A W Tozer Quotes

Any man who by repentance and a sincere return to God will break himself out of the mold in which he has been held, and will go to the Bible itself for his spiritual standards, will be delighted with what he finds there. ~ A.W. Tozer

Man's chief End is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." With this agree the four and twenty elders who fall on their faces to worship Him that liveth for ever and ever, saying, "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created. ~ A.W. Tozer

We pursue God because, and only because, He has first put an urge within us that spurs us to the pursuit. "No man can come to me," said our Lord, "except the Father which hath sent me draw him," and it is by this very prevenient drawing that God takes from us every vestige of credit for the act of coming. ~ A.W. Tozer

One of the purest souls ever to live on this fallen planet was Nicholas Herman, known as Brother Lawrence. He wrote very little, but what he wrote has seemed to several generations of Christians to be so rare and so beautiful as to deserve a place near the top among the world's great books of devotion. The writings of Brother Lawrence are the ultimate in simplicity; ideas woven like costly threads to make a pattern of great beauty. ~ A.W. Tozer

But first of all we must will, for the will is master of the heart. ~ A.W. Tozer

However brightly the light may shine, it can be seen only by those who are spiritually prepared to receive it. 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.'" - A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy 8 ~ Richard J. Foster

We are magnifying the messenger and consequently minimizing the message. ~ A.W. Tozer

Man must choose his world ~ A.W. Tozer

Father, I want to know Thee, but my coward heart fears to give up its toys. ~ A.W. Tozer

The doctrine of justification by faith - a Biblical truth, and a blessed relief from sterile legalism and unavailing self-effort - has in our time fallen into evil company and been interpreted by many in such manner as actually to bar men from the knowledge of God. The whole transaction of religious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless. Faith may now be exercised without a jar to the moral life and without embarrassment to the Adamic ego. Christ may be "received" without creating any special love for Him in the soul of the receiver. The man is "saved," but he is not hungry nor thirsty after God. In fact he is specifically taught to be satisfied and encouraged to be content with little. ~ A.W. Tozer

Yet who can flee from His Presence when the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him? ~ A.W. Tozer

The believing man does not claim to understand. He falls to his knees and whispers, "God." The man of earth kneels also, but not to worship. He kneels to examine, to search, to find the cause and the how of things. ~ A.W. Tozer

Now, a plain word here about the Christian church trying to carry on in its own power: That kind of Christianity makes God sick, for it is trying to run a heavenly institution after an earthly manner. ~ A.W. Tozer

To men and women everywhere Jesus says, "Come unto me, and I will give you rest." The rest He offers is the rest of meekness, the blessed relief which comes when we accept ourselves for what we are and cease to pretend. ~ A.W. Tozer

The Bible is the inevitable outcome of God's continuous speech. It is the infallible declaration of His mind for us, put into our familiar human words. ~ A.W. Tozer

Like the eye which sees everything in front of it and never sees itself, faith is occupied with the Object upon which it rests and pays no attention to itself at all. While we are looking at God, we do not see ourselves - blessed riddance. The man who has struggled to purify himself and has had nothing but repeated failures will experience real relief when he stops tinkering with his soul and looks away to the perfect One. ~ A.W. Tozer

A spiritual kingdom lies all about us, enclosing us, embracing us, altogether within reach of our inner selves, waiting for us to recognize it. God Himself is here waiting our response to His Presence. This eternal world will come alive to us the moment we begin to reckon upon its reality. ~ A.W. Tozer

The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man's spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. ~ A.W. Tozer

Down through history man has taken many paths in his quest for God's presence, all to no avail. Only one path is correct, and that path is revealed in the Word of God. Only in the Bible do we begin to understand what these inward stirrings are and how to find entrance into the presence of God. A right understanding of the Bible opens to us the only path into the presence of God. ~ A.W. Tozer

Faith is the gaze of a soul upon a saving God. ~ A.W. Tozer

Only after an ordeal of painful self-probing are we likely to discover what we actually believe about God. ~ A.W. Tozer

Within each of us an enemy which we tolerate at our peril. Jesus called it "life" and "self," or as we would say, the self-life. Its chief characteristic is its possessiveness: the words "gain" and "profit" suggest this. To allow this enemy to live is in the end to lose everything. To repudiate it and give up all for Christ's sake is to lose nothing at last, but to preserve everything unto life eternal. And possibly also a hint is given here as to the only effective way to destroy this foe: it is by the Cross. "Let him take up his cross and follow me." The ~ A.W. Tozer

