the Fourth Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Morning and Evening with A.W. Tozer
Tozer in the Morning
WORTHY - OR UNWORTHY?
The love of Jesus is so inclusive that it knows no boundaries. At the point where we stop loving and caring, Jesus is still there-loving and caring! The question may be asked: "How does the living Christ feel today about the sinful men and women who walk our streets?" There is only one answer: He loves them! We may be righteously indignant about the things they do. We may be disgusted with their actions and their ways. We are often ready to condemn and turn away from them. But Jesus keeps on loving them! It is His unchanging nature to love and seek the lost. He said many times when He was on earth, "I have come to help the needy. The well do not need a doctor-but the sick need attention and love." We are prone to look at the needy and measure them: "Let us determine if they are worthy of our help." During all of His ministry, I do not think Jesus ever helped a "worthy" person. He only asked, "What is your need? Do you need My help?"
Tozer in the Evening
Preaching the Word
Again, the Christian minister must have a word from God for the teen-aged, the middle-aged and the very aged. He must speak to the scholar as well as to the ignorant; he must bring the living Word to the cultured man and woman and to the vulgarian who reads nothing but the sports page and the comic strip. He must speak to the sad and to the happy, to the tender-minded and to the tough-minded, to those eager to live and to some who secretly wish they could die. And he must do this all in one sermon and in a period of time not exceeding 45 minutes. Surely this requires a Daniel, and Daniels are as scarce in the United States as in Babylon in 600 B.C. To add to the pastors burden is the knowledge that in each service there will likely be a few lost sons who should come home, some who never loved God at all and some who lost the love they had. So he must call sinners to repentance, warn the unruly, comfort the feebleminded, instruct, reprove, rebuke, encourage, console and exhort all at the same time, or at least on the same day. This is the situation stated baldly, but it is not actually as difficult as it looks. I said that the preacher appears to be at cross purposes with himself; but it is in appearance only, for what seems to be confusion is but the seamy side of the tapestry. The artistic pattern is on the other side.
