the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Morning and Evening with A.W. Tozer
Tozer in the Morning
Heart-Matters
It will probably be found at last that there is no sin except sin of the mind. It is the carnal mind that is enmity against God, that is not subject to the law of God, neither can be. It should, however, be remembered that when the Bible speaks of the mind it does not refer to the intellect alone. The whole personality is included in the concept; the bent of the will, the moral responses, the sympathies and antipathies are there also, as well as the intellect. When God saw the wickedness of man, that it was great in the earth, He saw what could not be seen from the outside, that, as it is rendered in one place, the whole imagination, with the purposes and desires of the heart was only evil continually (Genesis 6:5). From this passage alone we may properly gather that sin has its seat deep within the mind where it pollutes the emotions (desires), the intellect (imaginations) and the will (purposes). These taken together constitute what the Bible and popular theology call the heart.
Tozer in the Evening
Exaltation of the Humble
From Adam we inherit the instinct to meet our enemies head on, to try to win by direct assault, and it is only after many shocking failures that we learn that victories are not so won in the realm of the spiritual. The carnal approach usually does little more than to alienate the enemy still further from us and, worse than all, it puts us in a position where God cannot help us. The enemy never quite knows how to deal with a humble man; he is so used to dealing with proud, stubborn people that a meek man upsets his timetable. And furthermore, the man of true humility has God fighting on his side--who can win against God?
Strange as it may seem, we often win over our enemies only after we have first been soundly defeated by the Lord Himself. God often conquers our enemies by conquering us. He defeated Esau by defeating Jacob the night before on the bank of the Jabbok. The conquest of Esau took place in his brother Jacob. It is often so. When God foresees that we must meet a deadly opponent, he assures our victory by bringing us down in humbleness at His own feet. After that, everything is easy. We have put ourselves in a position where God can fight for us, and in a situation like that, the outcome is decided from eternity.
