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(Reformation Within Protestantism): Faith in Practice
A.W. Tozer

A.W. Tozer (1897 - 1963). American pastor, author, and spiritual mentor born in La Jose, Pennsylvania. Converted to Christianity at 17 after hearing a street preacher in Akron, Ohio, he began pastoring in 1919 with the Christian and Missionary Alliance without formal theological training. He served primarily at Southside Alliance Church in Chicago (1928-1959) and later in Toronto. Tozer wrote over 40 books, including classics like "The Pursuit of God" and "The Knowledge of the Holy," emphasizing a deeper relationship with God. Self-educated, he received two honorary doctorates. Editor of Alliance Weekly from 1950, his writings and sermons challenged superficial faith, advocating holiness and simplicity. Married to Ada, they had seven children and lived modestly, never owning a car. His work remains influential, though he prioritized ministry over family life. Tozer’s passion for God’s presence shaped modern evangelical thought. His books, translated widely, continue to inspire spiritual renewal. He died of a heart attack, leaving a legacy of uncompromising devotion.
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Sermon Summary
In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes that when God speaks, His words have multiple applications and are true for anyone who believes them. He asserts that nothing in history, philosophy, or science can invalidate God's promises. The preacher also discusses the impact of social changes on people's perspectives but emphasizes that it does not change God or His promises. He concludes by highlighting God's declaration of being the only Savior and the Creator of Israel, emphasizing His power and authority.
Sermon Transcription
Isaiah 43. I'm going to read the first 22 verses, and I would ask that you give very careful attention to everything that is written here. But now, thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, fear not, for I have redeemed thee. I have called thee by thy name, thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and through the rivers they shall not overflow thee. When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Savior. I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Sheba for thee. Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honorable, and I have loved thee. Therefore will I give men for thee, and people for thy life. Fear not, for I am with thee. I will bring thy seed from the east and gather thee from the west, and I will say to the north, Give up. To the south, keep not back. Bring my sons from far and my daughters from the ends of the earth, even every one that is called by my name, for I have created him for my glory. I have formed him, yea, I have made him. Bring forth the blind people that have eyes, and the deaf that have ears. Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people be assembled. Who among them can declare this and show us former things? Let them bring forth their witnesses that they may be justified, or let them hear and say it is true. Hear my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servants whom I have chosen, that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he. Before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me. I, even I, am the Lord, and beside me there is no Savior. I have declared and have saved, and I have showed whom there was no strange God among you. Therefore, hear my witnesses, saith the Lord, that I am God. Yea, before the day was, I am he, and there is none that can deliver out of my hand. I will work, and who shall hinder? Thus saith the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. For your sake I have sent to Babylon, and have brought down all their nobles, and the Chaldeans, whose cries in the ships. I am the Lord, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King. Thus saith the Lord, which maketh a way in the sea, and a path in the mighty waters, which bringeth forth the chariot, and horse, and army, and power. They shall lie down together, they shall not rise, they are extinct, they are quenched as told. Remember me not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing. Now it shall spring forth, shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert. The beasts of the field shall honor me, the dragons and the owls, because I give waters in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people, my chosen. This people have I formed for myself. They shall show forth my praise. Now, dear Father, we would in spirit tonight rise above Toronto, we would rise above this civilization, we would rise above these times, and we would hear thee speak, the great God Almighty, who speaks to the spirits of men. O Lord Jesus, thou art here in our midst, with us on the scene, and we acknowledge thy presence, we are honored. O Lord, that thou wouldst condescend to be in our company, to be one of us here. O Lord, we are honored. We pray now, thy blessing upon the word, O break through the devil's fortresses, and storm his bastions, and loose