Tag: Prayer

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Tozer Talks

“Prepare By Prayer”

June 9, 1957

In the 26th chapter of the gospel as recorded by Matthew, verses 31 to 46, verses 31 to 46. I wonder if we couldn’t read that responsively too. So, we’d all have a part in it beginning with verse 31, of Matthew 26. And going down to an including verse 46, Matthew 26:31-46. Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad. But after I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee. Peter answered and said unto him, Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended. Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. Peter said unto him, Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee. Likewise also said all the disciples. Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder. And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy. Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.  And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.  He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done. And he came and found them asleep again: for their eyes were heavy. And he left them, and went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words. Then cometh he to his disciples, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going: behold, he is at hand that doth betray me.   And now the 41st verse, watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Now in the passage which we read and that which immediately precedes it and follows it, we have the record of the most critical event in the history of the world. I think there can be no doubt of that at all, that it had about it and upon it, more mighty historic significance. Greater human weight of wheel and woe than any other event, or series of events in the history of mankind. The Lord Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of men, was about to be betrayed into the hands of sinners. He was about to offer His holy soul, to have poured out upon that soul, the accumulated putrefaction and moral filth of the whole race of men and then carry it to the tree and die there in agony and blood.

Now there was One present, the One most vitally concerned, who anticipated this crisis and prepared for it. That one of course was Jesus. And He prepared for it by the most effective preparation known in heaven or in earth, namely prayer. Our Lord prayed in the garden. Let us not pity our Lord, as some are inclined to do. Let us thank Him that He foresaw the crisis, and that He went to the place of power and the source of energy, and got himself ready for that event. And because He did this, He passed the cosmic crisis triumphantly.

And I say, cosmic crisis, because it had to do with more than this world. It had to do with more, even than the human race. It had to do with the entire cosmos, the whole wide universe. For the Lord was dying that all things might be united in Him, and that the heavens as well as the earth might be purged; and that new heavens and new earth might be established that could never pass away. And all of this rested upon the shoulders of the Son of God, here this night in the garden. And he got ready for this. I repeat in the most effective way known under the sun, and that is by going to God in prayer.

But over against that, were his disciples. They approached the crisis without anticipation. Partly they didn’t know, partly they didn’t care. Partly, they were too unspiritual to be concerned, and partly they were sleepy. So carelessly and prayerlessly and sleepily they allowed themselves to be carried by the rolling of the Wheel of Time into a crisis so vital, so significant, so portentous, that nothing like it has ever happened, I repeat, in the world, and never will happen again. And the result of their failure to anticipate was that one betrayed our Lord, one denied our Lord, all forsook our Lord, and all fled away.

And then Christ gave them here in the text read, Christ gave them these words as a sort of a little diamond set in this great ring. He said, watch and pray, that you enter not into temptation. For the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. And this is what I want especially to talk about now. And I want you to know that this prayer that Jesus made that night in the garden, was an anticipatory prayer. That is, He prayed in anticipation of something that He knew it was coming in the will of God; and He got ready for it.

Now, this is what I want to emphasize and lay upon your conscience this morning, that you practice an anticipatory prayer, because battles are lost before they’re fought. You can write that line across your heart or across your memory, and the history of the world and biography will support it, that battles are always lost before they are fought.

It was true and is true of nations. It was true of France in the Second World War. There are those of us who date back, who were grown up at the time of the First World War, and we remember how the cry electrified the world, “they shall not pass” and pass they did not when France in her strength rose and opposed herself to the hordes of the Kaiser. But only twenty-five years and a little more, twenty-six at the most later, the hoards of Hitler came down, and France surrendered almost without firing a gun. And to this day, men don’t know why. Only last week I saw that some angry Frenchman has written a book, flailing his own country and lashing his people that they surrendered with scarcely a fight.

But why did they lose the battle? Why did France surrender? She surrendered because between the hour, her finest hour when she cried, they shall not pass, and her disgraceful surrender, she had gotten rotten and decayed; politically decayed and morally decayed, and spiritually decayed, and like an old tree filled with dry rot. When the tanks of Hitler came sweeping down like a stormy wind, France went down, and she’s never risen since. And she still manifested the same spirit in her politics and in her social life that caused her to lose the Second World War.

Now my friends, if that can be true of nations, and history will support it, it’s also true of pugilists. They say of fighting men, that they leave their victory in the nightclub. And while I’ve never seen a fight and I don’t attend them, they still do illustrate and Paul used these games to illustrate and so can I. They do illustrate the fact that a man to be at fighting peak must take care of himself. And when a man, has some have gained world acclaim and become very popular, they find themselves going to the nightclubs and drinking and staying up all night and sleepilly loafing in the day. And then there comes the time when they’re to fight again. And though they try desperately to get ready by what they call training, the night clubs have taken too much out of them.

So, they go into the ring and collapse in the fifth round, and people say how could it be that this might be, world beater should go down so disgracefully before a man who was not rated who wasn’t supposed to be good? The answer was not is, that he lost the fight before he went into the ring, not when they counted him out there on the floor face down and unconscious, but as he drank wine and stayed up and danced half the night or all of the night. He left his victory in the nightclub they say.

It was also true of Israel, up on a higher level. Back yonder in the Old Testament times, you will find that when Israel went in righteous and prayed up, she never lost a battle. But when she went in filled with iniquity and prayerlessly, she never won a battle. Israel never lost the battle the day she fought it and she never won a battle the day she fought. She always lost her battle when she worshipped the golden calf or sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play or when she intermarried with a nation or when she neglected the altar of Jehovah and raised up a heathen altar under some tree. It was then that Israel lost her battle.

And so, it was by anticipation you see. It was before it happened that she lost, and it was true the disciples here as I’ve already mentioned. They didn’t lose the day that in the morning when one of them cursed and said he was not a disciple and another one kissed Jesus and said, here’s the man go take Him. And when even John who loved Him forsook Him and fled, and they all sneaked away and melted into the night. That was not when the collapse came. The collapse had started the night before, when tired and weary, they lay down and slept instead of listening to the voice of their Savior and staying awake to pray. If they had stayed awake and prayed alongside of Him and heard His groans and seen His bloody sweat, it might have changed the history of the world, and certainly it would have changed their history.

