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		<title>Tozer Devotional</title>
		<link>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer</link>
		<description>Collective Writings from the Books of A.W. Tozer</description>
		<ttl>1440</ttl>
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			<title>Stumble Causers</title>
			<link>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=921</link>
			<description><![CDATA[When we are first converted, especially if we come from a non-Christian background, we are likely to be almost too naive for our own good. The wondrous experience through which we have just passed, or perhaps I should say into which we have entered, has predisposed us to believe in everybody. Our trust in other Christians is likely to be boundless. That there could be hypocrites, double-minded professors, religious pretenders, carnal camp followers, never once enters our minds. The result is that our first encounter with a worldly church member comes as a frightful shock to our sensitive minds. Some never recover from this shattering of their confidence. They become religious cripples. Their growth is stunted and their usefulness destroyed, or at the least greatly hindered from that moment on.
That I speak truly here may be proved by everyday experience; but there is a more sure word of Scripture: "But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin [shall offend any one of these, KJV] it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea" (Matthew 18:6).
When we learn that the word offend actually means cause to stumble or to sin, we know how serious the whole thing is. Better to die than to imperil the faith of a weak disciple. Christ's words may mean more than that, but they can hardly mean less.]]></description>
			<pubDate>Tue, 21 May 2013 07:00:00 -0600</pubDate>
			<guid>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=921</guid>
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			<title>The Wrong Kind of Teachers</title>
			<link>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=920</link>
			<description><![CDATA[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.]]></description>
			<pubDate>Mon, 20 May 2013 07:00:00 -0600</pubDate>
			<guid>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=920</guid>
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			<title>Helping or Hindering New Believers</title>
			<link>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=919</link>
			<description><![CDATA[The happiest man in the world," said a well-known preacher some time ago, "is the new convert before he has met too many Bible teachers and seen too many church members."	. . .	
The first half of our opening quotation, then, is so true as to need no verification. "The happiest man in the world is a new convert." But it is the last half that disturbs me. Why should a Bible teacher or a church member tend to destroy the joy of the new convert? Well, to be just to everyone I must assert positively that not all Bible teachers and church members would have such an adverse effect. I know Bible teachers who would delight in piling more fuel on the blazing altar of the young Christian's heart, and I know church members whose influence and example would be a source of great strength to his whole life. But I also know many of the other kind, the kind the young convert must actually climb over in his struggle to advance in the Christian life.
The way some Bible teachers injure the new convert is to take away his simplicity; and the way some church members do it is by disillusioning him--before he is ready for it.]]></description>
			<pubDate>Sun, 19 May 2013 07:00:00 -0600</pubDate>
			<guid>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=919</guid>
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			<title>Finding Light and Life in Christ</title>
			<link>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=918</link>
			<description><![CDATA[The happiest man in the world," said a well-known preacher some time ago, "is the new convert before he has met too many Bible teachers and seen too many church members."
Even after we have made what allowance we must for the obvious irony in these words, there still remains in them sufficient truth to perturb the honest Christian soul more than a little.
Surely one of the happiest persons in the world should be the new convert. Has he not found Him of whom Moses and all the prophets did write? The spontaneous song that bursts from his lips is likely to be: "Hallelujah! I have found Him Whom my soul so long has craved.  Jesus satisfies my longings;  Through His blood I now am saved." 
Old things pass away and all things become new. So brilliant is the contrast between the dark despair of but a few short hours ago and the new, bright world into which he has been thrust by the miracle of faith that every nerve and cell in his complex personality vibrates joyously. The testimony of many persons known for their poise and self-restraint has been that at the time of their first satisfying encounter with Christ the whole world took on a new luster. It is not unusual to hear people say that on the night of their conversion, the air smelled sweeter, the stars shone more brightly and all the common familiar objects of nature appeared to glow with a subdued light. And that these men and women were not the victims of a hallucination is proved triumphantly by the stability of their subsequent lives and the salty good sense manifest in all their religious attitudes.]]></description>
			<pubDate>Sat, 18 May 2013 07:00:00 -0600</pubDate>
			<guid>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=918</guid>
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			<title>Fellow Workers with God</title>
			<link>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=917</link>
			<description><![CDATA[If this working, yet not working, doing God's work, yet not doing it, should seem to be confusing, remember there is a parallel for it in the well-known testimony of Paul in Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me." From all this I think we may draw the following conclusion: We can no more do the work of God than we can live the life of God. In the believing and surrendered soul, Christ lives His life again and continues to live it, and in the obedient, believing man, God will continue to work, reaching out and through the human instrument to accomplish His wonders among men.
