Am I Really Converted?

April 13: Am I Really Converted?

As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also. —James 2:26

I believe in the deeper Christian life and experience—oh yes! But I believe we are mistaken when we try to add the deeper life to an imperfect salvation, obtained imperfectly by an imperfect concept of the whole thing.

Under the working of the Spirit of God through such men as Finney and Wesley, no one would ever dare to rise in a meeting and say, “I am a Christian” if he had not surrendered his whole being to God and had taken Jesus Christ as his Lord.…

Today, we let them say they are saved no matter how imperfect and incomplete the transaction, with the proviso that the deeper Christian life can be tacked on at some time in the future.

Can it be that we really think that we do not owe Jesus Christ our obedience?

We have owed Him obedience ever since the second we cried out to Him for salvation, and if we do not give Him … obedience, I have reason to wonder if we are really converted!

I am satisfied that when a man believes on Jesus Christ he must believe on the whole Lord Jesus Christ—not making any reservation!

 

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  Tozer, A. W., & Foster, M. E. (2007). Tozer on the Holy Spirit: A 366-day devotional. Camp Hill, PA: WingSpread.

  Exported from Logos Bible Software, 10:01 AM April 13, 2015.

 

The Holy Spirit is… – A.W. Tozer

We do not need many gifts but one.… The Holy spirit is wisdom, power, holiness, faith, love … all comprehended in the one living Presence that comes to abide in the heart that is yielded wholly to Him. – A.W. Tozer

Breathing Out and Breathing In

April 6:

The fear of the Lord is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate.

— Proverbs 8:13

Our attachment to the Person of Christ must exclude all that is contrary to Christ. These are the days when we are trying to be 100 percent positive. But the Scripture says of Jesus, “Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness” (Psalm 45:7).… If He had to hate in order to love, so do you and I.

To be 100 percent positive would be as fatal as to inhale steadily all your life without exhaling. You can’t do that.…
When the Church inhales the Holy Spirit she must exhale everything that is contrary to Him.

I don’t believe any man can love until he’s able to hate.… I don’t think he can love righteousness unless he hates sin; for the Scripture leaves us with the belief that in order to accept there are some things you must reject. In order to affirm there are things you have to deny; in order to say yes you have to be able to say no.

Jesus, breathe Thy Spirit on me,

Teach me how to breathe Thee in,

Help me pour into Thy bosom

All my life of self and sin.

Tozer on the Holy Spirit: A 366-Day Devotional

The Bible, and much more. Bible.faithlife.com is an online Bible study tool with dozens of Bibles for your Bible Study needs. It is a service of Faithlife / Logos Bible Software.

REF.LY

 

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Problems! Problems!

March 30:

Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. — 1 John 4:7

What … is the conclusion of the matter? That problems are the price of progress, that friction is the concomitant of motion, that a live and expanding church will have a certain quota of difficulties as a result of its life and activity. A Spirit-filled church will invite the anger of the enemy.

How then shall we deal with our problems? First, expect them so you will not be taken off guard. Second, realize that every live body of Christians has its troubles, from Christ and His apostles to the present day, so yours are not unique. Third, pour in copious amounts of love, the best lubricant in the world. Love will reduce friction to a minimum and keep the whole body working smoothly and without injury to its parts.

Where does this love come from? The love of God bursts forth from the Holy Spirit in our hearts.

The same bond which unites believers to Christ, binds them to each other.… Those who love Christ, love those who are like Him and those who are beloved by Him.… There is unity of design, a common interest in the objects of their pursuits.

Tozer on the Holy Spirit: A 366-Day Devotional

The Bible, and much more. Bible.faithlife.com is an online Bible study tool with dozens of Bibles for your Bible Study needs. It is a service of Faithlife / Logos Bible Software.

REF.LY

 

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No Contest

March 21:

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

—James 4:7

Truth is a glorious but hard mistress. She never consults, bargains or compromises. She cries from the top of the high places, “Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold” (Proverbs 8:10). After that, every man is on his own. He may accept or refuse.…

Were this an unfallen world the path of truth would be a smooth and easy one. Had the nature of man not suffered a huge moral dislocation there would be no discord between the way of God and the way of man.

I assume that in heaven the angels live through a thousand serene millenniums without feeling the slightest discord between their desires and the will of God. But not so among men on earth. Here … the flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary one to the other.

In that contest there can be only one outcome. We must surrender and God must have His way.

[T]here is a moment in every life when we meet God, and by a supreme surrender enter into His sovereign will and His perfect peace.

Tozer on the Holy Spirit: A 366-Day Devotional

The Bible, and much more. Bible.faithlife.com is an online Bible study tool with dozens of Bibles for your Bible Study needs. It is a service of Faithlife / Logos Bible Software.

REF.LY

 

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One Thing Needful

March 17:

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

—Matthew 5:3

The truly humble man does not expect to find virtue in himself, and when he finds none he is not disappointed. He knows that any good deed he may do is the result of God’s working in him.…
When this belief becomes so much a part of a man that it operates as a kind of unconscious reflex he is released from the burden of trying to live up to his own opinion of himself.… The emphasis of his life shifts from self to Christ, where it should have been in the first place, and he is thus set free to serve his generation by the will of God without the thousand hindrances he knew before.

