A.W. Tozer
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Aiden Wilson Tozer (1897 - 1963) was an American Protestant pastor, preacher, author, magazine editor, Bible conference speaker, and spiritual mentor. For his work, he received two honorary doctorates.
Born in La Jose (now Newburg), a tiny farming community in western Pennsylvania, his conversion experience was as a teenager in Akron, Ohio. While on his way home from work at a tire company, he overheard a street preacher say: "If you don't know how to be saved... just call on God." Upon returning home, he climbed into the attic, heeding the preacher’s advice. In 1919, five years after his conversion, and without formal theological training, Tozer accepted an offer to pastor his first church. This began forty four years of ministry, associated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA), a Protestant evangelical denomination; thirty three of those years were served as a pastor in a number of churches. His first pastorate was in a small storefront church in Nutter Fort, West Virginia. Tozer also served as pastor for thirty years at Southside Alliance Church in Chicago (1928 to 1959), and the final years of his life were spent as pastor of Avenue Road Church in Toronto, Canada. In observing contemporary Christian living, he felt that the church was on a dangerous course towards compromising with "worldly" concerns. |
Quotes
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"God cannot use a person to the maximum, until he or she has been hurt deeply,"
-A.W. Tozer "God waits to be wanted." -A.W. Tozer "As a man prays, so is he." -A.W. Tozer "Faith is the gaze of a soul upon a saving God." -A.W. Tozer "To be crucified means, first, the man of the cross is facing only one direction; second, he is not going back; and third, he has no further plans of his own." -A.W. Tozer "After a man is convinced that he can be filled with the Spirit, he must desire to be. To the interested inquirer I ask: are you sure that you want to be possessed by a Spirit who, while He is pure and gentle and wise and loving, will yet insist upon being Lord of your life? Are you sure you want your personality taken over by One who will require obedience to the written Word? Who will not tolerate any of the self-sins in your life: self-love, self-indulgences? Who will not permit you to strut or boast or show off? Who will take the direction of your life away from you and will reserve the sovereign right to test you and discipline you? Who will strip away from you many loved objects which secretly harm your soul? Unless you can answer an eager Yes, to these questions, you do not want to be filled. You may want the thrill of the victory or the power, but you do not want really want to be filled with the Spirit." -A.W. Tozer "How glorious is the world as men of the Bible knew it! Jacob saw a ladder set up on the earth with God standing above it and the angels ascending and descending upon it. Abraham and Balaam and Manoah and how many others met the angels of God…Angels were present to tell of Jesus’ coming birth and to celebrate that birth when it took place in Bethlehem; angels comforted our Lord when He prayed in Gethsemane; angels are mentioned in some of the inspired epistles, and the book of Revelation is bright with the presence of strange and beautiful creatures intent upon the affairs of earth and heaven. Yes the true world is a populated world. The blind eyes of modern Christians cannot see the invisible but that does not destroy the reality of the spiritual creation. Unbelief has taken from us the comfort of a personal world. We have accepted the empty and meaningless world of science as the true one, forgetting that science is valid only when dealing with material things and can know nothing about God and the spiritual world." -A. W. Tozer “It is important that we get still to wait on God. And it is best that we get alone, preferably with our Bible outspread before us. Then if we will we may draw near to God and begin to hear Him speak to us in our hearts. I think for the average person the progression will be something like this: First a sound as of a Presence walking in the garden. Then a voice, more intelligible, but still far from clear. Then the happy moment when the Spirit begins to illuminate the Scriptures, and that which had only a sound, or at best a voice, now becomes an intelligible word, warm and intimate and clear as the word of a dear friend.” -A.W. Tozer (The pursuit of God) “O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want You; I long to be filled with longings; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, that so I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.” Then give m grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long. In Jesus’ name. Amen” -A.W. Tozer (The Pursuit of God) "God was our original habitat and our hearts cannot but feel at home when they enter again that ancient and beautiful abode." -A.W. Tozer “The Bible was written in tears and to tears it will yield its best treasures. God has nothing to say to the frivolous man.” -A.W. Tozer God Tells the Man Who Cares “Deep calls to deep and though polluted and landlocked by the mighty disaster theologians call the Fall, the soul senses its origin and longs to return to its Source.” -A.W. Tozer Deliverance from "Me" What are the terms of discipleship? Only one with a perfect knowledge of mankind could have dared to make them. Only the Lord of men could have risked the effect of such rigorous demands: Let him deny himself. We hear these words and shake our heads in astonishment. Can we have heard aright? Can the Lord lay down such severe rules at the door of the Kingdom? He can and He does. If He is to save the man, He must save him from himself. It is the himself which has enslaved and corrupted the man. Deliverance comes only by denial of that self. No man in his own strength can shed the chains with which self has bound him, but in the next breath the Lord reveals the source of the power which is to set the soul free: Let him take up his cross. The cross has gathered in the course of the years much of beauty and symbolism, but the cross of which Jesus spoke had nothing of beauty in it. It was an instrument of death. Slaying men was its only function. Men did not wear that cross; but that cross wore men. It stood naked until a man was pinned on it, a living man fastened like some grotesque stickpin on its breast to writhe and groan till death stilled and silenced him. That is the cross. Nothing less. And when it is robbed of its tears and blood and pain it is the cross no longer. Let him take . . . his cross, said Jesus, and in death he will know deliverance from himself. -A.W. Tozer “Whenever God begins something, we have the assurance that He will finish it. Nothing will stand in the way of Him accomplishing His purpose in this world and in our lives. What God starts, He finishes, and nobody can hinder Him. Sure, delays will happen. Just remember, God is in charge of the delays as well as the progress.” -A.W. Tozer “Jesus Christ knows the worst about you. Nonetheless, He is the one who loves you the most.“ -A.W. Tozer “Many Christians are satisfied with their destination but they neglect the journey.” -A.W. Tozer "In every Christian's Heart, there is a cross and a throne, and the Christian is on the throne till he puts himself on the cross; if he refuses the cross, he remains on the throne. Perhaps this is at the bottom of the backsliding and worldliness among Gospel believers today. We want to be saved, but we insist that Christ do all the dying. No cross for us, no dethronement, no dying. We remain king within the little kingdom of man's soul and wear our tinsel crown with all the pride of a caesar; but we doom ourselves to shadows and weakness and spiritual sterility.” -A.W. Tozer “Faith is not a conclusion you reach...it's a journey you live.” -A.W. Tozer “Many Christians don't hear God's voice because we've already decided we aren't going to do what He says.” -A.W. Tozer “The only Christian you want to listen to is the one who gives you more of a hunger for God.” -A.W. Tozer “What's closest to your heart is what you talk about, and if God is close to your heart, you'll talk about Him.” -A.W. Tozer “Among the gifts of the Spirit scarcely one is of greater practical usefulness than the gift of discernment. This gift should be highly valued and frankly sought as being almost indispensable in these critical times. This gift will enable us to distinguish the chaff from the wheat and to divide the manifestations of the flesh from the operations of the Spirit.” -A.W. Tozer |
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