his prisoners, and free thine own people, Lord, like Lazarus were bound hand and foot. Loose us, and let us go. Graciously anoint the speaker and the hearer the night of Christ's sake. Amen. Now, in the passage which I have read, we hear the voice of God speaking to his people. God spoke this to Israel first, and it was to Israel, and it is to Israel, and it will yet be fulfilled in the nation of Israel. But it is living truth, and as such it is for God's spiritual Israel today. Now, it's very important that we settle on this. We try to divide our minds and say, this man is preaching something to us that belongs in another dispensation. Take that and you have brought all hope of help to an end. There is living truth here, and principles that are as old as the throne of God, and as new as the hour we live in. Now, I want you to note that what God has ever done for anybody, God will do for anybody else. Now, let's get a hold of this, and let's not write the lives of our fathers and gild the sepulchres of the ones that have gone before, and then imagine that we are living in a vacuum where there is nothing. Anything God ever did for any man in faith, he will do for any other man that will meet his conditions. You see, the voice of unbelief says, yes, I'm a believer, I believe the Bible, I don't like those modernists and liberals and modern scientists who deny the Bible. I wouldn't do that for the world. I believe in God, and I believe that God will bless. That is, some other time, some other place, and some other people. There are the three sleepers that bring the work of God to a halt. We are believers, and we can quote the creed with approval, we believe it, but we believe that God will bless some other people, some other place, some other time. But not now, and not here, and not us. Here is our problem, my brother. You have to have faith if God is going to do anything for you. Faith is the vitamin that makes all that you take from the Bible digestible. It makes you able to receive it and assimilate it. If you don't have faith, you can't get anything. So if we allow the gloomy voice of unbelief to whisper to us that God will bless some other time, but not now, some other place, but not here, some other people, but not us, we might as well just turn the lights out and save on the juice, because nobody will get anywhere. But the voice of faith has quite another message for us. The voice of faith speaks up brightly, though reverently, and says anything that God promised and did at any time, in any place, for anybody, God will do now for us here, the world in its condition. I say this is basic. I could tell you stories galore and entertain you for hours anywhere from my boyhood on the farm on down, and you would go away saying that was nice. But that's not what we're here for. We're serious-minded men and women. We're not fooling. And so let's get settled on one thing here. Let's get settled on this, that when God speaks, it has more than one application. If it is a truth, it is true for anybody that will believe it anywhere, anytime. Two times two makes four, whether it is in 400 B.C. or 1963 A.D., or whether it is in Russia or China or Canada. Two times two makes four, and you can't get around that. It's there. Anybody can trust it. Nobody can dispensationalize that away. Take two marbles and lay two other marbles with them and count them. You have four. Twice, two, four. That's true anywhere. It's a principle that's there. So when God speaks in his mighty voice, thunders down the years, he speaks to his people called Israel, he speaks to his people called Christians, and nothing has happened to invalidate his promises. Now, we'll remember that nothing in history would invalidate the promises of God. Nothing in philosophy, nothing that science has ever discovered can invalidate his promises. Social changes. You could talk by the hour on social changes. Certainly there have been social changes, and men look at things differently now than the way they looked at them in other times. But nevertheless, that doesn't change God, nor God's promises, nor human nature, nor the purposes of God, nor God's intentions toward his people, so that we can take this word of God and say, Now, here is the living word. Now, the mouth of Jehovah has spoken this. The mouth of Jehovah, and if you followed me in the scripture here, you will find the word on the first line, but now says, The Lord, and it's in capital letters. And every time you see the name Lord spoken in uppercase or capital letters, that is Jehovah, Y-H-W-H, Yahweh, the tetragrammaton, the incommunicable name, the awful name of God that he spoke out of the fire to Moses and said, I am that I am. That's who it is. And he is the one who is speaking. Can he make good on his intentions? Well, he certainly can. In our hymns and in our books of devotion, as well as in the profounder theology, there are seven names which God gives in compound with Jehovah. I am that I am, that is Jehovah. And then we hear Jehovah-dirah, that is Jehovah will provide. I am that I am will provide. And if the people of God would remember