If you would follow on to know the Lord, come at once to the open Bible expecting it to speak to you. Do not come with the notion that it is a thing which you may push around at your convenience. It is more than a thing, it is a voice, a word, the very Word of the living God. ~ A.W. Tozer

The average man has no central core of moral assurance, no spring within his breast, no inner strength to place him above the need for repeated psychological shots to give him the courage to go on living. He has become a parasite on the world, drawing his life from his environment, unable to live a day apart from the stimulation which society affords him. ~ A.W. Tozer

You can always test the quality of religious teaching by the enthusiastic reception it receives from unsaved men. If the natural man receives it enthusiastically, it is not of the Spirit of God. Paul says plainly that the natural man cannot know spiritual things. To him, spiritual things are plain foolishness (see 1 Cor. 2:14). ~ A.W. Tozer

Forgiveness, cleansing, regeneration, the Holy Spirit, all answers to prayer, are given to faith and received by faith. There is no other way. This is common evangelical doctrine and is accepted wherever the cross of Christ is understood. ~ A.W. Tozer

When a man rises and says, "I believe the Bible" and then ignores the teachings of the Bible on his own pet subjects, he is rejecting the Word more insidiously than outright disbelief. ~ A.W. Tozer

They who believe the Christian revelation know that the universe is a creation. It is not eternal, since it had a beginning, and it is not the result of a succession of happy coincidences whereby an all but infinite number of matching parts accidentally found each other, fell into place and began to hum. ~ A.W. Tozer

Unbelief is actually perverted faith, for it puts its faith not in the living God, but in dying men. ~ A.W. Tozer

God sovereignly decreed that man should be free to exercise moral choice, and man from the beginning has fulfilled that decree by making his choice between good and evil. When he chooses to do evil, he does not thereby countervail the sovereign will of God but fulfills it, inasmuch as the eternal decree decided not which choice the man should make but that he should be free to make it. If in His absolute freedom God has willed to give man limited freedom, who is there to stay His hand or say, 'What doest thou?' Man's will is free because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so. ~ A.W. Tozer

The fact of God is necessary for the fact of man. Think God away and man has no ground of existence. ~ A.W. Tozer

Strength of this affection. And it is not hard to understand. The baby represented everything sacred to his father's heart: the promises of God, the covenants, the hopes of the years and the long messianic dream. As he watched him grow from babyhood to young manhood the heart of the old man was knit closer and closer with the life of his son, till at last the relationship bordered upon the perilous. It was then that God stepped in to save both father and son from the consequences of an uncleansed love. "Take now thy son," said God to Abraham, "thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will ~ A.W. Tozer

God breathed on clay and it became a man; He breathes on men and they become clay. ~ A.W. Tozer

Jesus calls us to his rest, and meekness is His method. The meek man cares not at all who is greater than he, for he has long ago decided that the esteem of the world is not worth the effort. ~ A.W. Tozer

Conversion for those first Christians was not a destination; it was the beginning of a journey. And right there is where the Biblical emphasis differs from ours ... . In the book of Acts, faith was for each believer a beginning, not an end; it was a journey, not a bed in which to be waiting for the day of our Lord's triumph. ~ A.W. Tozer

To seek proof is to admit doubt, and to obtain proof is to render faith superfluous. ~ A.W. Tozer

Unbelief has put self where God should be, and is perilously close to the sin of Lucifer who said, "I will set my throne above the throne of God." Faith looks out instead of in and the whole life falls into line. ~ A.W. Tozer

If we would find God amid all the religious externals we must first determine to find Him, and then proceed in the way of simplicity. Now as always God discovers Himself to "babes" and hides Himself in thick darkness from the wise and the prudent. We must simplify our approach to Him. We must strip down to essentials (and they will be found to be blessedly few). We must put away all effort to impress, and come with the guileless candor of childhood. If we do this, without doubt God will quickly respond. ~ A.W. Tozer

Tens of thousands, perhaps millions, have come into some kind of religious experience by accepting Christ and they have not been saved. ~ A.W. Tozer

The things you read will fashion you by slowly conditioning your mind. ~ A.W. Tozer

But this hunger must be recognized by our religious leaders. Current evangelicalism has (to change the figure) laid the altar and divided the sacrifice into parts, but now seems satisfied to count the stones and rearrange the pieces with never a care that there is not a sign of fire upon the top of lofty Carmel. But God be thanked that there are a few who care. ~ A.W. Tozer

Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh? (Gal. 3:3). ~ A.W. Tozer

God never hurries. There are no deadlines against which he must work. Only to know this is to quiet our spirits and relax our nerves. ~ A.W. Tozer

O God and Father, I repent of my sinful preoccupation with visible things. The world has been too much with me. Thou hast been here and I knew it not. I have been blind to Thy Presence. Open my eyes that I may behold Thee in and around me. For Christ's sake, Amen. ~ A.W. Tozer

But when, through the open door of the cross and the name and power of Jesus Christ, I commend myself to the Father's heart, then God cancels all my past, accepts all my present, swears His holy name for my future and the love of God take me over. Then fear goes out of my heart, because love has come in. ~ A.W. Tozer

If JESUS cannot control you, HE cannot save you. And if HE cannot control ALL of you HE cannot control any of you. ~ A.W. Tozer

One hundred religious persons knit into a unity by careful organization do not constitute a church any more than eleven dead men make a football team. ~ A.W. Tozer

Many are guilty of merely 'nibbling' at the truth of the Christian Gospel. ~ A.W. Tozer

The most godly Christian is the one who knows himself best, and no one who knows himself will believe that he deserves anything better than hell. ~ A.W. Tozer

And so, God, in no hurry whatsoever, painstakingly chips away, removing everything that is not part of the image of Christ. He takes the initiative to interrupt our lives for the higher cost of developing us into spiritually mature believers. ~ A.W. Tozer

That God is the sum of all created things. Nature and God are one, so that whoever touches a leaf or a stone touches God. That is of course to degrade the glory of the incorruptible Deity and, in an effort to make all things divine, banish all divinity from the world entirely. ~ A.W. Tozer

What I believe about God is the most important thing about me. ~ A.W. Tozer

It would be like God to make the most vital thing easy and place it within the range of possibility for the weakest and poorest of us. ~ A.W. Tozer

It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply. ~ A.W. Tozer

The Bible is a whole series of highways, all leading toward God. And when the text has been illuminated and the believer of the text knows that God is the end toward which he is moving, then that man has real faith. ~ A.W. Tozer

We would dwell with Thee in daily experience here on this earth so that we may be accustomed to the glory when we enter Thy heaven to dwell with Thee there. ~ A.W. Tozer

Frankly, I am quite tired of those who tout Christianity as a way to stop smoking or drinking or break wild habits of the world. Is that all Christianity is, to keep us from some bad habit? Of course, regeneration will clean us up, and the new birth will make a man right. If that is what Christianity is all about, what about the person whose life is not that bad? The purpose of God in redemption is to restore us again to the divine imperative of worship. We were created to worship, but sin destroyed that ability. Jesus Christ, on the cross, redeemed us and brought us back to the place where we now can worship and have fellowship with God Almighty. My clean life is a by-product of my conversion. My life may have pointed out to me that I needed a drastic change, but that is not the purpose for which I was converted. The essence of conversion is to bring me into a right relationship with God and have fellowship with Him. ~ A.W. Tozer

We can never know who or what we are till we know at least something of what God is. ~ A.W. Tozer

The scribe tells us what he has read, and the prophet tells what he has seen. ~ A.W. Tozer

We get the odd notion that God is showing mercy because Jesus died. No. Jesus died because God is showing mercy. ~ A.W. Tozer

The purified heart is obnoxious to the devil and to all the forces of the lost world. They will not rest until they have won back what they have lost. ~ A.W. Tozer

What we need to restore power to the Christian testimony is not soft talk about brotherhood but an honest recognition that two human races occupy the earth simultaneously: a fallen race that sprang from the loins of Adam and a regenerate race that is born of the Spirit through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. ~ A.W. Tozer

that is the only explanation that satisfies the heart of a thinking man, whatever his wild reason may say. Should faulty education and perverse reasoning lead a man to conclude otherwise, there is little that any Christian can do for him. For such a man I have no message. ~ A.W. Tozer

Writers are b*tc*ing about 140 characters. If you can't make a point in two sentences, how good is that book of yours really going to be?
Taken from Twitter Titters Volume 1 edited by John Rice ~ A.W. Tozer

One of the most stinging criticisms made against Christians is that their minds are narrow and their hearts small. This may not be wholly true, but that such a charge can be made at all is sufficient cause for serious heart searching and prayer. ~ A.W. Tozer

