Tozer in the Morning – The Barrenness of Busyness
Satan’s distracting words often come from the most unexpected quarters. Martha would call Mary away from sitting at the feet of the Master. Sometimes, if we are not careful, our best friend may distract us. Or it might be some very legitimate activity. This day’s bustle and hurly-burly would too often and too soon call us away from Jesus’ feet. These distractions must be immediately dismissed, or we shall know only the “barrenness of busyness.”
The multiplying agencies and the extraneous activities of much of the current gospel “programming” may distract us if we are not wary and lead us into some meandering by-path that comes to a dead end. Our genius is preserved by sticking at the task of worldwide evangelization that God has called us to by the tried and proven methods that God has blessed, thereby avoiding the slough of an effete denominationalism on the one hand and unproductive, fevered activity on the other.
In a world like ours, we need to master the art and keep at the business of dismissing distractions.
Tozer in the Evening – CROSSING OVER JORDAN
The prophets and the psalmists of the Old Testament wrestled as we do with the problem of evil in a divine universe but their approach to God and nature was much more direct than ours. They did not interpose between God and His world that opaque web we moderns call the “laws of nature.” They could see God in a whirlwind and hear Him in a storm and they did not hesitate to say so! There was about their lives an immediate apprehension of the divine. Everything in heaven and on earth assured them that this is God’s world and that He rules over all. I heard a Methodist bishop tell of being called to the bedside of an elderly dying woman in his early ministry. He said he was frightened; but the old saint was radiantly happy. When he tried to express the sorrow he felt about her illness, she would not hear it. “Why, God bless you young man,” she said cheerfully, “there is nothing to be scared about. I am just going to cross over Jordan, where my Father owns the land on both sides of the river!” She understood about the unity of all things in God’s creation.