this, I am that I am will provide. God says it here, Jehovah says it here, he that laid the foundation of the earth and he that stretched the heavens abroad like a curtain, he that looks upon the nations and sees them as but dust in the balance, this is the one, the I am that I am, and he says, I will provide. And then Jehovah-Rapha, I am that I am, is the healing one. This is the expression that Dr. Simpson gathered up, picked up and gave meaning to or revealed to get the dust off of it so it could shine through again. I am the healer, I am the Lord that healeth thee. We don't see much of that and hear much about it now. The doctrine of divine healing is now divided into two classes. I might as well be bold about this, you don't get crowds talking like this, but you get good people talking like this, and I'm proud for good, honest people. I say it's divided into two classes, those that are making a circus out of it and the poor, discouraged people who are trying to believe it and taking pills to beat the band to keep them down. So that's about where we stand. There is very little anymore of real knowledge of this Jehovah-Rapha, this Jehovah that heals, but he does, he says he does. I've known quite a number in my ministry, and I've not been particularly a teacher. I've never preached but one or two sermons in my life, I think one, on the subject of divine healing. But I have seen God deliver people from the edge of death and heal them and set them free. So God still is Jehovah that healeth thee, then there is Jehovah Nessie, I am Jehovah, I am that I am is your banner of victory, your banner of victory. And Jehovah Shalom, I am your peace, and Jehovah Rea, I am your shepherd, and Jehovah Zedkei, I am your righteousness, and Jehovah Shammah, I am present here. I am that I am, present here with you. This is the mighty God who is speaking and speaks, and speaks to this people, and he wants to get through to you. Do you know, ladies and gentlemen, what you have suffered in Toronto? Do you know how you have been fed trash instead of truth in too many places? Do you know that you have been betrayed and sold down rare instead of fed the living word of God in too many instances in this city? Do you not know that God is trying to get through to you, and that he is trying to get through to you in his word? And he says, I am Jehovah. If you are looking to me now, looking away from men, looking to me, looking to Jehovah, looking away from Tozer, who is he? Looking away from the handsome young pastor, looking away from men, who are they? Nobody. Breath in their nostrils, ye young and good-looking today, old and cracked-voiced tomorrow. It's the way we go. But great, great God Almighty doth not. I am Jehovah, I am thy righteousness, I am thy shepherd, I am thy peace, I am thy banner of victory, I am thy healer, I am thy provider, I am present in your midst. This is the one you are dealing with, my brothers. And if you would only dare to arise and shake your head a bit to clear it, and shake a bit of the dust out of your mind and say, I dare to believe this, you would find the truths of God begin to glow like the stars. You would have life where you have not life, and light where you have not light, and joy where you have not joy. What did God do? Verse 11 to 17. God said, I am Jehovah, and beside this there is no Savior, I have declared and saved, and I have showed when there was no strange God among you. God won't share the throne with any little gods, and God won't share the pulpit with any little gods. I have declared and have saved and have showed when there was no strange God among you. And I am Jehovah, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King, which maketh a way in the sea and paths in the mighty waters, which bringeth chariot and horse and army and power. They shall lie down together, they shall not rise. Great God Almighty, as our brothers said in these prayers, is the God of history, the Lord of history. And what will he do now? Verses 19 and 20. I will make a way in the wilderness. What does this mean? It means a highway right through the primitive wilderness, where the owl and the sapphire and the dragon have lain. And I will make rivers in the desert. And what does that mean? It means the Gobi's deserts and the other deserts of the world are to have rivers run through them. Why is he going to do this? Why is he going to make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert? To bring drink to his people, to his chosen ones. I believe that God has some chosen ones, and God wants to bring drink to his chosen ones. Now, to bring this to our company, I say that we have to do a few things. One of them is to repudiate unbelief. To repudiate unbelief, the average evangelical church lies under a shadow of unbelief, a shadow of quiet doubting. Not the unbelief that argues against the scriptures, but worse than that, the chronic unbelief that doesn't know what faith means. The difference between the unbeliever who doesn't believe the Bible and boldly says so and argues against it, and the so-called Christian who simply lies in a state of coma