Tozer in the Morning – Finding Light and Life in Christ
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.
Tozer in the Evening – The Study of God
It is precisely because God is, and because man is made in His image and is accountable to Him, that theology is so critically important. Christian revelation alone has the answer to life?s unanswered questions about God and human destiny. To let these authoritative answers lie neglected while we search everywhere else for answers and find none is, it seems to me, nothing less than folly. No motorist would be excused if he neglected to consult his road map and tried instead to find his way across the country by looking for moss on logs, or by observing the flight of wild bees or watching the movements of the heavenly bodies. If there were no map a man might find his way by the stars; but for a traveler trying to get home the stars would be a poor substitute for a map. Without a map the Greeks did an admirable piece of navigating; but the Hebrews possessed the map and so had no need of human philosophy. As one not wholly unacquainted with Greek thought I state it is my belief that but one of Isaiah?s eloquent chapters or David?s inspired psalms contains more real help for mankind than all the output of the finest minds of Greece during the centuries of her glory.