Aiden Wilson Tozer Christian Quotations [Page 2]

Let us think of a Christian believer in whose life the twin wonders of repentance and the new birth have been wrought. He is now living according to the will of God as he understands it from the written Word. Of such a one it may be said that every act of his life is or can be as truly sacred as prayer or baptism or the Lord's Supper. To say this is not to bring all acts down to one dead level; it is rather to lift every act up into a living kingdom and turn the whole of life into a sacrament.

The Christian church was designed to make sinners sweat. I have always believed that, and I still believe it. The messages preached in our churches should make backslidden Christians sweat. And if I achieve that objective when I preach, I thank God with all of my heart, no matter what people think of me.

Of all persons the Christian should be best prepared for whatever the New Year brings. He has dealt with life at its source. In Christ he has disposed of a thousand enemies that other men must face alone and unprepared. He can face his tomorrow cheerful and unafraid because yesterday he turned his feet into the ways of peace and today he lives in God. The man who has made God his dwelling place will always have a safe habitation.

Nothing less than a whole Bible can make a whole Christian.

There can be no doubt that this possessive clinging to things is one of the most harmful habits in the [christian] life. Because it is so natural, it is rarely recognized for the evil that it is. But its outworkings are tragic.

Our most pressing obligation is to do all in our power to obtain a revival that will result in a reformed, revitalized, purified church. Each generation of Christians is the seed of the next, and degenerate seed is sure to produce a degenerate harvest.

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.

The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him. The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian Church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him.

How frightful a thing it is for the preacher when he becomes accustomed to his work, when his sense of wonder departs, when he gets used to the unusual, when he loses his solemn fear in the presence of the High and Holy One; when, to put it bluntly, he gets a little bored with God and heavenly things.

I am among those who believe that our Western civilization is on its way to perishing. It has many commendable qualities, most of which it has borrowed from the Christian ethic, but it lacks the element of moral wisdom that would give it permanence. Future historians will record that we of the twentieth century had intelligence enough to create a great civilization but not the moral wisdom to preserve it.

All great Christians have been wounded souls.

Christians alone are in a position to rescue the perishing. We dare not settle down to try to live as if things were 'normal.' Nothing is normal while sin and lust and death roam the world, pouncing upon one and another till the whole population has been destroyed.

The Christian's heart must be soaked in prayer before the true spiritual fruits begin to grow.

Progress in the Christian life is exactly equal to the growing knowledge we gain of the Triune God in personal experience.

Satan hates God for His own sake, and everything that is dear to God he hates for the very reason that God loves it.

It's not my business to try and make God think like me... but to try, in prayer and penitence, to think like God.

Pray; and as you pray, surrender; and as you surrender, believe.

Men are free to decide their own moral choices, but they are also under the necessity to account to God for those choices.

We must meet the uncertainties of this world with the certainty of the world to come.

Wise leaders should have known that the human heart cannot exist in a vacuum. If Christians are forbidden to enjoy the wine of the Spirit they will turn to the wine of the flesh....Christ died for our hearts and the Holy Spirit wants to come and satisfy them.

Many of us Christians have become extremely skillful in arranging our lives so as to admit the truth of Christianity without being embarrassed by its implications. We arrange things so that we can get on well enough without divine aid, while at the same time ostensibly seeking it. We boast in the Lord but watch carefully that we never get caught depending on Him.

Without doubt the emphasis in Christian teaching today should be on worship. There is little danger that we shall become merely worshipers and neglect the practical implications of the gospel. No one can long worship God in spirit and in truth before the obligation to holy service becomes too strong to resist. Fellowship with God leads straight to obedience and good works. That is the divine order and it can never be reversed.

The gravest question any of us face is whether we do or do not love the Lord.

God answers our prayers not because we are good, but because He is good.

Peace of heart that is won by refusing to bear the common yoke of human sympathy is a peace unworthy of a Christian. To seek tranquility by stopping our ears to the cries of human pain is to make ourselves not Christian but a kind of degenerate stoic having no relation either to stoicism or Christianity.

Leadership requires vision, and whence will vision come except from hours spent in the presence of God in humble and fervent prayer?

While we are looking at God we do not see ourselves-blessed riddance.

Most of the world's great souls have been lonely. Loneliness seems to be one price the saint must pay for his saintliness... Always remember: you cannot carry a cross in company. Though a man were surrounded by a vast crowd, his cross is his alone and his carrying of it marks him as a man apart. Society has turned against him; otherwise he would have no cross. No one is a friend to the man with a cross.

It appears that too many Christians want to enjoy the thrill of feeling right but are not willing to endure the inconvenience of being right.

