Jim :)

A couple of things to remember:

1.) Don't compare yourself to others and think that if you meet their standards or match their steps that you've somehow attained a satisfying prayer life. You can never spend enough time in prayer.

2.) You can literally prayer for hours on end without stopping or being repetitive when you are in relationship with the Church. I have found that if you take notecards and list elders, deacons their families, other ministry leaders, their families their jobs and responsibilities, plus your family, plus people your trying to reach out to for their Salvation, plus people that you are praying into the harvest field as missionaries or other types of laborers, plus churches in your community, your community leadership, state leadership, federal leadership and global events you can easily spend 3 to 4 hours a day in prayer. Plus prayer for your own life before God.

Now this is just structured prayer, not to mention prayers that you make that are unplanned as the Spirit reminds you of people or circumstances. Plus, time for thanksgiving, singing, meditating on Scriptures and the Spirit brings them to mind.

Now, regardless if Tozer or Ravenhill spent 15 hours a day or more praying or if you spend 15 minutes or more a day praying, the point isn't how long your praying, it's what your praying about. Greatest commandments: Love God and Love eachother. With this command, we have lots to cry out for.

Now, by no means do I want to put up a front and make anyone believe that this is my daily routine, if that was the case, I'd never leave the house and serve God practically. But I just wanted to point out how there are always many, many things to pray and spend hours upon hours with God about.

Blessings,

Desi

I think we should give Tozer the last word here. From the chapter "The Saint must walk alone" in his book "Man, the Dwelling Place of God"

And yes, it can even (often especially) happen with your own wife and children....

'The truly spiritual man is indeed something of an oddity. He lives not for himself but to promote the interests of Another. He seeks to persuade people to give all to his Lord and asks no portion or share for himself. He delights not to be honored but to see his Saviour glorified in the eyes of men. His joy is to see his Lord promoted and himself neglected. He finds few who care to talk about that which is the supreme object of his interest, so he is often silent and preoccupied in the midst of noisy religious shoptalk. For this he earns the reputation of being dull and overserious, so he is avoided and the gulf between him and society widens. He searches for friends upon whose garments he can detect the smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces, and finding few or none he, like Mary of old, keeps these things in his heart.'

'It is this very loneliness that throws him back upon God. "When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up." His inability to find human companionship drives him to seek in God what he can find nowhere else. He learns in inner solitude what he could not have learned in the crowd that Christ is All in All, that He is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption, that in Him we have and possess life's summum bonum.'


OJ

hi, God gave us 2 ears and 1 mouth so i believe we should listen at least twice as much than we talk.remember God was the still small voice. abram heard that voice, noah heard that voice,moses heard that voice etc. anyone in the bible who had faith heard that voice including saul of tarsus.jimp

Very intersting thread, much to ponder and pray about. Having a wife and two toddlers I can identify with the struggle to find the right balance in ministry and family time.

Old_Joe quoted Tozer,

_________________
Oracio

Excerpts -

When he was 15 years old, Tozer's family moved to Akron, Ohio. One afternoon as he walked home from his job at Goodyear, he overheard a street preacher say, "If you don't know how to be saved . . . just call on God." When he got home, he climbed the narrow stairs to the attic where, heeding the preacher's advice, Tozer was launched into a lifelong pursuit of God.

In 1919, without formal education, Tozer was called to pastor a small storefront church in Nutter Fort, West Virginia. That humble beginning thrust him and his new wife Ada Cecelia Pfautz, into a 44-year ministry with The Christian and Missionary Alliance.
Thirty-one of those years were spent at Chicago's Southside Alliance Church. The congregation, captivated by Tozer's preaching, grew from 80 to 800.

In 1950 Tozer was elected editor of the Alliance Weekly now called Alliance Life. The circulation doubled almost immediately. In the first editorial dated June 3, 1950, he set the tone: "It will cost something to walk slow in the parade of the ages while excited men of time rush about confusing motion with progress. But it will pay in the long run and the true Christian is not much interested in anything short of that."