and cannot rise and believe, but hopes and gets an o'er, is the same as the difference between a man who has had an accident or becomes suddenly ill and the chronic invalid who never knows what it is to be quite well, but never is quite dead. He is never quite dead, he can always muster a smile, and he does have a heartbeat if it isn't normal. He does have a temperature if it isn't normal. He does have respiration, you can count them, they are not normal. He is not alive, but thank God he is not dead. The man who hit the abutment going 60 miles an hour, he is still warm even though he is dead. To drag him out, he is still warm but dead. It happens suddenly and dramatically. The man who says, I don't believe your Bible, I don't believe it, it's an old saga of old notions, it's filled with stories of adultery and murder and assassination, I don't believe your Bible. All right, he has hit something hard and he has been injured and it's dramatic and terrible. We talk about that. But the churches lie around in a state of chronic unbelief. They don't expect God to do anything, and naturally he doesn't. One occasionally, now and a great while, gets added to the church by mauling and wooling and kneading and pawing over him. We get him in. But the lift and the freedom and the brightness and the joy of the true Christian who believes God is missing from us to a large extent. Now, the voice of unbelief I say, it springs out or speaks out of the psychology of non-expectation. This is our trouble these days, it's the psychology of non-expectation. So we sit down, we are going to have a board meeting in such and such time, so we have a board meeting. Now, I don't refer to this church, I just refer to the Evangelical churches which I'm familiar with all over the continent, and for that matter all over the world. So what are we going to do to stir ourselves up a little bit? Well, we sit down and we lean back against the wall and put the stake home and others around the wall. As we lean back, tired into the hours, what can we do to stir ourselves a little bit? Well, who can we get? And where will we look? And I wonder if we can get him. And we forget all the time that Jehovah is present, I am Jehovah, I am in the midst of you, why don't you talk to me? Why don't you ask me what's to be done? Why don't you ask me? No, we don't ask him. I am your banner of victory, but we say, now I just wonder how much it would cost, how much a revival costs, absolutely nothing and absolutely everything. Hear me? That's how much it will cost. It will cost not one dime, and it will cost everything we have. I mean by that that you can't import a flyer man here from New Zealand or Australia or somewhere, you can't do it that way. How many of these blessed preachers have come in from Ireland and England and where have you, and they did big things over there, we heard, and we flew them in, and they never got anywhere. I don't know about here, but down in the States, we used to bring them in all the time, and we never got anywhere. I never saw anything result. We were trying to import God, trying to fly God over in a jet. He doesn't come that way. He says, I am Jehovah, I am with you, I am where you are, I am here now. Call on me, but you didn't call on me. He says in the next verse, My people have I formed, but thou hast not called upon me, O Jacob, thou hast been weary of me, O God. In other words, the great God Almighty, we're bored with him, we chuckle at Pogo and we laugh at Dear Abby, but we're bored with God. He says, You're weary of me, you're bored with me. I don't hesitate to say that an awful lot that's going on in the name of Christianity today is simply boredom. We're bored with God. God says, Why don't you call? I'm here, I'm ready to help you, and I will do these things for you. The voice of unbelief, chronic voice of unbelief, says, Things will be as they are, there's no use. Things will be as they are, but the voice of Jehovah says, I will. I will do a new thing. I will make a way in the wilderness. I will make rivers in the desert. Now, unbelief is entirely logical and true to nature. Do you hear me? Unbelief is entirely logical and true to nature. The man of faith, if he is logical, his logic is a higher logic that can't be seen by men. But unbelief is entirely logical. The sun rises and the sun also sets. It rains and it snows. The seasons follow each other. The ducks fly to the north and the ducks fly to the south. Babies are born and old men die. Things go on as they go on. Sure, as it was in the beginnings, is now and ever shall be. That's our only hymn we know. Things will be as they have been, we sing in unbelief, there is no use. But the voice of Jehovah says, Behold, I will. When you introduce God into a thing, it's a new thing. I will make a way in the wilderness, whoever heard of it. I will make rivers in the desert, whoever heard of it. But I say unbelief is logical and true to nature, and utterly and completely natural, because nature is fixed in a regular routine. And you may expect nature to continue to go right on in that routine. But another factor is now