What is wrong with Christians today is that we have the gifts of God but have forgotten the God of the gifts.

We desperately need seers who can see through the mist- Christian leaders with prophetic vision. Unless they come soon it will be too late for this generation. And if they do come we will no doubt crucify a few of them in the name of our worldly orthodoxy.

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.

Yet if we would know God and for other's sake tell what we know we must try to speak of his love. All Christians have tried but none has ever done it very well. I can no more do justice to that awesome and wonder-filled theme than a child can grasp a star. Still by reaching toward the star the child may call attention to it and even indicate the direction one must look to see it. So as I stretch my heart toward the high shining love of God someone who has not before known about it may be encouraged to look up and have hope.

Always, everywhere God is present, and always He seeks to discover Himself to each one

God wants the whole person and He will not rest till He gets us in entirety. No part of the man will do" (101) - "The Pursuit of God

We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts

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

Christians don't tell lies they just go to church and sing them.

Next to the Holy Scriptures, the greatest aide to the life of faith may be Christian biographies.

Christianity is hard when we try to serve God in man's way instead of serving God in God's way.

Yes, I believe you can be right with God and still not like the way some people behave. Our admonition is to love them in a larger and more comprehensive way because we are all one in Christ Jesus. This kind of love is indeed a Christian virtue!

An honest man is strange when he is among dishonest men, but it is a good kind of strangeness.

If you want to be holy then you must give time to God and not just intend to.

Be thankful, but be careful that you don't become so enamored of God's good gifts that you fail to worship the giver.

No one need fear to listen to the voice of God unless he has already made up his mind to resist it.

The superior Christian lets God strip him of everything that might serve as a false refuge, a secondary trust.

What I am anxious to see in Christian believers is a beautiful paradox. I want to see in them the joy of finding God while at the same time they are blessedly pursuing Him. I want to see in them the great joy of having God yet always wanting Him.

Quoting Scripture leads you to the fountain, but only if you plunge in and come up wet will I know that you are a Christian.

Many Christians are satisfied with their destination but they neglect the journey.

God is not silent. It is the nature of God to speak. The second person of the Holy Trinity is called "The Word." The Bible is the inevitable outcome of God's continuous speech. It is the infallible declaration of His mind.

To truly know God we must long for Him without any other motive than reaching God Himself.

A real Christian in an odd number anyway. He feels supreme love for One whom he has never seen, talks familiarly every day to Someone he cannot see, expects to go to heaven on the virtue of Another, empties himself in order to be full, admits he is wrong so he can be declared right, goes down in order to get up, is strongest when he is weakest, richest when he is poorest, and happiest when he feels worst. He dies so he can live, forsakes in order to have, gives away so he can keep, sees the invisible, hears the inaudible, and knows that which passes knowledge.

Listen to no man who has not listened to God.

Walking in humility isn't focusing on what we are NOT; rather, it's declaring what God is.

Christians should be the boldest people in the world-not cocky and sure of ourselves, but sure of Him.

The Christian gospel is a message of freedom through grace and we must stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. But what shall we do with our freedom? The Apostle Paul grieved that some of the believers of his day took advantage of their freedom and indulged the flesh in the name of Christian liberty. They threw off discipline, scorned obedience and made gods of their own bellies.

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 Christian expects to go to Heaven on the virtue of another.

The complacency of Christians is the scandal of Christianity.

No matter what the circumstances, we Christians should keep our heads. God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, of love and of a sound mind. It is a dismal thing to see a son of heaven cringe in terror before the sons of earth.

To me, it has always been difficult to understand those evangelical Christians who insist upon living in the crisis as if no crisis existed. They say they serve the Lord, but they divide their days so as to leave plenty of time to play and loaf and enjoy the pleasures of the world as well. They are at ease while the world burns....

There is a strain of loneliness infecting many Christians, which only the presence of God can cure.

Spiritual Christians look upon the world not as a playground but as a battleground.

We Christians must look sharp that our Christianity does not simply refine our sins without removing them.

The weakness of so many modern Christians is that they feel to much at home in the world. In their effort to achieve restful 'adjustment' to unregenerate society they have lost their pilgrim character and become an essential part of the very moral order against which they are sent to protest.

Nothing bothers the devil more than a Christian delighting in God’s presence.

Failure to get a right viewpoint in the beginning of our Christian lives may result in weakness and sterility for the rest of our days!

I say that a Christian congregation can survive and often appear to prosper in the community by the exercise of human talent and without any touch from the Holy Spirit! All that religious activity and the dear people will not know anything better until the great and terrible day when our self-employed talents are burned with fire and only that which was wrought by the Holy Ghost will stand forever!