the Fourth Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Morning and Evening with A.W. Tozer
Tozer in the Morning
Savior But Not Lord?
In the New Testament salvation and discipleship are so closely related as to be indivisible. They are not identical, but as with Siamese twins they are joined by a tie which can be severed only at the price of death.
Yet they are being severed in evangelical circles today. In the working creed of the average Christian salvation is held to be immediate and automatic, while discipleship is thought to be something optional which the Christian may delay indefinitely or never accept at all.
It is not uncommon to hear Christian workers urging seekers to accept Christ now and leave moral and social questions to be decided later. The notion is that obedience and discipleship are unrelated to salvation. We may be saved by believing a historic fact about Jesus Christ (that He died for our sins and rose again) and applying this to our personal situation. The whole biblical concept of Lordship and obedience is completely absent from the mind of the seeker. He needs help, and Christ is the very one, even the only one, who can furnish it, so he takes Him as his personal Savior. The idea of His Lordship is completely ignored.
Tozer in the Evening
Persistence in Going On
Israel allowed themselves to settle down and became contented with circumstances that were all right, but which could and did break their spirit of adventure and cause them to accept the status quo as being final for them. Every once in a while through prophet, apostle or psalmist, God stretches out His hand and tries to arouse His people from their sleep. Somebody once said that man is made of dust and dust tends to settle. People tend to settle down and do the same things year in and year out, slowly going around in a circle. When this gets into religion, it is deadly and evil. The majority of Christians are asleep and in a spiritual rut. Sometimes Christians who realize they are in a rut put pressure on others to adopt their viewpoint. But even if truth does not convince and persuade a man or woman, nobody has the right to set up a pyschological squeeze on someone else. If people yield under pressure, it shows that they are too weak to resist. If they are too weak to resist, and if they take a religious position because they are too weak to resist, they will also be too weak to persist. When we follow Christ there must be persistence. We must go on.
