the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Daily Devotionals
Morning and Evening with A.W. Tozer
Tozer in the Morning
PROBLEMS AND PRESSURES
Jesus did not promise any of us that consistent Christian living would be easy! He did not promise a release from daily problems and pressures. He did not promise to take us to our heavenly home on a fluffy pink cloud! We live our lives in the knowledge of the grace of God, but we dare not forget that our Lord came to die for us and to express the never-changing moral and redemptive will of God for His people. Before we condemn the Jews of Bible history for their failures, we must be sure that we are not overlooking spiritual and moral shortcomings of our own! As Christian believers, you and I must be careful about the reasons we give for not heeding God's Word and God's warning from heaven. Have we taken His grace seriously enough that we have sought forgiveness for spiritual carelessness, indifference and apathy?
Tozer in the Evening
The Need for Power from On High
Christ told His disciples to tarry in Jerusalem until they had been endued with power from on high. This can only mean that He will not entrust His work to the unready and the unqualified. It is infinitely more important that we should be prepared for service than that we should win someone else to our subnormal spiritual condition. Soul-winning by persons who have not met the test of obedience to the Word of Christ must inevitably produce other professing Christians of the same spiritual stripe. Missions carried on by persons not spiritually endued can but transplant an effete Christianity on a foreign shore, for be sure that no church founded in a heathen land will be any better than the spiritual lives of those who founded it.
Real repentance will result in purified hearts and sanctified lives. A hard and determined return to the pattern shown us in the mount will bring the smile of God upon our efforts. Then we shall experience not less soul-winning, but more. Then we shall have not fewer missionary activities, but more. Then whatever we do shall prosper (Psalms 1:3), and God shall be glorified in everything at home and abroad.
