Excerpts & Quotes from Dr. A.W.Tozer

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[b]Falling down before God[/b]

[i] "Then Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying: 'As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you...'" Genesis 17:3-4
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"The Scriptures declare, 'Abram fell on his face' as the Lord talked with him (Genesis 17:3). Abraham was reverent and submissive. Probably there is no better picture anywhere in the Bible of the right place for mankind and the right place for God. God was on His throne speaking, and Abraham was on his face listening!

"Where God and man are in relationship, this must be the ideal. God must be the communicator, and man must be in the listening, obeying attitude. If men and women are not willing to assume this listening attitude, there will be no meeting with God in living, personal experience....

"Yes, Abraham was lying face down in humility and reverence, overcome with awe in this encounter with God. He knew that he was surrounded by the world's greatest mystery. The presence of this One who fills all things was pressing in upon him, rising above him, defeating him, taking away his natural self-confidence. God was overwhelming him and yet inviting and calling him, pleading with him and promising him a great future as a friend of God!"

[i]-Men Who Met God, page 21-22.[/i] [/color]

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[b]The Pursuit of God,[/b]

"Sound Bible exposition is an imperative [b]must[/b] in the Church of the living God. Without it no church can be a New Testament church in any strict meaning of that term. But exposition may be carried on in such way as to leave the hearers devoid of any true spiritual nourishment whatever. For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself...."

[i]-Preface, 1948.[/i]

"The way to deeper knowledge of God is through the lonely valleys of soul poverty and abnegation of all things. The blessed ones who possess the Kingdom are they who have repudiated every external thing and have rooted from their hearts all sense of possessing. These are the 'poor in spirit.'"
[i]-Page 23[/i]

"To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart."
[i]-Page 14[/i]
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[color=003333] [b]Why We Must Think Rightly About God - Part 1[/b]

"What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. ... Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God.

For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God. This is true not only of the individual Christian, but of the company of Christians that composes the Church. [b]Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God,[/b] just as her most significant message is what she says about Him or leaves unsaid, for her silence is often more eloquent than her speech. ...

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 spiritual future of that man. Were we able to know exactly what our most influential religious leaders think of God today, we might be able with some precision to foretell where the Church will stand tomorrow. ...

A right conception of God is basic not only to systematic theology but to practical Christian living as well. It is to worship what the foundation is to the temple; where it is inadequate or out of plumb the whole structure must sooner or later collapse. I believe there is scarcely an error in doctrine or a failure in applying Christian ethics that cannot be traced finally to imperfect and ignoble thoughts about God....

It is my opinion that the Christian conception of God current in these middle years of the twentieth century is so decadent as to be utterly beneath the dignity of [b]the Most High God[/b] and actually to constitute for professed believers something amounting to a moral calamity.

[i]-The Knowledge of the Holy by A. W. Tozer, Chapter 1[/i]
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[b]Why We Must Think Rightly About God - Part 2[/b]

All the problems of heaven and earth, though they were to confront us together and at once, would be nothing compared with the overwhelming problem of God: That He is; what He is like; and what we as moral beings must do about Him....

The idolatrous heart [b]assumes that God is other than He is [/b]- in itself a monstrous sin - [b]and substitutes for the true God one made after its own likeness.[/b] Always this God will conform to the image of the one who created it and will be base or pure, cruel or kind, according to the moral state of the mind from which it emerges....

The [b]essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him.[/b] It begins in the mind and may be present where no overt act of worship has taken place. 'When they knew God,'wrote Paul, 'they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.'

Then followed the worship of idols fashioned after the likeness of men and birds and beasts and creeping things. But this series of degrading acts began in the mind. [b]Wrong ideas about God are not only the fountain from which the polluted waters of idolatry flow; they are themselves idolatrous.[/b] The idolater simply imagines things about God and acts as if they were true.