But not only are battles lost before they’re fought, battles are also won before they’re fought. Look at David and Goliath. Everybody knows the story. We tell it to the children and the artists painted, and it’s got a place in the thought and literature of all the world. How little David, with his ruddy cheeks, went out and slew the mighty, roaring, breast-beating giant eleven feet tall and with a sword like a Weaver’s beam. And get, tiny, little, stripling David went out and with one stone lay him low and with his own great sword which David could hardly lift, cut off his head and carry that huge head by the hair, and display and lay it before shouting, triumphant Israel.

When did David win that battle? When did he win that fight? When he walked quietly out to meet that great, boasting giant? No! Let somebody else try it and the words of Goliath would have been proved true. Why, I’ll tear you to pieces and feed you to the birds, he said. And under other circumstances, he would have done just that. But David was a young man who knew God. And he had slain the lion and the bear. And he had taken his sheep as the very charge of the Almighty. And he had prayed and meditated and lay under the stars at night and talked to God. And had learned that when God sends a man, that man can conquer any enemy no matter how strong. And so, it was not that morning on the plain there, between the two hills that David won. It was all down the years to his boyhood when his mother taught him to pray, and he learned to know God for himself.

Then there was Jacob. Do you remember that after twenty years, he was to meet his angry brother who had threatened to kill him. He had never seen him. He had gotten away so that Esau couldn’t kill him. And now he was coming back. And the Lord revealed that the next day they would meet there on the plain beyond the river Jabbok. And the next day they met down on the plain, and they threw themselves into each other’s arms, and Esau forgave Jacob. And Jacob conquered his brother’s ire and his brother’s murderous intent. When did he do it? Did he do it that morning, when he walked out to meet his brother and crossed over the river? No. He did it the night before when he wrestled alone with his God. It was then he prepared himself to conquer Esau. Esau being the sulky, hairy man of the forest who had solemnly threatened by oath that he would slay Jacob when he found him. How could he cancel that oath? How could he violate the salty oath taken after the manner of the East? God Almighty took it out of his heart when Jacob wrestled alone by the river. Always it’s so. And Jacob conquered Esau the night before, not when they met, but the night before they met. And so it was with Elijah. Elijah defeated Ahab and Jezebel and all the prophets of Baal and brought victory and revival to Israel. And when did he do it? Did he do it that day on Carmal?

I counted as I sat here. Not that I wasn’t enjoying the service, for I certainly do enjoy every second of it, all the singing and all the rest. But I counted the words. Do you know how many words there were in Elijah’s prayer? After Baal all day long had prayed and leapt on the altar and cut themselves till they were bloody, then Elijah walked up at six o’clock in the evening, at the time of the going of the evening sacrifice. Elijah walked up and prayed a little prayer. Was it a prayer that took him twenty minutes as we sometimes do in prayer meeting and shut others out? Was it a long eloquent prayer though it was a blunt-read little prayer of exactly sixty-six words in English, and I would assume fewer in Hebrew.

So, there was your prayer. Did that prayer bring down the fire? Yes and no. Yes, because if it hadn’t been offered, there would have been no fire. No, because if Elijah hadn’t known God all back down the years and hadn’t stood before God during the long days and the months and years that preceded Carmel, that prayer would have collapsed by its own weight, and they’d have torn Elijah to pieces. So, it was not on Mount Carmel that Baal was defeated, it was in Mount Gilead. For remember that it was in Gilead, from Gilead that Elijah came. And I feel I am always a better man after reading this story. How that great, shaggy, hairy man dressed in this simple rustic garb of the peasant came down boldly, staring straight ahead, and without any court manners or any knowledge of how to talk or what to do, walked straight in smelling of the mountain and the field, and stood before the shrinking, timid, cowardly, henpecked Ahab, and said, I’m Elijah. I stand before Jehovah. And I’m just here to tell you there’ll be no rain until I say so. Goodbye. That was a dramatic moment, a terrible moment, a wonderful moment, but back of that were long years of standing before Jehovah. He didn’t know he was to be sent to the court of Ahab, but he had anticipated it by long prayers and weightings and meditations in the presence of his God.

Now, my brother, there are crises that wait for us out there, as there was a crisis that faced Jesus and His disciples, and David, and Israel and Daniel and Elijah and all the rest. There are crises that wait for us. I want to name a few of them briefly. One of them is acute trouble. Now, I hope it doesn’t come to you, but the history of the race shows that it comes to us all at some time. And when sharp trouble, with its shocking, weakening sting, comes to us, some Christians meet it unprepared. And of course, they collapse. But is it the trouble that brings the collapse? Yes. And no. It is the trouble that brings the collapse, in that, they wouldn’t have collapsed without the trouble. But it is not the trouble that causes them to collapse, because if they had anticipated it and prepared for it, they would not have collapsed. The man who goes down unto trouble, says the proverb, his strength is small. And his strength is small, because his prayers are few and lean. But the man whose prayers are many and strong, will not collapse when the trouble comes.

Then there’s temptation, temptation that comes unexpected and subtle, and it’s too unexpected and too subtle for the flesh. But anticipatory prayer gets the soul ready for whatever temptation there may be. Was it the day that David walked on the roof top that he fell into his disgraceful and tragic temptation? No, it was his long gap that the historians say was in between, and they don’t know what David was doing. I know one thing David wasn’t doing, he wasn’t waiting on his God. He wasn’t out lying, looking at the stars and saying, the heavens declare the glory of God. He did that. But that’s the time he wasn’t doing it. And so, David went down because the whole weight of his wasted weeks before, bore down upon him. So, temptation can’t hurt you if you have anticipated it by prayer. And temptation will certainly fail you if you have not.