Should such a man fail God in any way he will be sorry and repent, but he will not spend his days castigating himself for his failure. He will say with Brother Lawrence: “I shall never do otherwise if You leave me to myself; it is You who must hinder my falling and mend what is amiss,” and after that “give himself no further uneasiness about it.”

 

In the character of a Christian, humility is the one thing needful. Where this is wanting, all is wanting.

Tozer on the Holy Spirit: A 366-Day Devotional

The Bible, and much more. Bible.faithlife.com is an online Bible study tool with dozens of Bibles for your Bible Study needs. It is a service of Faithlife / Logos Bible Software.

REF.LY

 

 

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Expect … Receive

March 16:

And blessed is she that believed: for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord.

—Luke 1:45

Expectation has always been present in the Church in the times of her greatest power. When she believed, she expected, and her Lord never disappointed her.…

Every great movement of God in history, every unusual advance in the Church, every revival, has been preceded by a sense of keen anticipation. Expectation accompanied the operations of the Spirit always. His bestowals hardly surprised His people because they were gazing expectantly toward the risen Lord and looking confidently for His word to be fulfilled. His blessings accorded with their expectations.…

We need today a fresh spirit of anticipation that springs out of the promises of God. We must declare war on the mood of nonexpectation and come together with childlike faith. Only then can we know again the beauty and wonder of the Lord’s presence among us.

We are to do all things to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). This includes our pleasures.… The only question is, what is God’s will for us in each matter? We are never to abandon our God-given common sense in the victorious life.

Tozer on the Holy Spirit: A 366-Day Devotional

The Bible, and much more. Bible.faithlife.com is an online Bible study tool with dozens of Bibles for your Bible Study needs. It is a service of Faithlife / Logos Bible Software.

REF.LY

 

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Faith and Prayer

The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. – James 5:16

A. W. Tozer (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In Hebrews, we find a long list of benefits which faith brings to its possessor: justification, deliverance, fruitfulness, endurance, victory over enemies, courage, strength and even resurrection from the dead. Then, everything that is attributed thus to faith might with equal truth be attributed to prayer; for faith and true prayer are like two sides of the same coin—they are inseparable! Men may, and often do, pray without faith though this is not true prayer, but it is not thinkable that men should have faith and not pray. Whatever God can do, faith can do; and whatever faith can do, prayer can do when it is offered in faith. It should not be considered strange, then, that an invitation to prayer is an invitation to omnipotence, for prayer engages the Omnipresent God and brings Him into our human affairs. According to the Bible, we have because we ask or we have not because we ask not. It does not take much wisdom to discover our next move. Is it not to pray and pray again and again until the answer comes? Let us not fail the world and disappoint God by failing to pray!

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“What I believe about God is the most important thing about me.”

A. W. Tozer, a modern day prophet, was a key figure in The Christian and Missionary Alliance. His legacy reaches through time and has impacted countless millions. A prolific author and pastor, Tozer was known for his emphasis on the deeper life movement. His message, informed as it was by A.B. Simpson the founder of The Alliance, brought the missionary call to a massive audience. A series of his sermons are available as audio files.

His books have been published around the world and in many languages. This devotional was compiled from the Renewed Day by Day

We Need a Revival!

MARCH 15:

Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee?
—Psalm 85:6

A. W. Tozer (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We need a revival! We need a revival of consecration to death, a revival of happy abandonment to the will of God that will laugh at sacrifice and count it a privilege to bear the cross through the heat and burden of the day.

We are too much influenced by the world and too little controlled by the Spirit. We of the deeper life persuasion are not immune to the temptations of ease and we are in grave danger of becoming a generation of pleasure lovers.…

May God raise up a people who will consult their pleasures less and the great need more. I know of one successful layman who refuses again and again to take perfectly legitimate pleasure trips because he cannot bring himself to leave his class of adolescent Sunday school boys. May God multiply such men and women among us till the reproach of Egypt is rolled away and man’s confidence in us restored.

A sanctified life is a life conformed to the Scriptures in every particular. It communes with our hearts; it next reaches our ears, and then it is accomplished in our feet.

Tozer, A. W., & Foster, M. E. (2007). Tozer on the Holy Spirit: A 366-day devotional. Camp Hill, PA: WingSpread.

The Holy Spirit Is Here

March 14

And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.

—Acts 2:1

Pentecost did not come and go—Pentecost came and stayed. Chronologically the day may be found on the historic calendar; dynamically it remains with us in all its fullness of power.

Today is the day of Pentecost. With the blessed Holy Spirit there is no Yesterday or Tomorrow—there is only the everlasting Now. And since He is altogether God, enjoying all the attributes of the Godhead, there is with Him no Elsewhere; He inhabits an eternal Here. His center is Everywhere; His bound is Nowhere. It is impossible to leave His presence, though it is possible to have Him withdraw the manifestation of that presence.

Our insensibility to the presence of the Spirit is one of the greatest losses that our unbelief and preoccupation have cost us. We have made Him a tenet of our creed, we have enclosed Him in a religious word, but we have known Him little in personal experience.

When the Holy Spirit comes into our [lives] He does something. He accomplishes something. He is more than a sentiment, a feeling a fancy. He is an infinite force that … enables us to accomplish all for which we were called as the disciples of Christ.

Tozer on the Holy Spirit: A 366-Day Devotional

The Bible, and much more. Bible.faithlife.com is an online Bible study tool with dozens of Bibles for your Bible Study needs. It is a service of Faithlife / Logos Bible Software.

REF.LY

 

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