It is critically important that we grasp this truth. Much religious work is being done these days that is not owned by our Lord and will not be accepted or rewarded in that great day. Superior human gifts are being mistaken for the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and neither they who exercise these gifts nor the Christian public before whom they are exercised are aware of the deception. Never has there been more activity in religious circles and, I confidently believe, never has there been so little of God and so much of the flesh. Such work is a snare because it keeps us busy and at the same time prevents us from discovering that it is our work and not God's.
"Nothing is wrought by creatures," said Meister Eckhart; "the Father works alone. The soul shall never stop until she works as well as God. Then she and the Father shall do His work together: she shall work as one with Him, wisely and lovingly. That we may be in unity with Him. God help us. Amen."]]></description>
			<pubDate>Fri, 17 May 2013 07:00:00 -0600</pubDate>
			<guid>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=917</guid>
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			<title>Laboring in the Lord</title>
			<link>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=916</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Certain passages of Scripture, if carelessly read, might give the impression that God delegates some of His work to Christian leaders to do for Him as a manufacturer might sublet to others certain items in a contract; such, for instance, as First Corinthians 15:58, "Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain." In First Corinthians 16:10 Paul says plainly that Timothy "is carrying on the work of the Lord, just as I am," but we must never understand from this that these men did a work of God apart. Rather they were the obedient instruments in whom and through whom God wrought His own work.
Any misunderstanding about this is cleared up by the explanation of Paul in Colossians 1:29, "To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me"; and First Corinthians 15:10, "I worked harder than all of them--yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me."]]></description>
			<pubDate>Thu, 16 May 2013 07:00:00 -0600</pubDate>
			<guid>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=916</guid>
		</item>
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			<title>Workers Used of God</title>
			<link>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=915</link>
			<description><![CDATA[In a close and final sense no one can do God's work. Nor does He turn His work over to others to do. He works in His people and through them, but always it is He who works.
Jesus said, "My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working" (John 5:17); and Paul said, "It is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose" (Philippians 2:13).
This is not to teach that men should not work. One has but to run his eyes over the pages of the Bible casually to become convinced that God intends His people to work. He put the man in the Garden of Eden "to work it and take care of it" (Genesis 2:15). Our Lord was a carpenter and He chose active men for His first disciples. The book of Proverbs has some scathing things to say about the sluggard who loafs away his days in careless indolence only to have poverty come upon him at last like an armed man (Proverbs 6:11).]]></description>
			<pubDate>Wed, 15 May 2013 07:00:00 -0600</pubDate>
			<guid>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=915</guid>
		</item>
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			<title>Reflecting on the Memoirs of Those Who Walked with God</title>
			<link>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=914</link>
			<description><![CDATA[. . . Why do the majority of present day Christians prefer shallow religious fiction? Or uninspired Bible talks that never get beyond the "first principles"? Or one-page daily devotions? Or watered-down Christian biography? . . .
. . .  present day evangelical Christianity is not producing saints. The whole concept of religious experience has shifted from the transcendental to the utilitarian. God is valued as being useful and Christ appreciated because of the predicaments He gets us out of. He can deliver us from the consequences of our past, relax our nerves, give us peace of mind and make our business a success. The all-consuming love that burns in the writings of an Augustine, a Bernard or a Rolle is foreign to the modern religious spirit. Like understands like and fails to comprehend what is unlike itself. The tortoise finds the mockingbird dull. Esau has no fellowship with Jacob. "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Corinthians 2:14).
To come to our devotions straight from carnal or worldly interests is to make it impossible to relish the deep, sweet thoughts found in the great books we are discussing here. We must know their heart-language, must vibrate in harmony with them, must share their inward experiences or they will mean nothing to us. Because we are too often strangers to their spiritual mood, we are unable to profit by them and are forced to turn to one or another form of religious entertainment to make our Christianity palatable enough to endure.]]></description>
			<pubDate>Tue, 14 May 2013 07:00:00 -0600</pubDate>
			<guid>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=914</guid>
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			<title>Books to Be Chewed and Digested</title>
			<link>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=913</link>
			<description><![CDATA[The devotional works that have appeared have been so varied as to make classification difficult. Some of the great names are Meister Eckhart, Bernard of Clairvaux, Jan van Ruysbroeck, Michael Molinos, John of the Cross, Thomas Traherne, Richard Rolle, William Law, Walter Hilton, Francis de Sales, Jakob Boehme and Gerhart Tersteegen. To those might be added the more familiar names of Fenelon, Guyon and Thomas á Kempis.