And then there’s Satan’s attacks. Now Satan’s attacks are rarely anticipated because Satan’s too shrewd to be uniform. You see, if Satan established a pattern of attack, we’d soon catch on to his pattern. If I could go to the games to illustrate. I’ve never seen but one ball game in twenty years and no prize fight. But, if you allow me again, as Paul, to illustrate. If the devil were to be uniform and regular in his attacks, the human race would have found him out a long time ago, and poorest old church member would have known how to avoid him. But, because he is not uniform, but highly irregular and mixes things up, He’s deadly if we haven’t the shield of faith to protect ourselves.

Take the pitcher for instance, he doesn’t start throwing when the first inning begins and throw this same ball in the same place for nine innings. If he did, then the score would be 128 to nothing. But what does he do, he mixes them up, and the batter never knows where they’re going to appear. First up, then down and in and out and lo, then fast, then down the middle. He mixes them up. It is the absence of uniformity that makes the pitcher effective. And you think the devil isn’t as smart as dizzy Dean or Billy Pierce.

Do you think the devil doesn’t know that the way to win over the Christian is to fool him by irregularity. Never attack him twice the same way in the same day. Keep coming in from one side one time, another side, another side like the boxer. You think that boxer goes in there and gets himself rigidly stereotyped; he leads with his left, he strikes with his right, he moves back two steps, he moves forward two steps Why are the commonist stumble bum would win over a fighter like that. A fighter has to use his head too. And first, he attacks from one side, then from the other, then dashes in and backs away, then pedaled backward, and then then charges, and then it’s left and right then, feignt then, sidestep, and then weaves and bobbs, then; you know how to do it.

You won’t believe this, but I used to fight when I was a kid, a young fellow. You wouldn’t believe that would you? You’d think that anybody big enough to lift a boxing glove would be able to knock me down, but I was never knocked off my feet. I was too fast. And my brother, that’s the way to do it. The devil doesn’t come in always the same way. Every one of us, any of us could figure him out. But he will come at you today like a wild bull of Bashan, and tomorrow he’ll be as soft as Ferdinand. And the next day he won’t bother you at all. Then he’ll fight you three days in a row and let you alone for three weeks. Remember, it was said of Jesus after the three temptations, he left Him for a season. Why? To get the Lord to drop his guard, of course.

And so, the devil fights like a boxer. He pitches them in like a skilled pitcher. He uses strategy. Now, I say that’s why it’s pretty hard to anticipate; you don’t know what he’s going to do next. But you can always put a blanket anticipation down. You can always figure that the devil is after you. And so, by prayer and watching and waiting on God, you can be ready for his coming, when he does come, and you can win. Not the day he arrives but the day before he arrives. Not the noon he gets to you, but the morning before the noon. And the only way to win then consistently my brethren is to keep the blood on the doorpost. Keep the cloud and fire over you. And keep your fighting clothes on. And never allow a day to creep up on you. Never get up early in the morning and look at your clock and say I’ll miss my train and dash away. If you must dash away, take a New Testament along. Instead of reading the Tribune, read your New Testament on your way to work. Then, bow your head and talk to God. Get ready. I don’t recommend that. It’s too fast and too uncertain. But I say, rather than not pray at all, grab prayer somewhere in the morning. I met God in the morning when the day was at its best, said Cushman.

So, I recommend never let a day creep up on you. Never let Thursday floor you because you didn’t pray on Wednesday and never let Tuesday get you down because you were prayerless on Monday. And never let three o’clock in the afternoon floor you because you didn’t pray at seven in the morning. See to it that you get prayed up somewhere.

Now, I have 1-2-3-4 that are recommendations. And I’ve got eight minutes. That means two minutes apiece and I will turn you loose to go out into the sunshine and think over these things. But you want to take down these four little thoughts that I’m going to leave with you to close, the little conclusion. All sermons should have conclusions. Never act as if things were all right. Now, if the devil lets you alone a while and you’re not in much trouble and you’re reasonably happy and reasonably spiritual, you’re likely to develop a complex that says, well, things are all right, and you’ll neglect your prayer life and you don’t watch and pray.

Remember, as long as sin and the devil and disease and death are abroad in the land, like a virus, like a contagious disease, things are not all right. And you’re not living in a healthier, wholesome world, healthful world; a world that is geared to keep you spiritually healthy. This vile world is not a friend of grace to lead us on the God. It’s the opposite. So instead of assuming that things are all right, assume that they’re always wrong. And then prepare for them and anticipate them from whatever direction they come. That’s number one.

Number two is never trust the devil and say things are all right. The devil business is overdone and I won’t pray today. I’ll wait till Wednesday. Never trust the devil. Just as you can’t trust a communist, you can trust the devil, because it’s from the devil, the communists learn their techniques and get their psychology and justice. No statesman worthy of your vote or trust ever ought to trust a communist as long as he’s a communist. So, we never must trust the devil, never. Never imagine that he’s smiling. Never look at a picture of him by Dorre or somebody and say, oh, he’s not a bad looking devil. Perhaps all this is more or less, it’s like Santa Claus and Jack Frost. It’s only imaginary. Never trust the devil.

Always anticipate any possible attack by watching and praying, for the spirit though it’s willing, the flesh is terribly weak. Again, never become overconfident for the very reason I’ve stated that our Lord stated the flesh is weak.  Never become over confident. Many a man has lost a fight from overconfidence. And many a businessman has lost a business because he was overconfident.

And fourth, never underestimate the power of prayer. Watch and pray said Jesus and He wasn’t talking poetry. Watch and pray said Jesus; and he practiced it. And won because he did practice it, and caught the spinning world that sin had thrown out of gear. Caught them in the web of His own love and redeemed them by the shedding of His own blood. He did it, I say, because He readied Himself for that awful event, and that glorious event, by prayer the night before. And by prayer in the mountains and other times, and by prayer down the years to his boyhood.

Never underestimate the power of prayer, and remember that without it, you cannot win, and with it, you cannot lose. Granted, of course that it’s true prayer and not saying of words. Granted your life is in harmony with your prayer. If you pray you cannot lose. And if you fail to pray, you cannot win. For the Lord gave us the example of anticipatory prayer, getting ready for any event by seeking the face of God in watchful prayer at regular times. Then no matter what happens, like Jesus Christ our Lord, like Daniel and Elijah and the rest, you can go triumphantly through, for prayer all the way wins.