[i]The Knowledge of the Holy by A. W. Tozer, Chapter 1[/i][/color]

MAN HAS LOST GOD

The average person in the world today, without faith and without God and without hope, is engaged in a desperate personal search and struggle throughout his lifetime. He does not really know what he is doing here. He does not know where he is going. The sad commentary is that everything he is doing is being done on borrowed time, borrowed money and borrowed strength-and he already knows that in the end he will surely die! It boils down to the bewildered confession of many humans that they have lost God somewhere along the way. Man, made more like God than any other creature, has become less like God than any other creature. Created to reflect the glory of God, he has retreated sullenly into his cave-reflecting only his own sinfulness. Certainly it is a tragedy above all tragedies in this world that love has gone from man's heart. Beyond that, light has gone from his mind. Having lost God, he blindly stumbled on through this dark world to find only a grave at the end!

[color=003333] "[b]The greatness of God[/b] rouses fear within us, but [b]His goodness[/b] encourages us not to be afraid of Him. To fear and not be afraid -- that is the paradox of faith."

[i]-The Knowledge of the Holy, 84[/i]
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[color=003333] "When I am praying the most eloquently, I am getting the least accomplished in my prayer life. But when I [b]stop[/b] getting eloquent and give God less theology and shut up and [b]just gaze upward[/b] and [b]wait[/b] for God to speak to my heart He speaks with such power that I have to grab a pencil and a notebook and take notes on what God is saying to my heart."

[i]-Success and the Christian, 46-47[/i][/color]

[color=003333] '...Faith is not a once-done act, but a [b]continuous gaze [/b]of the heart at the Triune God. Believing, then, is directing the hearts' attention to Jesus. It is lifting the mind to "behold the Lamb of God," and [b]never ceasing[/b] that beholding [b]for the rest of our lives.'[/b]

[i]-The Pursuit of God, 90.[/i]
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[color=003333] "Whoever seeks God as a means toward desired ends will not find God. The mighty God, the maker of heaven and earth, will not be one of many treasures, not even the chief of all treasures. [b]He will be all in all or He will be nothing.[/b] God will not be used."[/color]

[color=003333] "If God is the Supreme good then our highest blessedness on earth must lie in knowing Him as perfectly as possible."

[i]-That Incredible Christian, 65[/i][/color]

[color=003333] "Christianity today is man-centered, not God-centered. God is made to wait patiently, even respectfully, on the whims of men. The image of God currently popular is that of a distracted Father, struggling in heartbroken desperation [b]to get people to accept a Savior of whom they feel no need[/b] and in whom they have very little interest. To persuade these self-sufficient souls to respond to His generous offers God will do almost anything, even using salesmanship methods and talking down to them in the chummiest way imaginable. This view of things is, of course, a kind of religious romanticism which, while it often uses flattering and sometimes embarrassing terms in praise of God, manages nevertheless to make man the star of the show."

[i]-Man: The Dwelling Place of God, 27.[/i][/color]

[color=003333]“If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95 percent of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95 percent of what they did would stop, and everybody would know the difference.”[/color]

Faith is the least self-regarding of the virtues. It is by its very nature scarcely conscious of its own existence. 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 to 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. While he looks at Christ, the very things he has so long been trying to do will be getting done within him. It will be God working in him to will and to do.

-The Pursuit of God, 83

[color=003333]"The way to deeper knowledge of God is through the lonely valleys of soul poverty and abnegation of all things. The blessed ones who possess the Kingdom are they who have repudiated every external thing and have rooted from their hearts all sense of possessing. These are the 'poor in spirit'"

[i]The Pursuit of God, 23[/i]
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[color=003333]"To be right with God has often meant to be in trouble with men."

[i]Man the Dwelling Place of God, 114.[/i]
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[color=003333]"I find that many men and women are troubled by the thought that they are too small and inconsequential in the scheme of things. But that is not our real trouble -- we are actually too big and too complex, for God made us in His image and we are too big to be satisfied with what the world offers us!

..Man is bored, because he is too big to be happy with that which sin is giving him. God has made him too great, his potential is too mighty."

[i]Who Put Jesus on the Cross, 170.[/i]

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[color=003333] Dr.Tozer used to say so often, if you saw a man going down mainstreet in Jerusalim with a cross, you know some things about him:

1) He wasn't coming back.
2) He has no plans to the future.[/color]