the Fourth Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Morning and Evening with A.W. Tozer
Tozer in the Morning
The Wrong Kind of Teachers
The newborn Christian finds himself alive with a sweet, enjoyable kind of life that he accepts naively, almost unconsciously. To him everything is simple and immediate. He knows no intermediary. Christ is to him on an infinitely higher level what its mother is to a baby--warmth, nourishment, protection, rest and an object of satisfying affection.
Right here is where the wrong kind of Bible teacher can do his damage. The first thing he does is to destroy the new Christian's simplicity. He introduces something between the Christian and Christ. He makes him Biblo-centric instead of Christo-centric. (And there is a difference, let no one deceive you.) The Spirit-anointed Bible teacher will so teach the Word as to keep it transparent, so as to allow it to be what it always should be, a kind of burning bush which God indwells and out of which He shines in awesome splendor. The beholder sees the bush, it is true, but the object of his interest is the Presence, not the bush. The wrong kind of teacher gets so technical about the bush that the fire dims down and the light ceases to fall on the Christian's face.
That is what the gentle cynic meant when he said "before he has met too many Bible teachers."
As for "too many church members" spoiling the new Christian's happiness, it is the result of disillusionment pure and simple.
Tozer in the Evening
THE PERFECTIONS OF GOD
I hope that if I am remembered at all it will be for this reason: I have spent my efforts and my energies trying to turn the direction of the people away from the external elements of religion to those that are internal and spiritual. I have tried to take away some of the clouds in the hope that men and women would be able to view God in His glory. I would like to see this sense of glory recaptured throughout the church-too many Christians do not expect to experience any of the glory until they see Him face to face! Within our Christian fellowship and worship, we must recapture the Bible concepts of the perfection of our God Most High! We have lost the sense and the wonder of His awe-fullness, His perfection, His beauty. Oh, I feel that we should preach it, sing it, write about it, talk about it and tell it until we have recaptured the concept of the Majesty of God! Only that can be beautiful ultimately which is holy-and we who belong to Jesus Christ should know the true delight of worshiping God in the beauty of His holiness!