Tozer's forte was his prayer life which often found him walking the aisles of a sanctuary or lying face down on the floor. He noted, "As a man prays, so is he." To him the worship of God was paramount in his life and ministry. "His preaching as well as his writings were but extensions of his prayer life," comments Tozer biographer James L. Snyder. An earlier biographer noted, "He spent more time on his knees than at his desk."

Tozer's love for words also pervaded his family life. He quizzed his children on what they read and made up bedtime stories for them. "The thing I remember most about my father," reflects his daughter Rebecca, "was those marvelous stories he would tell."

Son Wendell, one of six boys born before the arrival of Rebecca, remembers that, "We all would rather be treated to the lilac switch by our mother than to have a talking-to by our dad."

Tozer's final years of ministry were spent at Avenue Road Church in Toronto, Canada. On May 12, 1963, his earthly pursuit of God ended when he died of a heart attack at age 66. In a small cemetery in Akron, Ohio, his tombstone bears this simple epitaph: "A Man of God."

Some wonder why Tozer's writings are as fresh today as when he was alive. It is because, as one friend commented, "He left the superficial, the obvious and the trivial for others to toss around. . . . [His] books reach deep into the heart."

His humor, written and spoken, has been compared to that of Will Rogers--honest and homespun. Congregations could one moment be swept by gales of laughter and the next sit in a holy hush.

http://articles.ochristian.com/article150.shtml


Excerpt: From a fan of both Tozer & Dorsett -

Tozer pastored briefly in several poor churches in West Virginia and Ohio before ultimately receiving a call to Southside Alliance Church in Chicago where he stayed for most of his life. He didn’t like to drive, so his family stayed close to the church for years, even after the humble wooden church was replaced with a far grander building.
Dorsett ably recalls Tozer’s rise within the C&MA as the leaders of that group rapidly understood they had a winner on their hands. Or more like a blaze. For it seemed that wherever Tozer went, people caught fire. He went on to be a radio preacher on WMBI, the voice of Moody Bible Institute, and eventually garnered a nationwide audience.
In 1960, Tozer accepted a call to do nothing but preach at Avenue Road Church in Toronto, serving for three years before succumbing to a heart attack 45 years ago on May 12, 1963.

Tozer was a very staunch pro-American patriot and was deeply affected by World War II, maintaining a special admiration and care for soldiers and their families.

Fearing that he’d succumb to too many human compliments, Tozer would avoid greeting his congregation at the door of the church after services, preferring to visit his church’s nursery and talk with young parents.

Family devotion times at the Tozer household appear to have been just as difficult to schedule and pull off as they are in some of our homes.

Students, especially at Wheaton College, Moody Bible Institute, and later at his church in Toronto, adored Tozer and his messages. Tozer returned that affection, maintaining a lifelong soft spot for young people.

Tozer wrote one of his most famous works, The Pursuit of God, in one day while traveling by train to speak at another church.

Despite not having much education beyond fourteen years, Tozer devoured as many books as he could read, electing to read widely on many topics, particularly writings of pre-Reformation Christians who had been largely ignored by Protestants of his time. Tozer himself never attended college or went to seminary. He routinely cautioned potential pastors about problems with the seminary system.

Tozer spent hours in prayer and study in his office at the church, often prostrate on the floor. He even wore a specially tailored pair of pants that allowed him to pray longer while kneeling.

For years, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones tried (unsuccessfully) to get Tozer to come to London to preach at his church.

Tozer defined workaholism, somehow managing to squeeze life enough for two people into one, yet when not traveling always made it home for the family dinner.

Tozer later regretted some of the harsh statements he made about movies with Christian themes.

While "A Passion for God" is a deeply needed book on Tozer, I finished it only to have this wave of discontent wash over me. When the forwards, appendices, and index are removed, this book is a scant 150 pages. Because Dorsett revisits some issues repeatedly (Ada Tozer’s longing for a more intimate relationship with a man much more devoted to God than to his wife, for instance), each revisit adds little to what was already said, diluting the fullness of the material even more.