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Tozer Talks

“Faith, as Confidence in God”

Sunday evening, August 21, 1955

John 14:13, 14 & 1 John 5:14

Tonight, I want to read two verses from John 14 and then turn to John’s first epistle and read a passage. John 14:13 and 14, whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask anything in my Name, I will do it. Well, that’s what John records Jesus as having said. Then in 1 John, the same man is writing, but now writing out of Divine inspiration and writing in line with what our Lord said, these words, this is the confidence that we have In Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatsoever we asked, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him.

You will note a similarity in the language, in the phrasing, in the emotional mood of the two passages. John was the author of the last one and he quoted our Lord as having spoken the first passage. So I want to talk tonight about faith as confidence in God. And this may have a familiar ring in as much as it will constitute my philosophy of faith, and it is of course among evangelicals a theme that we like to dwell on.

Now, John says that Jesus said that whatsoever we ask in His name, He would do. Then he says that we have this assurance, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us and if He hears us, we have the petition we desired of Him. Now, let me say this to begin, that there is a great deal of praying being done among us that doesn’t amount to anything, that is futile and never brings back anything to us. There is no good possible that can come with trying to cover this up or attempting to deny it. We will do a great lot better by admitting that there is enough prayer made any Sunday to save the whole world or four or five suburbs of the world. But the world isn’t saved. And much of our praying is simply an echo. The only thing that comes back to us is the echo of our own voice.

Now this has a very injurious effect upon the church of Christ. Not only injurious, but sometimes disastrous. There are about six things that unanswered prayer does in a congregation over an extended period. It tends to chill and discourages the praying people. If we continued to ask and ask and ask like a petulant child that doesn’t expect to get what it asks for, but continues to whine for it, we continue to do that and never get an answer. The temptation is that we will get chilled and cold inside of our hearts and get discouraged. And then it confirms the natural unbelief of the human heart for, remember this, the human heart by nature is filled with unbelief. It was unbelief that led to the first act of disobedience. Therefore, not disobedience, but unbelief was the first thing. While disobedience is the first recorded sin, back of the act of disobedience was the sin of unbelief, or the disobedience would never have taken place.

So, to pray and pray and have a church pray; pray for her sick and have them stay sick or die; pray for deliverance and never get it; pray for a thousand things and never see one of them brought to pass, I say the effect is to confirm the natural unbelief in the human breast.

And then, it encourages the idea that religion is unreal. And a great many people have the idea that religion is unreal. It is a subjective thing, purely, and there is nothing real about it. There is nothing to which you can be referred. If I use the word “horse,” everybody’s mind immediately jumps to a large animal with short hair and ears that stand-up, intelligence face, fast on its feet and powerful. Everybody knows what the word “horse” means because our English word “horse” has a reference, something to which the word refers. If I use the word “lake,” everybody thinks of a large body of water. If I use the word “star,” everybody thinks of a heavenly body. But we can use the word “faith” and belief in God and Heaven and all His works, and there is nothing to which it refers. They’re just words, like pixies and fairies and such things. And that encourages that false idea in our hearts when we pray and pray and pray and get no answers.

And then it gives plenty of occasion to the Enemy to blaspheme. The Enemy loves to blaspheme. He is a dirty-mouth, obscene blasphemer.  I don’t like to abuse the Devil. I don’t like to even abuse the Devil, but I have a lot of secret sympathy though I wouldn’t myself use it. But I have a lot of secret sympathy for that rough old Irishman William Nicholson, who calls the Devil a dirty old pig. And he is just that, an obscene old pig. He loves to blaspheme, and if he can get a lot of Christians howling to the high heaven for weeks on end, and then see to it that they never get an answer. I don’t know what he says, but I know what he says has moral obscenity in it and he blasphemes God.

And worst of all practically is the enemy in possession of the field. The failure of a military drive when it wants fails, and worst part is not the men they lose. The worst part is not the face they lose. The worst part of the failure of a military drive is that it leaves the enemy in possession of the field. And when the people of God pray and pray and get nowhere, it leaves the enemy in possession of the field. My listening people, this is in itself a tragedy and a disaster. The Devil should be on the run. We should never see anything but the back of his neck. He should be always retreating and retreating and his worst fighting should be rear guard action. A scorched earth policy, burning and destroying as he goes, but always on the run.

Instead of that, the obscene and blasphemous Enemy, smugly and scornfully hold this position. The people of God let him have it, and as of course, retards the work of the Lord greatly. Having no prayers answered, having prayer sent up to having to come back empty. It is like sending an army out without weapons. It is like setting a pianist down to a piano without fingers. It is like sending a woodsman into the woods without an axe or is like sending a farmer into the field without a plow. And the work of God stands still.

Now, Jesus said anything we would ask in His name we could have it. John said, this is the confidence, the boldness, the assurance we have. I’m not adding words. Our English tongue is a very highly versatile, almost volatile tongue. We can say anything we want to say. It is the richest of all the languages because it has received tributaries from everywhere. But our difficulty is that sometimes we have to use a half dozen words to mean as much as one word means in another language. And so when the Holy Ghost said, this is the confidence we have in Him, that word confidence, our English word “confidence” is not enough, so the translators call it, this is boldness we have in Him. And others say this is the assurance we have in Him. So, it takes the word confidence, boldness and assurance to mean what God meant when he said this is that which we should feel toward him.

Now, right here comes a parting of the way between the man of faith and the man of unfaith. For the man of unfaith rejects flatly this kind of teaching; that this is the confidence, that we have in God that if we ask anything according to His will, He will give it to us. The man of unfaith says that can’t be so, and they will not accept it, and he demands the proof of human reason.