introduced. God introduces the factor of the supernatural, and he says, I am that I am, and I will. And so God will. God will do a new thing, God will. Jehovah will. I'll tell you, my brother, that if God doesn't do something, Christianity is in a bad way, and evangelical Christianity is in a bad way. A friend of mine had a debate with an Atheist. I wouldn't stoop to it myself, but he did. He had a debate with an Atheist in the public auditorium of some sort, and the Atheist said there was no God and no miracles and no anything, and the preacher tried to prove there was. But the preacher got more out of it than the Atheist did, for the preacher got this out of it. The Atheist said, well, all right, I don't know whether there is any God that can work miracles or not, but I'll tell you one thing, it's going to be too bad for you Christians if there isn't, because if your God doesn't get busy with some miracles pretty soon, you've had it. He's right, he's just as right. The truer words are never spoken than those words of an enemy of God. I am, says God, if we're going to go on the way of nature and the natural religion and natural things, it's in the fictional kingdom. Of course not! You say, well, he's sick, he'll die. Well, no, you can't expect anybody to do anything, we've had it, all right, we've had it. But I hear another voice saying, I am that I am, I am that I am. I've lived for that voice all my life, since I've been a Christian. To hear God speak these words, I am that I am. You can't, but I can. You aren't, but I am. But I am able. You have no wisdom, but I am Jehovah, and I have the wisdom. We approach him through Jesus Christ, his Son. Don't forget that all of the power of this great Jehovah, with his awful and awesome and glorious name, is channeled through the person of his Son, Jesus Christ, to his people. That's one thing Jesus did. Jesus dug a channel, so to speak, through to the mighty ocean that is Jehovah, so that all the sweet waters, the healing waters, the soul-quenching waters that are God flow down to the Lord's people if they will only believe. Now this is spoken to faith. God says a new thing. Now he doesn't say this thing is new to him. Nothing is new to God, nothing can be new to God. Behold, I will do a new thing, but it's not new to God. It's new to us, that's all. It's new to us. Brother testified the other night about the dear old saints that lived in days gone by, and they knew, they saw God's work. They saw God's work. When God says to us of this generation, I will do a new thing, what is it we say? Is God going to create something brand new as we were creating a galaxy out of nothing? No. He is going to repeat for a new generation what he did for an old generation. That's all. So remember it, that God will do a new thing for his people. Keep that in mind. I believe that. Oh, I believe it, brother. The day that I stop believing it will be the day I hope the chariot comes. I hope that chariot comes. Now, father of my father, the chariots of Israel are now horsemen their own, and I hope I can step in and be breathed away to a better land than this. Because if it isn't true that God says, look, look, look, I will do it for you, why do you worry, I'll do it for you, I'm God, I'm Jehovah, I'm your righteousness, I'm your provider, I'm your healer, I'm your banner of victory, I'm your righteousness, I'm your shepherd, I'm your peace, I'm your everything. If God is all this to us, then there's no reason why anybody should be downhearted in this hour, no reason at all. And if anybody should be downhearted, I will, he says, I will make, I will make, listen to God, I will make, I will make. If God could make a world out of nothing, why can't God make anything he wants to make now for his people? And so God invites us to see him work, invites us, invites us of this city, this people listening to me now, invites us to see him work. You know what? God is going to do it in a way that nobody will get the glory but himself. God is going to get the glory, and he's not going to share it with anybody. I am Jehovah, that is my name, and my glory I will not share with another. And so God wants to do things in a way that nobody can say, so-and-so did that. God is doing it because God wants the glory, and God must have the glory because of who he is. He says, I will make, God will make. We need a God who can make things, we need a God who can create, I will create. And he invites us to watch him create. So let not these things, any of these things of the world paralyze our hearts. Let not past mistakes paralyze our hearts. I mean give us summons. You know, they said about Jack Dempsey when he was going big in his day, probably hit harder than any other man that ever was in the boxing ring. I know that the old fellows could sit around the hot stove and argue that for hours, but I would say that's generally thought to be so. That if he got a good clean shot at a fellow's chin, that when he waked up hours later, something had happened to him. He'd been stung. I wonder if I can illustrate that further. I don't want to go too far afield here. But to