To a large extent these were universal Christians who experienced the grace of God so deeply and so broadly that they encompassed the spiritual possibilities of all men and were able to set forth their religious experiences in language acceptable to Christians of various ages and varying doctrinal viewpoints. Just as a sincere hymn may strike a worshipful chord common to all Christians, so these works of devotion instantly commend themselves to true seekers everywhere. There need only be genuine faith in Christ, complete separation from the world, an eager cleaving unto God and a willingness to die to self and carry the cross, and the Holy Spirit will introduce His people to each other across the centuries and teach them the meaning of spiritual unity and the communion of saints.	. . .
. . . people are unable to appreciate the great spiritual classics because they are trying to understand them while having no intention to obey them. The Greek Church father, St. Gregory, said it better than I could, so we'll let him tell us: "He who seeks to understand commandments without fulfilling commandments, and to acquire such understanding through learning and reading, is like a man who takes shadows for truth. For the understanding of truth is given to those who have become participants in truth (who have tasted it through living). Those who are not participants in truth and are not initiated therein, when they seek this understanding, draw from it a distorted wisdom. Of such the apostle says, `The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit,' even though they boast of their knowledge of truth."
In conclusion, we use books profitably when we see them as a means toward an end; we abase them when we think of them as ends in themselves. And for all books of every sort let us observe Bacon's famous rule: "Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested."]]></description>
			<pubDate>Mon, 13 May 2013 07:00:00 -0600</pubDate>
			<guid>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=913</guid>
		</item>
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			<title>Learning from the "Masters"</title>
			<link>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=912</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Good speaking as well as good writing has its pitch, its tempo, its balance and rhythm, its tone and timbre. And these things cannot be learned in the popular sense of the word; they can only be acquired by unconscious imitation. If we listen long and sympathetically to someone who uses English with style and artistry, something of his art will seep through the pores of our minds and improve our own style greatly. And remember that reading is hearing with the mind. We listen to a man when we read his book with a congenial spirit.
Some of my younger readers may want to know who the "masters" are to whom I have referred, and what books I recommend to develop verbal skill. Here are a few: John Bunyan for simplicity; Joseph Addison for clarity and elegance; John Milton for nobility and consistent elevation of thought; Dickens for sprightliness (start with the Christmas Carol); Bacon for conciseness and dignity.
In addition to these I would recommend Robert Louis Stevenson, John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Also the poetry of Wordsworth, Bryant, Blake, Keats and Shelley. . . .]]></description>
			<pubDate>Sun, 12 May 2013 07:00:00 -0600</pubDate>
			<guid>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=912</guid>
		</item>
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			<title>Mastering Our Medium</title>
			<link>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=911</link>
			<description><![CDATA[God has honored human speech by using it as a medium through which to express His message of salvation, first in the inspired Scriptures and afterwards in a thousand languages and dialects among the nations of mankind. Language is the mighty organ upon which may be played the joyous oratorio of redemption for the blessing of men and for the high honor of God.
Among the countless gifts of God, one of the most precious to us is our beautiful, expressive English tongue. That such a gift should be neglected by busy men and women in their wild race to make a living is at least understandable, if unfortunate; but that it should be neglected as well by the ministers of the sanctuary is not only impossible to understand but completely inexcusable.
For the very reason that God has committed His saving truth to the receptacle of human language, the man who preaches that truth should be more than ordinarily skillful in the use of language. It is necessary that every artist master his medium, every musician his instrument. For a man calling himself a concert pianist to appear before an audience with but a beginner's acquaintance with the keyboard would be no more absurd than for a minister of the gospel to appear before his congregation without a thorough knowledge of the language in which he expects to preach.]]></description>
			<pubDate>Sat, 11 May 2013 07:00:00 -0600</pubDate>
			<guid>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=911</guid>
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			<title>Memorization Priority</title>
			<link>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=910</link>
			<description><![CDATA[Certain cultures have stressed memorization to a point where education consists largely in learning by rote a few of the classics. . . .
About this two things may be said: One, that great skill in memorizing is found almost exclusively among peoples where books are scarce and where a certain limited few important classics are about all the reading matter required for an education as understood by those peoples. In the English-speaking world of today we have available not only everything that has ever been written in our mother tongue, but everything that has ever been written in any language, done for us in English translation. In the face of such a mountain of books, memorizing on any wide scale will be seen to be altogether impossible.
The second thing is that excessive memorization kills the impulse to think independent thoughts and makes us into tape recording machines full of other men's words but without a vital idea of our own. It is my considered opinion that a book that has fed a great thought into my mind and inspired me to explore new ideas on my own has done vastly more for me than the book I have memorized from cover to cover.
