7 More Tozerisms

Clever and compelling. Those are the 2 words I would use to describe the writing style of A.W. Tozer.

I have not read every book Tozer has written, but I believe I have read the most impactful or popular books he write. The 1st book I ever read from him was The Knowledge of the Holy. It was an assigned book for a theology class I took in college. At first, I found his writing style frustrating. How can you write a book on the attributes of God and make it so short (about 150 pages or so – depending on which version you read). I also thought he was too devotional and even mystical.

But the more I read Tozer, the more I cherish what he says.

He has a way of saying something you have heard said before, but in a fresh and provocative way. For example, in his book Man: The Dwelling Place of God, Tozer tells us not to underestimate the knowledge of the devil. With his knowledge of the truth, he uses it for evil. That is how I would say it; here is how he wrote it – “The devil is a better theologian than any of us and is a devil still.”

Whose comments are you more likely to remember? His or mine.

Clever and compelling.

With that in mind, let me share with you 10 more of my favorite Tozerisms.

1. “When you kill time, remember that it has no resurrection.” (from Renewed Day by Day)

2. “It is doubtful where God can bless a man greatly until he has hurt him deeply.” (from Root of the Righteous)

3. “Left to ourselves we tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms. We want to get Him where we can use Him, or at least know where He is when we need Him. We want a God we can in some measure control. We need the feeling of security that comes from knowing what God is like, and what He is like is of course a composite of all the religious pictures we have seen, all the best people we have known or heard about, and all the sublime ideas we have entertained.” (from The Knowledge of the Holy)

4. “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. 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. 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 important fact about any man is not what he at any 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. Always the most revealing think about the Church is her idea of God, just as her most significant message is what she says about Him or leaves unsaid, for her silence if often more eloquent than her speech. She can never escape the self-disclosure of her witness concerning God.” (from The Knowledge of the Holy)

5. “A real Christian is 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 do he can live, forsakes in order to have, gives away so he can keep, sees the invisible, hears the inaudible, and knows that which passeth knowledge.” (from Root of the Righteous)

6. “I can only say that I have observed on significant lack among evangelical Christians which might turn out to be the real cause of most of our spiritual troubles; and of course if that were true, then the supplying of that lack would be our most critical need. The great deficiency to which I refer is the lack of spiritual discernment, especially among our leaders. How there can be so much Bible knowledge and so little insight, so little moral penetration, is one of the enigmas of the religious world today.” (from Root of the Righteous)

7. “God is looking for men in whose hands his glory is safe.” (source unknown)