit makes known to us what is Christ's. He is the Divine Illuminator enlightening the mind and heart of the believer. May that light shine brightly in each of us!
prayer
How I need heart illumination, Lord, to know You and Your Word. Thank You for sending the Spirit, the Divine Illuminator!
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/