Sadly, the one truth I hoped would be revealed in this biography never seemed to gel for me: What made Tozer’s spiritual journey so profoundly different from all the other evangelical preachers of his time? Nor did I get a good feel for the one defining aspect of Tozer’s life that set him well apart from his contemporaries: his love for the mystic writers of Christianity. How and why did he latch onto them when they were largely ignored by others?
Dorsett also mentions that in later years Tozer received some critiques for being overly ecumenical, though he devotes only a page or so to this unusual fact about Tozer. This is definitely an underdeveloped thought considering Tozer railed against the increasing worldliness and liberalism he saw steeling away the heart and soul of Evangelicalism. In what may have been an overdevelopment, Dorsett devotes several pages to racial issues in Chicago toward the latter part of Tozer’s ministry there. In truth, Tozer did not have much to say on the issue other than he didn’t want to ignore reaching out to the black community of the time, nor did he like some of the contention, both from whites in his church and blacks in the surrounding neighborhood, that was forcing his congregation to relocate.

Leonard Ravenhill discussed his friendship with Tozer in a few teaching tapes I’ve heard of his, so I was surprised that nothing came of this in the book, especially since I know that Dorsett likes Ravenhill, too. Dorsett also noted that Tozer spoke at several Keswick conferences, though this is not developed at all. I would have liked to have known more about Tozer’s affiliations with some of the trends and schools of thought of the time.

http://ceruleansanctum.com/2008/05/review-a-passion-for-god-the-spiritual-journey-of-a-w-tozer.html

First off What in blue blazes happened in this thread? about 10 to 12 hours ago when I was on it had like 14 comments log on and find 55? I read through some of the post and saw concern about if Tozer wasn't very involved with his family life or something to that effect, that he was secluded from his family and friends.

I would say its quite obvious Tozer did act as a Godly Husband and did likely help with his family. How do I know? Because had He not his wife would likely be terribly upset with him and his prayers would have been hindered.

"7You husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with someone weaker, since she is a woman; and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered." 1 Peter 3:7

It would be wise to assume that Brother Tozer did find a balance that we should also seek seeing that many of His prayers did infact get answered. I listened to a Paris Reidhead sermon and in it he mentions how we should operate and work speaking on the little things. Paraphrased He said when a man becomes a husband and father that is his ministry, doing the dishes for your family can be a service to the Lord and your family. Painting a room, taking out the trash, etc can all be done in Service to God.

As a fairly new dad I seek to find the balance with my two toddlers and have started letting them join me in my time of prayer and worship. My wife graciously bought me a keyboard for my birthday but really its not mine but everyone that wants to play it including my young ones. being a musician it excites my heart to see them sing Jesus Loves Me and try and push some keys down on a piano or to strum one of my guitars as we sing about Jesus. Or driving in the car listening to Christian radio and hearing my little boy sing along to Holy is the Lord.

I would image Tozer knew something of the same thing, to train up a child means to take them along side of you and let them experience what you experience and let them know what you have learned and know.

_________________
Matthew Guldner

Thank you Brother Matthew.

The second link in my last post was from an admirer of Dorsett because he was one of his students and even he said in that over-view of Dorsett's book that too much time was spent repeating the words of Ada.

If one's spouse doesn't share an equal zeal or passion for the work of GOD or the calling, then it can be difficult for the husband and wife to see eye to eye. Ada's comment about her husband was very revealing.

If Tozer loved "young people" - "service men" - "the black people of Chicago" - the "nursery filled with babies and their parents" - and so much more written in that over-view - I wonder why anyone would take the liberties to write about Tozer's personal home life, when Tozer probably wouldn't have shared a word about any problems with Ada or either of their families (his or hers).
I've had in-laws before, as some others have, and only GOD knows what went on in that home and between them all - but the fruit of Tozer's work can be found anywhere. Dorsett opened up a can of worms and had a reason to focus so much on what may have been a very serious and private problem between Mr. & Mrs. Tozer and to write a book in 2008 about a man who died in 1963 that attempts to defame him, to me is just odd, to say the least.

There are other biographers on Tozer that are worth reading.

Thanks again for your sound input.

_________________
Robert Wurtz II

Sad epitaph.