Tozer Devotional

Tozer Devotional

Work and Pray

It is useless to ask God for something we could obtain with a bit of effort properly directed. No instructed Christian will waste his time praying for things that are within his own power to obtain. To do so is to deceive ourselves and make a farce of the whole concept of prayer. If work will get it for us, then work it is or we can go without it. God will not contribute to our delinquency by supplying us with gifts which we could get for ourselves but have done nothing to obtain. But there is a third category consisting of desired objects which work alone can never secure. They lie far enough out of our reach that it will take something supernatural to get them for us, yet near enough that we must labor to obtain them. This adds up to work and prayer, and it will probably be found that the greatest majority of desired objects and objectives fall within this category. And this situation brings us close to God and makes us His co-laborers. Whether it be a desire to open a closed field, win a hostile tribe, obtain a better job, build a new church, have a successful meeting, rear a family, get through school or do any one of an almost infinIte number of legitimate things, the method is likely to be the twofold one of work and prayer. We might paraphrase the famous exhortation of Dr. Simpson and say that when faced with these borderline tasks which we must work at but which we can never do alone, the thing to do is to work as if we had it all to do and pray as if we expected God to to it all. But wishing-let the vain dreamers and the builders of Spanish castles spend their time at it if they will. We know better than to waste our time and efforts at anything so useless.

Verse

After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. . . . One of those listening was a woman named Lydia . . . The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul's message Acts 16:10, 14

Thought

Paul would never have experienced the demonstration of God's power in Philippi had he not obeyed God and gone there. Yet Paul could not open Lydia's heart to respond to the message. Only God could do that. There is that for us to do and that for God to d

Prayer

O Lord, give me sensitivity to Your direction as to what You want me to do and what only You can do. In Jesus' name.