Tozer in the Morning – The Feasibility of Change
. . . people in ruts . . . discover that the passing of time tends to dull their religious feelings, and the signal that used to be quite clear is fading out. Then they worry a little and say, “The signal is gone. I’ll have to do something.” Suddenly it comes on again and they hear it a little and say, “Oh, it’s not so bad after all.” They are just in a favorable pocket–perhaps some new preacher has come to town. They think they are hearing the voice again, and they are, a little bit. But it is not long until they are out of range and cannot hear it any more. Time has increased their indifference to spiritual things and dulled their religious feelings, continually making them harder to change. Change is one of the ingredients of Christianity. If people could not change, the gospel would be absolutely meaningless. If the Lord would say, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ; repent and believe,” and a person could not repent or believe, the gospel would be meaningless. The fact that people can change is the only hope they have. If they could not change, there would be no reason to preach to them that they must change. And yet we are sent to preach that people should change, meaning they should repent. They should turn from darkness to light. They should turn from idols to God. They should change. This is absolutely necessary, a vital ingredient in the spiritual life.
Tozer in the Evening – MAN’S WASTED POTENTIAL
God has made it plain that hell is a real place-a final abode for people who do not want to love God and serve Him! The sadness and the tragedy of this fact is that these are human beings, all dear to God because He created them in His own image. Of nothing else in the Creation is it said that it was created in the likeness of God! Because fallen and perishing man is still nearer to God’s likeness than any other creature on earth, God offers him conversion regeneration and forgiveness. It was surely because of this great potential in the human personality that the eternal Word could become flesh and dwell among us. We are assured in many ways in the Scriptures that God the Creator does not waste human personality but it is surely one of the stark tragedies of life that human personality can waste itself! A man by his own sin may waste himself, which is to waste and lose that which on earth is most like God. The man who dies out of Christ is said to be lost, and hardly a word in our language expresses his condition with greater accuracy!