My own method is to confine my memorization to the Scriptures and the great hymns. I memorize passages of Scripture so I can use them in my sermons and meditate on them as I travel. And I like to store the great hymns in my mind to sing under my breath anywhere under any circumstances at any time. Further than that I do not give myself too much concern about memorizing.]]></description>
			<pubDate>Fri, 10 May 2013 07:00:00 -0600</pubDate>
			<guid>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=910</guid>
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			<title>Disciminating Reading</title>
			<link>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=909</link>
			<description><![CDATA[I hope my readers conclude right here that I have contradicted myself in the above paragraphs. It will indicate that they have been reading with their critical faculties awake. But actually there is no self-contradiction present. I have warned against harmful books and declare that there is no harm in reading in fields far removed from the standard evangelical meadows considered safe by the timid souls who think they must defend Christianity and protect the faithful from the effects of alien ideas. I'll explain.
By harmful books I do not mean those on a high intellectual level, such as the classics, poetry, history, political science and whatever falls within the category of the liberal arts. I mean cheap fiction (religious or secular), shallow religious chop suey such as is found in so many religious magazines, the world of religious trash designed to entertain the saints; I mean the self-glorifying religious adventure stories written by the brethren of the restless feet who refuse to take any responsibility or to stay in one place long enough to plant a single tree or lay a single foundation, but who always manage to spin an exciting yarn when they get back home. I mean the "digest" type of religious literature, precooked and predigested, to be ingested with a minimum of effort and in the shortest possible time. Such matter not only affords no nourishment for the soul, but its continuous use creates a parasitic mind in the reader, gives him a morbid appetite for wind and makes the reading of serious religious books not only distasteful but impossible.
I deliberately omit from my list of dangerous books the vulgar and the unclean. I take it for granted that no Christian would stain his soul with such literary putrefaction. At least I am quite sure that no one who reads this page will need to be warned about such books.]]></description>
			<pubDate>Thu, 09 May 2013 07:00:00 -0600</pubDate>
			<guid>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=909</guid>
		</item>
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			<title>Sharpening the Axe</title>
			<link>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=908</link>
			<description><![CDATA[I have never subscribed to the doctrine that we Christians should live in an intellectual vacuum, refusing to hear what the world has to say. A faith that must be "protected" is no faith at all. If I can retain my faith in Christ only by closing my mind against every criticism, I give proof positive that I am not well convinced of the soundness of my position. The soul that has had a saving encounter with God is sure beyond the possibility of a doubt. His happy testimony will be, "To the LORD I cry aloud, and he answers me from his holy hill. I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the LORD sustains me. I will not fear the tens of thousands drawn up against me on every side" (Psalm 3:4-6). Such a man will not need to shield himself from the classics nor from comparative religions or philosophy or psychology or science. The Spirit bears witness to Christ deep within his consciousness. His heart knows, though his reason my not yet have caught up with his heart.
When a very young minister, I asked the famous holiness preacher, Joseph H. Smith, whether he would recommend that I read widely in the secular field. He replied, "Young man, a bee can find nectar in the weed as well as in the flower." I took his advice (or, to be frank, I sought confirmation of my own instincts rather than advice) and I am not sorry that I did.
John Wesley told the young ministers of the Wesleyan Societies to read or get out of the ministry, and he himself read science and history with a book propped against his saddle pommel as he rode from one engagement to another. Andy Dolbow, the American Indian preacher of considerable note, was a man of little education, but I once heard him exhort his hearers to improve their minds for the honor of God. "When you are chopping wood," he explained, "and you have a dull axe you must work all the harder to cut the log. A sharp axe makes easy work. So sharpen your axe all you can."]]></description>
			<pubDate>Wed, 08 May 2013 07:00:00 -0600</pubDate>
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			<title>Books and the Christian</title>
			<link>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=907</link>
			<description><![CDATA[The book that informs us without inspiring us may be indispensable to the scientist, the lawyer, the physician, but mere information is not enough for the minister. If knowledge about things constituted learning, the encyclopedia would be all the library one needed for a fruitful ministry. The successful Christian, however, must know God, himself and his fellow men. Such knowledge is not gained by assembling data but by sympathetic contact, by intuition, by meditation, by silence, by inspiration, by prayer and long communion. I therefore recommend reading, not for diversion, nor for information alone, but for communion with great minds. The book that leads the soul out into the sunlight, points upward and bows out is always the best book.
The man who can teach me to teach myself will help me more in the long run than the man who spoon-feeds me and makes me dependent upon him. The teacher's best service is to make himself unnecessary. The book that serves as a ramp from which my mind can take off is the best book for me. The book that follows me into the pulpit and intrudes itself into my sermon is my enemy and an enemy to my hearers. The book that frees me to think my own inspired thoughts is my friend.]]></description>
			<pubDate>Tue, 07 May 2013 07:00:00 -0600</pubDate>
			<guid>http://www.cmalliance.org/devotions/tozer?id=907</guid>
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