the Fourth Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Morning and Evening with A.W. Tozer
Tozer in the Morning
Sharpening the Axe
I have never subscribed to the doctrine that we Christians should live in an intellectual vacuum, refusing to hear what the world has to say. A faith that must be "protected" is no faith at all. If I can retain my faith in Christ only by closing my mind against every criticism, I give proof positive that I am not well convinced of the soundness of my position. The soul that has had a saving encounter with God is sure beyond the possibility of a doubt. His happy testimony will be, "To the LORD I cry aloud, and he answers me from his holy hill. I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the LORD sustains me. I will not fear the tens of thousands drawn up against me on every side" (Psalms 3:4-6). Such a man will not need to shield himself from the classics nor from comparative religions or philosophy or psychology or science. The Spirit bears witness to Christ deep within his consciousness. His heart knows, though his reason my not yet have caught up with his heart.
When a very young minister, I asked the famous holiness preacher, Joseph H. Smith, whether he would recommend that I read widely in the secular field. He replied, "Young man, a bee can find nectar in the weed as well as in the flower." I took his advice (or, to be frank, I sought confirmation of my own instincts rather than advice) and I am not sorry that I did.
John Wesley told the young ministers of the Wesleyan Societies to read or get out of the ministry, and he himself read science and history with a book propped against his saddle pommel as he rode from one engagement to another. Andy Dolbow, the American Indian preacher of considerable note, was a man of little education, but I once heard him exhort his hearers to improve their minds for the honor of God. "When you are chopping wood," he explained, "and you have a dull axe you must work all the harder to cut the log. A sharp axe makes easy work. So sharpen your axe all you can."
Tozer in the Evening
WISDOM FROM GOD
The thinking of our generation often reflects a willingness to exchange a high view of God's eternity for a short-term concept called "here and now." Technology is presumed to be paramount but the answers science gives us are short-term answers. The scientists may be able to keep us alive for a few extra years but believing Christians know some things that Einstein did not know! For instance, we know why we are here. We can say why we were born. We also know what we believe about the value of things eternal. We are thankful that we have found the promise from the God of all grace that deals with the long-term and the eternal. We belong to a company of the plain people who believe the truth revealed in the Bible. Actually, the wisest person in the world is the person who knows the most about God; the person who realizes that the answer to creation and life and eternity is a theological answer-not a scientific answer!
