We Travel an Appointed Way: Making Spiritual Progress
By A. W. Tozer
4.5/5
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About this ebook
The difference is humility...
In this compilation of 39 editorials from A.W. Tozer, readers will enjoy eloquent distillations of the Reformation faith. Knowing God deeply and intimately brings purpose and meaning to life and should be the Christian's highest goal, and these essays will help that endeavor.
To the child of God, there is no such thing as accident. “We travel an appointed way,” says Tozer. The paths we tread were chosen for us when as yet we were not, when as yet we only existed in God’s mind. Our way is ordered by the secret script of God's hidden providence, and true faith displaces any possibility for chance or misfortune.
Tozer tells us that we are full of life filled with providences and plans laid out from above. He urges us not to think we are simply God's pawns, for that is the attitude of the unbeliever, whereas the true follower of Christ will know that he is one of God's beloved! The difference is humility.
A. W. Tozer
The late Dr. A. W. Tozer was well known in evangelical circles both for his long and fruitful editorship of the Alliance Witness as well as his pastorate of one of the largest Alliance churches in the Chicago area. He came to be known as the Prophet of Today because of his penetrating books on the deeper spiritual life.
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Reviews for We Travel an Appointed Way
6 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book was a good read. Some spiritual nuggets broken down into bite sized pieces. It’s rewarding to read material from those of years past to see we are not so different today. Unfortunately, we still walk much of these same spiritual paths. Thank you Mr Tozer.
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Book preview
We Travel an Appointed Way - A. W. Tozer
blest.
CHAPTER
2
Credulity versus Faith
Credulity and faith are like toadstools and mushrooms respectively, near enough in appearance to be mistaken for each other, but so wholly unlike that their effects are exactly opposite.
The true man of faith is seldom credulous, and the credulous man seldom has real faith. Faith belongs to the simple-hearted, credulity to the simple-minded. They are worlds apart. The one honors God by believing His promises against all evidence; the other is a child of superstition and honors nobody. Rather, he reveals untidy mental habits and lack of spiritual insight.
It is astonishing what some people will believe when they get going. They properly hold it a sin to doubt the Bible, so they refuse to doubt anything that is served up along with the Bible, however ridiculous and unscriptural it may be. If the story has a flavor of wonder about it, these uncritical friends will accept it without question and repeat it in an awed voice with much solemn shaking of the bowed head. Multiply such people in any given church, and you have a perfect soil for the growth of every kind of false teaching and fanatical excess.
We need to cultivate a healthy skepticism toward everything that cannot be supported by the plain teaching of the Bible. Belief is faith only when it has God’s revealed truth for its object; beyond that it may be fully as injurious as unbelief itself.
Many of the stories brought forward to justify the ways of God to men actually prove nothing except the unsoundness of the speaker’s intellectual fiber. Yet if all chimney-corner Scripture and old wives’ tales were forbidden, many a preacher would have to get out of the ministry. It is a deep pity that the Christian public must be forced to listen to so much nonsense and be helpless to do anything about it.
The point is, the Word of God needs no support from men. It stands alone, strong and majestic as the Matterhorn. When we call in the aid of childish stories and shaky illustrations to prove its truth, we do no more than to reveal our hidden unbelief and air our weak credulity.
CHAPTER
3
The Bible: The Book of Life
The Bible is unique among books, which means simply that no book has been produced just like it.
The Bible is not a book of history, though it contains much history, and all it does contain is authentic. It is not a book of science, though all its pronouncements upon the facts usually falling into the category of science are accurate and trustworthy. It is not a book of biography, though its biographical sketches are easily the most inspiring in the world. It is not a book of philosophy, though it is the sum of all that is deep and sound philosophy. It is not a book of astronomy, though its references to the sun and the stars rate among the loftiest sayings ever recorded. It is not a book of psychology, though its knowledge of the workings of the human mind astonishes the reader and lays bare his soul. It is not strictly a book of theology, though it is the source of all the true theology this fallen world will ever know.
What, then, is the Bible? It is the Book of Life. The words that I speak unto you,
said our Lord, they are spirit, and they are life
(John 6:63).
The Bible is a life-bringing and a life-giving book. It is not primarily concerned with any department of human thought for its own sake. If the Bible speaks about the rainbow, it is that we may be reminded of God’s covenant of mercy with mankind. If it tells the story of Abraham, it does so that we may learn to know the place of faith in our relation to God. If it points us to the moon and the stars, it is that we may know how frail we are. If it talks about the birds, it is to teach us to trust our Heavenly Father without fear or doubting. It tells us about hell not to satisfy our morbid curiosity, but that we may steer our feet far from its terrors. It tells us about heaven that we may be prepared to enter there. It writes the history of human disgrace that we may learn the value of divine grace. It warns in order that it may turn our feet away from the paths that go down to the path of destruction. It rebukes in order that we may see our own faults and be delivered from them.
Volumes could be written in praise of the Holy Bible without using one word too many. President Woodrow Wilson once said that the Bible is a book of such importance that no one unacquainted with it can be said to be an educated man, and no one who is familiar with it can be said to be uneducated. Sir Walter Scott, when he was dying, called for the book.
A servant inquired which of his thousands of volumes he meant, and the great man replied, The Bible, of course. For a dying man there can be no other book.
Even the skeptic George Bernard Shaw, during the last years of his life, kept a Bible near him and never traveled without carrying a copy along with him.
We should all have several Bibles: a well-bound reference Bible for study and a large-print, plain-text Bible for devotional reading. That many at least. And if we can afford it (and we can if we will cut down somewhere else), we should have a good modern translation or two. There are dozens of them. Their chief value is to stimulate interest by affording a change of style and to throw sidelights upon the text of the familiar King James Version.
Money invested in Bibles is money well spent. Time spent in reading the Bible is not likely to be time wasted. The Bible is the supreme gift for friends and loved ones. Words spoken in favor of the Bible are good words and, if they should fall upon the right ears, might prove to be apples of gold in pictures of silver
(Proverbs 25:11).
CHAPTER
4
Autumn Winds
Autumn winds are blowing again. The fall of the year brings with it a world of emotions as rich and varied as the notes of an organ. The spring is more stimulating and fuller of expectation, but there is about the fall a quiet strength which the spring lacks. It is not a wonder that so many serious-minded people love the fall,
"When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though
the trees are still,
And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill."
To the farmer, the first signs of autumn bring a warm sense of well-being. He no longer wonders whether his crops will turn out well. The full shocks of corn, the yellow pumpkins smiling between them, the high-piled hay mows and the full silos assure him that God’s summer has been good to him, and his work has been rewarded.
It is about this time of year, too, that a goodly number of men become strangely affected and begin to look off across the fields with an eager light in their eyes. For hunting season will soon be in, and the sound of gunfire and the baying of dogs will make sweet music over the hills and across