Now, we’re going to leave aside a little for the moment the fact that unbelief is a moral thing. That it is not a mental thing at all, but a moral thing. Unbelief is always sinful because it always presupposes

an immoral condition of the heart before it can exist. Faith is not the failure of the mind to grasp the truth; it is not a bad conclusion drawn from logical premises. It is not the failure or unsoundness of a logical premise. It is a moral sin. But we’ll leave that aside for a little bit and simply say that the man of unfaith cannot understand the language that I’m giving you now. This is the confidence that we have in God that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. If you will ask anything in my Name, I will do it. He says, I got to have a reason for this, but a man of faith feels confident. The man of faith does not dare or rest upon human reason.

I have wondered sometimes why somebody hasn’t come out and said that I have used reason to prove that reason was no good. But here’s what I have done, I have used reason to do what reason can do, viz. and namely, to show that there are things that reason cannot do. I have never been against human reason. But I have been against human reason trying to do things that human reason is not qualified to do. I once more say to you that the great difference today in the world is not between the liberal and the fundamentalist, but the great gulf fixed today is between the evangelical rationalist and the evangelical mystic. The one who believes God and disbelieves human reason, and the one who believes that things of God can be proved by and grasped by human reason. I may not live to see it, but some of you younger people will live to see that I was right in what I’m saying. We have evangelical rationalists that insist upon trying to reduce everything down to where it can be explained and proved. And the result is we have rationalized faith and we have pulled Almighty God down to the low level of human reason.

There are some things human reason cannot do. You can use human reason to discredit human reason. Anything that human reason can do, I’m for it. You have a can opener in your house and what woman doesn’t. You don’t use it to mend your little boy’s stocking. You use it to open cans. Your husband has a hammer and saw. He doesn’t use them to paper the wall of the living room. He uses it to cut boards and pound nails. Everything was created for a purpose. And I claim that there are some things human reason can’t do. Human reason and faith lie not contrary to each other, but one lies above the other. Faith, when we’re believers, we enter another world all together; a realm that is infinitely above “little Reason.” My thoughts are not your thoughts nor My way is your way. High as the heaven is above the earth, so great are the thoughts of God above the thoughts of man. Faith never goes contrary to reason. Faith simply ignores reason and rises above it. Reason could not tell us that Jesus Christ should be born in the Virgin Mary, but faith knows He was. Reason cannot prove that Jesus took upon Him the form of a man and died under the sins of the world, but faith knows that He did. Reason cannot prove that on the third day He rose from the dead, but faith knows that He did, for faith is an organ of knowledge.

You see, there are fundamental rationalists that say the human brain alone is an organ of knowledge. They forget there are at least two other organs of knowledge. Feeling is an organ of knowledge too. All the reason in the world couldn’t tell you the temperature was 98 today, but you felt that it was didn’t you?  I did, even I can stand the heat like a lizard but I’ve had enough of this. I know that it was hot today. I have an organ of knowledge, feeling. A young man loves a young woman. How does he know it? Did he read the Encyclopedia Britannica and reason to it? No, he listened to the ticking of his own heart. He knows it by feeling. Feeling is an organ of knowledge, and reason is an organ of knowledge, and faith is an organ of knowledge and we’ve got to believe that. Reason cannot say Jesus rose from the dead. Faith knows He did. Reason cannot say He sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, for reason doesn’t know, but faith knows that He did. Reason cannot say, He shall come to judge the quick and the dead, but faith knows that He’ll come. Reason cannot say my sins are all gone, but faith knows they’re gone. It’s all down the line, faith is an organ of reason and the man is an organ of knowledge.  

And the man who believes he’s having knowledge that the man who merely thinks, can’t possibly have. Poor little old brains and come staggering along behind like a little boy trying to keep up with the Dad. Coming along on his little, short stubby legs trying to reason. That’s why in the New Testament the word “wonder” appears “and they wondered at Him and they wondered at Him and they all marveled. Faith was going ahead doing wonders and reason was coming along wide-eyed marveling. That’s always the way it should be, but nowadays we send reason a little ahead on a little, short legs and faith never follows. Nobody marvels because we can explain the whole business. I claim that a Christian is a miracle and then just the moment you can explain a Christian, you have no Christian left anymore.

Some of you may have read William James’ “Varieties of Religious Experience.” I have read it two or three times. It’s helpful to me because I’m a man of faith. But William James did this, he tried to psychologize the wonders of God working in the human breast. But when the early disciples were on Solomon’s Porch in prayer and praise, people stood awestruck and joined themselves to them. And the real Christian is somebody that cannot be explained by human reason. Something happened that psychology cannot explain. And faith is the highest kind of reason after all. Or faith goes straight into the presence of God and goes behind the veil, for also our Lord Jesus Christ has gone, our Forerunner for us, and engages God Almighty and reaches that for which he was created, and communes with the source of his Being and loves the fountain of his life and prays to that One that begot him and knows that God that made Heaven and Earth. He may not be an astronomer, but he knows that God who made the stars. He may not be a physicist, but he knows the God who made mathematics. There may be many technical and local bits of knowledge he doesn’t have, but he knows the God of all knowledge and enters in past the veil into the Presence and stands hushed and wide-eyed and gazes and gazes and gazes upon the wonders of Diety. Faith takes him there. Reason cannot disprove anything that faith does, but reason can never do it.

Some of you, my dear friends, may have wondered why a few weeks ago, I sat down and took my pen in hand and wrote a tongue in cheek, half humorous, half ironic review of the book, “Prior Claim” because it is all going in the wrong direction. It is supporting the Bible by reason. It’s coming to the help of God Almighty by a few scientific facts. No, my Brethren, good men are doing it, better men than I, but they’re wrong. Not all the scientific facts ever assembled in any university of the world can support one spiritual fact, because you are in two different realms, two different worlds. One deals with reason, the other deals with faith. If the sun were to start rising in the West and go into the East, and if the Summer were to have no Fall but were suddenly plunged into Winter, and if the corn were to start growing down instead of up, and if the goony birds were all to start laying eggs and hatching puppies out of them, it wouldn’t change my mind about God or the Bible. For my  faith in God is not dependent upon the support of scientific helps. We don’t even know if they have got their science straight in the first place.