get at an illustration, I wonder if I can illustrate it further. In baseball, they have what they call a brushback pitch. That is, a man standing at the bat with his bat over his shoulder, bouncing it the way they do nervously, waiting for the ball to come through. And the pitcher thinks he's crowding the plate, as they say, so he pitches in close to brush him back. That's quite commonly done, nobody thinks much of it. If it isn't repeated too often or done too obviously to hit a man. But once in a while, those great, big, powerful boys will let a baseball go. It doesn't happen often, maybe two or three times in the last twenty years, or thirty years. Those great, big, muscular giants will stand down there, trained as fine as a razor, and they'll throw. I don't know how many miles an hour that ball goes, and it's hard to know. And it'll hit a man, hit him on the head, or hit him so that it sends him to the hospital, or in two or three instances, kill the man. Do you know what they say about those pitchers after that? They're never much good after that. They've had something, something's hit their psychology. Even though they know they were innocent and had no intention of doing wrong, they've been wounded, they've suffered a trauma within their nervous system. And when they get the signal from the pitcher, lean back and wind up, they just can't quite give it what it ought to have, because there's a subconscious inhibition. They're hurt. They don't want to repeat that terrible thing. And mentally they've got it licked, but deep in their reflex system, it's got them licked. Now back to our boxer again. When a man had been hit by the great fighters, such as Dempsey, they never amounted to much afterwards, because while they'd shake it off and come out of it and be all right afterward, apparently, not only their chin had been hit, but their psychology had been hit. They'd been defeated inside, and they just never quite could go into the ring expecting to win after that. It wasn't true of all men, but it was true of some of the greats who could almost kill a man with a blow. They did something to their opponent, the opponent never could get over. He had a numb paralysis within him that he couldn't lick. I believe that there are Christians have allowed some of their past mistakes to do the same thing for them. Oh, you were so bright and cheerful in your spiritual life once, and then you all made some tragic mistake or had something happen to you, you got out of it some way or other and prayed and wept your way out of it, but it did something to you, and you now can't lick it. Past wrongs that have been done to you, past failures, you thought you were going to win and didn't, or present sins or present unworthiness or present discouragement. These things are not mental at all. They're deeper than that. They're deeper than that. The simple people of the world, the simple people, they can believe God in a way that we more sophisticated ones have a hard time doing. That's why God has to begin sometimes with the simplest people. Jesus couldn't get a Pharisee to follow him, and he couldn't get any of the big shots, but he did get some fishermen and some simple people, and he got one tax collector, but he didn't get very many great people. So God comes to simple people. Who must? The black man in Africa, South Africa, a Baptist man? He came cheerfully and expectantly to God, and they called him everywhere to pray for the sick. There was a meeting once up in the bush somewhere there. They were having a camp meeting. There's a snake, a serpent in that part of the country that's deadly. Nobody ever gets well from it, nobody, nobody. When they strike, within seven minutes the victim is dead. Don't fool around, at least die. A woman was on her way, an African woman on her way to the tent or whatever it was, where they were having their camp meeting. She stepped on what she thought was a twig, a stick, and just bent back around and slashed its fangs into the calf of her leg. It was a bare black leg happily singing her way up to the church, but it bent around and struck. They carried her to the tent. Her leg had already begun to swell until it was a couple of times as large, and she was in a state of semi-coma, a tumor. They took her to a tumor, and they said, Pastor, she's been bit by the, for the moment I forget the name, of the serpent, the deadly thing, the thing that just never fools. It's like a bullet in the head. When it strikes, they're dead. He said, let's pray, and they got down on their knees, and he laid his great black ham-like hands on this poor swollen body, and he looked away to Jesus Christ, and he said, Lord Jesus, you're dead, and the woman opened her eyes and looked around, and the leg began to go down, and in a short while, you say, what fanatic told that story? That story was written and published in the Alliance Weekly, written by a friend of mine named Frank Mason, a Baptist preacher, who's just as sane and calm as any man you know. That happened. That was not a wrought-up story. That happened. Will you see, my brothers and sisters, if we could shake