Let any man turn to God in earnest, let him begin to exercise himself unto godliness, let him seek to develop his powers of spiritual receptivity by trust and obedience and humility, and the results will exceed anything he may have hoped in his leaner and weaker days. ~ A.W. Tozer

They have never bothered to think the matter out for themselves, but have heard about Him from others, and have put belief in Him into the back of their minds along with the various odds and ends that make up their total creed. To many others God is but an ideal, another name for goodness, or beauty, or truth; or He is law, or life, or the creative impulse back of the phenomena of existence. ~ A.W. Tozer

You." So they said, "You'll kill our poor women. You'll kill our children." This is ~ A.W. Tozer

He is ETERNAL, which means that He antedates time and is wholly independent of it. Time began in Him and will end in Him. To it He pays no tribute and from it He suffers no change.
He is IMMUTABLE, which means that He has never changed and can never change in any smallest measure. To change He would need to go from better to worse or from worse to better. He cannot do either, for being perfect He cannot become more perfect, and if He were to become less perfect He would be less than God.
He is OMNISCIENT, which means that He knows in one free and effortless act all matter, all spirit, all relationships, all events. He has no past and He has no future.
He IS, and none of the limiting and qualifying terms used of creatures can apply to Him. ~ A.W. Tozer

We must return to New Testament Christianity, not in creed only but in complete manner of life as well. Separation, obedience, humility, simplicity, gravity, self-control, modesty, cross-bearing: these all must again be made a living part of the total Christian concept and be carried out in everyday conduct. ~ A.W. Tozer

The only power God recognizes in His church is the power of His Spirit whereas the only power actually recognized today by the majority of evangelicals is the power of man. ~ A.W. Tozer

If we who follow Christ, with all the facts before us and knowing what we are about, deliberately choose the kingdom of God as our sphere of interest, I see no reason why anyone should object. If we lose by it, the loss is our own; if we gain, we rob no one by so doing. ~ A.W. Tozer

God does his deepest work in our darkest hours ~ A.W. Tozer

Spinoza wrote of the intellectual love of God, and he had a measure of truth there; but the highest love of God is not intellectual, it is spiritual. God is spirit and only the spirit of man can know Him really. In the deep spirit of a man the fire must glow or his love is not the true love of God. ~ A.W. Tozer

To escape the error of salvation by works we have fallen into the opposite error of salvation without obedience. In our eagerness to get rid of the legalistic doctrine of works we have thrown out the baby with the bath and gotten rid of obedience as well. ~ A.W. Tozer

We may use the past tense properly to indicate that at a certain time a certain word of God was spoken, but a word of God once spoken continues to be spoken, as a child once born continues to be alive, or a world once created continues to exist. And those are but imperfect illustrations, for children die and worlds burn out, but the Word of our God endureth forever. ~ A.W. Tozer

It will be a great moment for some of us when we begin to believe that God's promise of self-revelation is literally true: that He promised much, but promised no more than He intends to fulfill. ~ A.W. Tozer

The idealists and relativists are not mentally sick. They prove their soundness by living their lives according to the very notions of reality which they in theory repudiate and by counting upon the very fixed points which they prove are not there. They could earn a lot more respect for their notions if they were willing to live by them; but this they are careful not to do. Their ideas are brain-deep, not life-deep. Wherever life touches them they repudiate their theories and live like other men. ~ A.W. Tozer

The man who has God for his treasure has all things in one. ~ A.W. Tozer

Religion, so far as it is genuine, is in essence the response of created personalities to the Creating Personality, God. ~ A.W. Tozer

Anyone who might feel reluctant to surrender his will to the will of another should remember Jesus' words, "Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin." We must of necessity be servant to someone, either to God or to sin. ~ A.W. Tozer

The moment the Spirit has quickened us to life in regeneration our whole being sense its kinship to God and leaps us in joyous recognition. That is the heavenly birth without which we cannot see the Kingdom of God. ~ A.W. Tozer

The philosopher Socrates said, "An unexamined life is not worth living." If a common philosopher could think that, how much more we Christians ought to listen to the Holy Spirit when He says, "Examine yourself." An unexamined Christian lies like an unattended garden. Let your garden go unattended for a few months, and you will not have roses and tomatoes but weeds. An unexamined Christian life is like an unkempt house. Lock your house up as tight as you will and leave it long enough, and when you come back you will not believe the dirt that got in from somewhere. An unexamined Christian is like an untaught child. A child that is not taught will be a little savage. It takes examination, teaching, instruction, discipline, caring, tending, weeding and cultivating to keep the life right. ~ A.W. Tozer