Faith is an organ of knowledge. And, this is the confidence that we have in Him. Faith mounts up on its long, heavenly boots, up the mountain top, up toward the shining peak and says, if God says it, then I know it’s so. What? This is the confidence that we have in Him. Do you see, this is the confidence we have concerning Him.

Now you see, we’re dealing with Him. I don’t recommend we have faith in faith. There’s an awful lot of it going on these days; people have faith in faith. There are men going around preaching faith. No, I don’t preach faith, never, never did and so help me God, I’ll not start it now. I know better. Nobody ought to go around preaching faith. I’m not preaching faith tonight. The Bible says, this is the confidence that we have in Him. There’s the origin and source and foundation and resting place for all our faith. In that kingdom of faith, we’re dealing now with Him, with God Almighty, the One whose essential nature is holiness, the One who cannot lie, and the One before Whom goes faithfulness and truth. Faithfulness and truth I say go before Him. He can’t lie and we’re dealing with a Character, you see Brethren. Our confidence rises as the character of God becomes greater and more beautiful and more trustworthy.

Oh my, this thing of memorizing promises in order that we might have more faith. Now, I’m a memorizer. I’ve got a New Testament in cadence form and I have the Book of Psalms in long meter form, easy to memorize and I carry them around with me and memorize. So, I am a memorizer. I believe in it, strictly believe in it. But if we think that more verses will bring more faith, we’re on the wrong track. It won’t. Faith does not rest upon promises. Faith rests upon character. Faith rests upon the one who made the promise. It’s written of Abraham that he staggered not at the promises of God through unbelief, but waxed strong in faith giving glory to God. So, the glory went to God not to the promise. What’s the promise for? The promise is that I might know intelligently what to claim, and what direction to go, and what God planned for me, and what God will give me. Those are the promises. They’re the intelligent direction.

Suppose a man made a will. I was just thinking, if I made a will, all I would have to will to anybody would be some books, that’s it. Oh, there will be some household furniture, but not too much and not too expensive. There would be a few books, but that’d be it. I will to my so and so this book and it would be gone and that would be it. But suppose that I made a will and my heirs came in to listen to the reading of the will. And the Lawyer said, it says, I will to my son Lowell, a yacht in the Gulf of Mexico. I will do my son Stanley, a 100-acre estate in Florida. To my son Wendell, a uranium mine in Nevada. Everybody would say, well, the old men cracked up before he died. He doesn’t have a one of those things. He doesn’t own a one of them. He doesn’t have a toy sailboat from the ten-cent store. He doesn’t have a thing. He actually made a will with no character back of it. The old fellow had cracked up when he went. They would all smile and go out and say, well, that’s too bad. He was all right up to the time he made that will, but there was no character; nobody could make good on that will. But suppose some rich man makes a will. He dies and they call in the heirs and they read. It says, I will ten thousand dollars to this person. I will $100,000 to this one. I will $5,000 to this is my faithful servant. I will, so they say, it’s all right, he can make good. He’s a great businessman, a well-to-do man, a man that had the confidence of all the American business public. Everybody trusted him down to the last character you see. He makes the will in order that his heirs might know what they can claim. But his will is only as good as his character, and if he’s got no character or he’s as I pictured myself to be, penniless, then the will doesn’t mean a thing. I could promise a yacht, but I haven’t got a yacht. I could promise him an estate in Florida, but I don’t have an estate in Florida. I just have a duck that remembers me with a lot of gratitude. I fed ducks when I was down there. I sat on the bank and fed ducks the time you sent me down there to rest. But I have no property in Florida. How can I will what I don’t have.

So you see, Brethren, faith does not come from promises. Faith comes from confidence in God. For faith rests upon character, not upon promises. But the promises are as good as the character of the one who made the promise. So, when I read my Bible, I have a promise, this is the confidence we have in Him. If you ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if He hears us, we have the petition as a promise from God. Jesus said, whatsoever you shall ask in my Name I will give it. There’s a promise from God. How good is a promise? It’s as good as the one who made it. How good is that? Ah, this is the confidence we have, faith says, God is God, the Holy God who cannot lie, the God who is infinitely rich and can make good on all of His promises. The God who is infinitely honest and never cheated anybody. The God who is infinitely true and never told any lies. That’s how good a promise is that God made. It as good as God is, because God made it.  But we push God off into the corner and use Him as an escape from Hell, and to help us when the baby’s sick. And then we go our way and then we try to pump up faith by reading promises. No, it won’t work Brother, it won’t work. This is the confidence that we have in Him, to glorify God by faith. It was God, not the promises, promises of course. We learn what God wants to do for us, we learn what to ask for. We learn what God has willed to us. We learn what we may claim as our heritage. We learn from the promises how we should pray. But faith always rests down upon the character of God.

Is that difficult to see friends? Why is nobody out in the whole world saying this? Why aren’t we saying that to our people? Why aren’t we telling our evangelical people once more, you’ve got to get to know God? You’ve got to get past making God a lifeboat to save you. You’ve got to get away from making God the ladder out of a burning building. You have to get away from the idea that God simply exists to help you run your business or fly your airplane; that God isn’t simply a water boy bringing you water while you have fun. God isn’t simply redcap carrying your suitcase and serving you. God is God. He made Heaven and Earth and holds the world in His hand and measures the dust of the earth in the balance; and the sky He spreads out like a mantel. And the Great God Almighty is not your servant. You’re his servant. He is your Father. You are His child. He sitteth in Heaven. You’re on earth. The angels veil their faces before the God who cannot lie.

I think it would be a wonderful thing that every preacher in America would begin to preach about God and nothing else for one solid year. Just one solid year, preach about God; who He is, His attributes, His perfection, His being, what kind of God He is, Why we dare to trust him? Why we can trust Him?  Why we should trust him? Why we can love Him? Why we should love Him? Why would dare not fall short of loving Him. And keep on preaching God, God, the Triune God, and keep on until God filled the whole horizon and the whole world. Faith would spring up like grass for the watercourse. And let a man get up and preach a promise and the whole congregation would say, I can trust that one. Look who made it. Look who made it.