off our sophistication and all our pseudo-learning and the cheap crust of unbelief that is over us, and we could hear him say, I am that I am, and I'm with you, and I'm on your side, and my son died for you, and hell can't take you out of my hand, and you're made for my glory, and I formed you for myself, and you're going to show forth my praise. If you'll only believe that I'll give you rivers in the wilderness, waters in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, and I'll give drink to my people, my chosen, and I will do these things for you. I will. You see that element of the supernatural that enters there. Nature says it can't be a nature of right, but God steps in and says, I am that I am. It can be, and God is right. Now, that's the kind of preacher I am, and that's the kind of church I want this church to be. And that's the kind of faith I believe is the true faith of our Father, the faith of our Father's living spirit. I haven't enrolled. I have just a little bit I want to do here to you from the word of God, just a little bit, not much, but I want you to hear something. God gave me this a long time ago, and I've had lots of enemies rise against me, and I've never fought back on any of them, but I've distrusted God. Here's what God says, Behold, I send an angel before thee to keep thee in the way, and bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Thou shalt indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak. I'll be an enemy to your enemy, and an adversary to your adversary. You hear God say, I'll take him on, just don't, don't, I'll take him on. Somebody told about hearing two little boys, and they were in a fight, and one of them got the other one down and was tumbling him, and he began to yell for his bigger brother. And the fellow that was on top looked over his shoulder and saw a great, strapping, muscular, bigger brother on the way, and he lit up. You see, he was licked as far as he was concerned, the little guy down. He just had sense enough that he had left yet in his head to call for help. And this preacher that told this said that this is the way we are with God. He said, I will be an enemy to your enemy, and I will. I can't win against my enemies, but God says, I will be an enemy to your enemies, and an adversary to your adversary. And he says, then he will bless your bread and your water, that's your business, he'll see that you get along and have enough to eat, and I will take sickness away from the midst of you. He will do that until he wants you in heaven, and he'll let you die and go to heaven like a good man. And there shall nothing cast their young, there'll be no unfruitfulness, nor be barren. And the number of thy days I will fulfill, if you'll beg God he'll take care of your birthdays. And how many you have or how few, it doesn't make too much difference after all. And I will send my fear before thee, and will destroy all things whom thou shalt come, and I will make all thine enemies turn their backs unto thee. And I will send hornets before thee, and I will give you the land, I will set thy bounds by the Red Sea, I'll read no more. But I will only say that that is for us, if we only dare to believe this, this is for us. So that if we will unite our hearts, and unite our purposes, and unite our intentions, and dare to believe it, we will see God begin to move in, in great strength and in great power, and we will see coming down from heaven that which we have so desperately struggled to bring in from the outside. We will see the great God do it, and then it will not be said, this man did it or that man did it, but we can all say together, not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord. Now there's a great big victory for us, dear friends, and we're going to sing about it now. It's a dear old camp meeting song. My brother will announce it. And I want you to sing it, and I want you to believe it while we're singing it.
(Reformation Within Protestantism): Faith in Practice
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A.W. Tozer (1897 - 1963). American pastor, author, and spiritual mentor born in La Jose, Pennsylvania. Converted to Christianity at 17 after hearing a street preacher in Akron, Ohio, he began pastoring in 1919 with the Christian and Missionary Alliance without formal theological training. He served primarily at Southside Alliance Church in Chicago (1928-1959) and later in Toronto. Tozer wrote over 40 books, including classics like "The Pursuit of God" and "The Knowledge of the Holy," emphasizing a deeper relationship with God. Self-educated, he received two honorary doctorates. Editor of Alliance Weekly from 1950, his writings and sermons challenged superficial faith, advocating holiness and simplicity. Married to Ada, they had seven children and lived modestly, never owning a car. His work remains influential, though he prioritized ministry over family life. Tozer’s passion for God’s presence shaped modern evangelical thought. His books, translated widely, continue to inspire spiritual renewal. He died of a heart attack, leaving a legacy of uncompromising devotion.