For Tozer, entertainment was simply the Church synchronizing with the world and succumbing to it. It was utter nonsense to him that the Church wanted to bring itself "up to speed" with the world around it. A worldly church was, in Tozer's thinking, an oxymoron and completely anathema. ~ A.W. Tozer

Lord, may I also talk "too much" about You. May I keep You first in everything I do, think or say today. Enable me by Your Spirit, I pray, in Jesus' name. Amen. ~ A.W. Tozer

For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience they are not the better for having heard the truth. The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts. ~ A.W. Tozer

In the beginning God. Not "In the beginning matter," for matter is not self-causing. It requires an antecedent cause, and God is that cause. Not "In the beginning law," for law is but a name for the course which all creation follows. That course had to be planned, and the planner is God. Not "In the beginning mind," for mind also is a created thing and must have a creator behind it. But In the beginning God, the uncaused cause of matter, mind, and law. There we must begin. Adam ~ A.W. Tozer

Were we able to extract from any man a complete answer to the question, "What comes into your mind when you think about God?" we might predict with certainty the future of that man. ~ A.W. Tozer

In a world of change and decay not even the man of faith can be completely happy. Instinctively he seeks the unchanging and is bereaved at the passing of dear familiar things. Yet much as we may deplore the lack of stability in all earthly things, in a fallen world such as this the very ability to change is a golden treasure, a gift from God of such fabulous worth as to call for constant thanksgiving. For human beings the whole possibility of redemption lies in their ability to change. To move across from one sort of person to another is the essence of repentance; the liar becomes truthful, the thief honest, the lewd pure, the proud humble. The whole moral texture of the life is altered. The thoughts, the desires, the affections are transformed, and the man is no longer what he had been before. ~ A.W. Tozer

The ancient image of God whispers within every man of everlasting hope; somewhere he will continue to exist. Still he cannot rejoice, for the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world troubles his conscience, frightening him with proofs of guilt and evidences of coming death. So is he ground between the upper millstone of hope and the nether stone of fear. ~ A.W. Tozer

The word of wisdom is missing," he continued. "We need the gift of discernment again in our pulpits. It is not ability to predict that we need, but the anointed eye, the power of spiritual penetration and interpretation, the ability to appraise the religious scene as viewed from God's position, and to tell us what is actually going on ~ A.W. Tozer

The greatest fact of the tabernacle was that Jehovah was there; a Presence was waiting within the veil. Similarly the Presence of God is the central fact of Christianity. At the heart of the Christian message is God Himself waiting for His redeemed children to push in to conscious awareness of His Presence. ~ A.W. Tozer

Always, everywhere God is present, and always He seeks to discover Himself to each one ~ A.W. Tozer

The Bible is not only a book which was once spoken, but a book which is NOW SPEAKING. ~ A.W. Tozer

Let us be alert to the season in which we are living. It is the season of the Blessed Hope, calling for us to cut our ties with the world and build ourselves on this One who will soon appear. He is our hope - a Blessed Hope enabling us to rise above our times and fix our gaze upon Him. ~ A.W. Tozer

It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular; it is why he does it. The motive is everything. Let a man sanctify the Lord God in his heart and he can thereafter do no common act. All he does is good and acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For such a man, living itself will be sacramental and the whole world a sanctuary. His entire life will be a priestly ministration. As he performs his never-so-simple task, he will hear the voice of the seraphim saying, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of the hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory. ~ A.W. Tozer

Trying to be happy without a sense of God's presence is like trying to have a bright day without the sun. ~ A.W. Tozer

Let every man abide in the calling wherein he is called and his work will be as sacred as the work of the ministry. It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it. ~ A.W. Tozer

He is indivisible from the Father and the Son, so that if you were to be suddenly transferred to heaven itself you wouldn't be any closer to God than you are now, for God is already here. ~ A.W. Tozer

Thus we are guilty of a kind of temporary atheism which leaves us alone in the universe while, for the time, God is not. We talk of Him much and loudly, but we secretly think of Him as being absent, and we think of ourselves as inhabiting a parenthetic interval between the God who was and the God who will be. And we are lonely with an ancient and cosmic loneliness. ~ A.W. Tozer