Now, this is the confidence Brethren. Confidence may be slow in coming, because you see, you and I have been brought up in a land of lies. David in his haste said, all men are liars, but I don’t read that he ever changed his mind when he cooled off. Because everybody is built alike. Don’t anybody get mad now and leave, because you’ll only come back sorry afterwards. Everybody has a deceitful heart and desperately wicked by nature. And we are brought up in a world of lies where lying is a fine art. Turn on the radio, and I’m not a betting man, but I buy you a soda if you can find an advertising program where the announcer can talk for 20 seconds without lying. Now listen to me. If there is a program anywhere that tells the exact truth, I don’t know where it is. Lying has become an art. They lie in pictures. They lie on the radio. They lie on billboards. They lie in magazines. They lie everywhere. And of course, we’ve got that psychology. We don’t have confidence in people. We’ve got the psychology of distrust. Reason tells us don’t trust them. Don’t trust them.

If a man were to come down to my house and offer me a $100 bill, I wouldn’t take it unless, of course, I knew the man. You won’t do that. But if I know you, I’ll take it. But no man can come a stranger and rap on my door and say, pardon me, I am giving $100 to some upstanding citizens your neighborhood. I’d say you don’t even know my name Mister. I’ve seen your kind before. Goodbye. One day I got a done. Somebody had done me. He said, you owe me such and such for a fountain pen which I sent to your house. I’d never gotten any fountain pen from him. I wrote him a little letter back. I never got the second one. It’s a racket. It’s a racket. A boy will come along and say, Good morning Mr. Tozer. He had asked the fellow next door what my name was, so he knows me. And I look at him. He’s young, about twenty-six, crew haircut and a smile that won’t come off. And I say what are you doing, selling magazines? Oh, I should not, selling magazines, I should say not. What gave you that idea? And after about 15 minutes conversation, you’ll find out he’s taking subscriptions from magazines to get through college, but they call it something else. You don’t believe a man who comes to your house unless he has a reputation that dates way back. You can believe the Fuller Brush man. He won’t steal your teeth before he leaves because he’s got a reputation to maintain. But for the most part, we live in a land of lies and deception. And we have a psychology of disbelief ground into us from our birth.

But when we enter the realm of the kingdom of God and the realm of faith, everything’s changed. Everything is different there. Never was there a lie told in Heaven. Never in the sweet kingdom of God did anybody deceive anybody else. And our own Bible is a book of absolute honesty. Jesus when he walked among men didn’t pull the trick the evangelists pull. Now raise your hand. Now put it down. Now go get him. Never any of that.  The fellow, a couple of evangelists I heard one time, the Evangelist led the song leader out and stood him up. And he said, now my brother and co-worker, he said, he’s been away from his family a long time and this morning he got a letter from his wife and they all reached for their handkerchiefs and began to blow, very tenderly. He said, let me show you what he got and he pulled out what was in the letter, telephone bill due, the electric light bill due, gas light due. He said, back in his town, his little wife is keeping the home fires burning and he’s out here serving God. Now, let us all stand and pray that the Lord will send in the money to pay this fellow’s electric light and telephone and gas. I stood up but I didn’t pray ladies and gentlemen, I’m telling you that. No scoundrel will ever get me to pray.

You can’t, you can’t trust people much, but in the kingdom of God, nobody ever cheats you like that. Nobody ever goes down to some dear old lady with a mother complex, rubs back, I used to have a lot of hair, and says, You remind me of my dear old mother, will you pray? I need $500 to serve God and knows she has $500. And so, they pray tenderly and before he leaves, he gets her poor old check for $500. I have more respect for a man who would take a gun and go out and endanger his own life. Do you hear me? I’ve got more respect for the gunman who meets a man and says, give me your money or I’ll put a bullet through you. He doesn’t know but what a policeman around the corner will put a bullet through him. And he does it the hard, tough way. I have just as much respect for the man who robs with a gun as I do for that dirty cheat who takes advantage of a motherly, old woman and pray hypocritically, and yet, that’s being done. And I’m considered a cynic and a pessimist and a scoundrel for daring to say so. I’ll say it all right if it cuts my audience down to nobody but McAfee and my wife and the janitor. Because, if there’s anything, any old place where we ought to be honest, it’s in the church of God. Brother, what you hear from this pulpit you can believe. The ol’ boy may be wrong, but he’s honest. And if I know it, no man will ever stick his feet down here on this rug who isn’t honest. The cheat can’t get in gunshot of the church.

But the Bible always tells us the truth. It tells us David was a man after God’s own heart and then tells us David fell and committed adultery. We wouldn’t do that now. We smooth that over and leave that chapter out, but God put it in. It tells us Peter was an apostle of the Lord and that he cursed and swore and said, I never knew Him. It tells us that Paul was a man full of the Holy Ghost and turned on the high priest and said, you whited wall. They said, did you know that was the high priest? Oh, he said, I’m so sorry. The Apostle apologized, He said I was sanctified up to that moment, but I sort of lost it. Excuse me, I didn’t know he was the high priest.

The Bible always tells all the facts. It doesn’t tell you that if you’ll accept Christ, you’ll have peace of mind. It doesn’t tell you that you’re going to relax and go to bed and sleep twelve hours. It doesn’t tell you that you’re going to suddenly become successful and grow hair on your bald spot. It just tells you that you’ll have eternal life now and lots of trouble and hardships and thorns and cross bearing and glory in the world to come and eternity with God. And if you’re man enough to put up with the thorns and the crosses, and the hardships and the hostilities, you can have the crown, but you buy the crown by blood, sweat and tears. That’s what the Bible tells us.

This good, honest old Bible, no wonder they die with this beside their bed. No wonder they lay this on the breast of the saints when they lay them away. When I die, I want you to put a Bible on my breast, but don’t put a Scofield Bible on my breast, just the plain text King James Version. Amen? All right, now don’t come down and criticize me for saying that because it won’t do you a bit of good. I’ll laugh in your face. Well, amen.

Just this little word and then I’m finished. It’s three minutes to nine and I’ll be done at nine one.

In my Name, He says. What does that mean? Anything ye ask in my Name. It means ask according to His will. That’s where the promises come in. You’ve got to get those promises to know what His will is. Memorize them. Learn them. Get them into a part of your bloodstream, so you will have them on tap at any moment, fully counting on His merits. Ah, the merits of Jesus, they’re enough my Brethren, they’re enough. The merits of Jesus. We’re going to Heaven on the merits of Another. There’s no question about that. We’ll get in, because another One, went out. We live, because another One died. We will be with God, because another One was rejected from the presence of God in the horror and terror of Calvary. We’ll have the vision beatific because One hung with darkness around Him in six hours of agony. We go to Heaven on the merits of Another.

So, your faith rests down upon the character of God and the merits of the Son of God. And you don’t have to have a thing, not a thing, only your poor, miserable soul. And the more miserable you feel yourself to be, the nearer to the Kingdom you are. Somebody said as I quoted before, humanity is divided into two classes, the good who think they are bad and the bad who think they’re good. And the bad man who thinks he is good is shut out of God’s kingdom forever. But the good man in God’s kingdom is not much very likely to run around talking about how good he is. He’s more likely to say that he’s not worthy to be called an apostle. He’s the chiefest of sinners and an unworthy servant. God likes to hear that kind of language if it’s genuine. So, why come in humility depending upon the merits of another? If you pray and say, O Lord, I’ve been a good boy, answer my prayer. You’ll never get your prayer answered. If you pray saying, O God, for Jesus sake do it, you’ll get your prayer answered. If you come saying Lord, if you do this, I’m sure that I promise that I’ll do so and so, you’ll never get your prayer answered. If you throw yourself recklessly out upon God and make no reckless promises, but trust His character, trust Him, trust the merits of His Son. You have the petition that you ask of Him!

Why can’t we see wonders done in this day? Why can’t we? I don’t believe in wonders that are organized and incorporated, Miracles Incorporated. You can have it. You can have it. Healing Incorporated. You can have that. Evangelism Incorporated. You can have that. Vision Incorporated.  Without a vision incorporate the people perish. You can have all that. Whenever we’ve got to get incorporated and get a letterhead and the president and secretary and have all that, God isn’t in it.

The man of faith can go alone into the wilderness and get on his knees and command Heaven. God’s in that. The man who dares to stand and let his preaching cost him something, God’s in that. The Christian who will put himself in a place where he must get the answer from God, he must get the answer from God, God’s in that; to live as Dr. Brown calls it, living hazardous.

Well, I believe in God, I will never be caught asking God to send me a trinket to play with. O Lord, do a miracle for me so I can write a tract. No, no. God is not going to send Santa Claus toys to His little saintlets. But if you’re in trouble and you have confidence in God, and you will go in the merits of His Son and ask Him and claim the promise, God won’t let you down. God will help you and get you out of your trouble. Do you know that?

I’ve had them come to me, although I don’t preach in a section of the city where I have more, too much, contact with criminals. I’ve had them come to me and tell me, Brother Tozer, I’ve been in prison and I ought to be in prison again. Now I’m converted, what do I do? And I say, go back and tell the authorities. But first, before you go, let’s ask God. And on one or two occasions, I’ve had God upset the police court and judges and all the rest and get that fellow out. Because he dared to believe that when he was in trouble, God would get him out of trouble if he would tell the truth. God is that kind of a God.

Dear old John Callahan, he is in heaven now. God bless his Irish memory. He was a scoundrel if ever one existed. He was a criminal and a rascal. John got converted in prison, and he got converted the old-fashioned way. He hadn’t dispensationized.  He just got converted. So, finally they let him out.

He said the one thing bothered me and that was my mug shot. Do you know what a mug shot is any of you people? It is one of these shots that they keep on police records. You know, front view and profile and your number underneath and they kept that. The Governor pardoned John, but he still had his picture in the rogue’s gallery. And he said, I felt so humiliated about that. So he said, I called on God and I said, O God, please, I’m your child. Now, please get that picture out of the rogue’s gallery. So he said he was somewhere preaching and they met the Governor of the state. They sat and talked together at the banquet. And they got to talking about the pardon the Governor had given him and said, Governor, if you believe in me and you believe in God and you would like to set a crown on what God has done for me, would you do me a favor? He said, I’ll do my best. He said, would you get that picture out of the rogue’s gallery for me. He said, well, John, that’s a tough one. He said, that regulation. I don’t know what I can do. He said, a few days later, he got a yellow envelope without a stamp on it, saying $300 penalty for private use. You got him. You get him around March 15. And this one was from the Governor of the state, and there was very little in it except his rogue’s gallery picture. So, he said he put that in a drawer in his desk. And when he would eat with the Governor or talk with some big shot and sit down there and would say, John Callahan, you ate with the Governor. You’ve shaken hands with great men. He said whenever I’d feel that come over, he said, I’d reach down and get my rogue’s gallery picture out and say, John, there you are. That’s you and there’s where you still would be but for the grace of God. He said that always humbled him.

All the promises of God, Brethren. The merits of Jesus’ blood and the character of God. That’s the ground of our hope, not our goodness, not what we promised to do, and not what we have done. But what He promises us, and He can’t lie, through the merits of His Son. So, if you’re in any kind of trouble, why don’t you go to God and put Him to the test. Get on your knees and pray it through, pray it through. Would you do that? If you have trouble in your home; you’ve got trouble in your business; you’ve got trouble, real trouble. I don’t know. You know. Alright, go to God. Get down on your knees. Open your Bible. Say, God I hadn’t thought about it, but I can trust Thee. And then, look for the promises. Claim them. And Brother, God Almighty won’t let you down. God will move Heaven and Earth. God will make the river run backwards. God will make the iron swim. And God will help out his children if they will trust Him.