Collection of a.w. Tozer's Prayers - Volume 3 — A.W. Tozer

Father, we pray thy blessing upon these words and upon the little commentary that we've made on them, trying to apply them to our practical living. We pray that thou wilt give consent of heart and willingness to obey and cheerful faith to do as we're told by the Spirit in the scriptures.

Bless us during the day and for the afternoon and for the evening, and may this day be a big day, a great day. Not a dramatic day, necessarily, that the newspapers will talk about, but a day deep in the things of the Spirit.

We give thee praise. Amen. A church, we love thy kingdom. Her walls before thee stand, dear as the apple of thine eye, engraven in thy hands. For her our tears shall flow, and for her our prayers shall rise, and for her we promise to labor and work thy poor churches only if a ragged beggar woman, when she could be a princess and lean upon the arm of her beloved, O Lord Jesus, we pray for thy church.

Revival and Faithfulness in the Church

We pray for thy people who believe thy word or claim to believe it. We cannot pray now, at the moment, for the liberal, for the toughest, for the false teacher, we cannot. But we pray for those who believe the Bible, we pray for those who claim they are evangelicals, and yet they wear rags where they should wear silks.

O God, we pray thee, revive thy church in the midst of the years, revive this church, O Lord, revive the Alliance, revive every denomination that stands for the truth, O Lord, save us from fear and save us from intimidation.

We have grieved thy Holy Spirit by neglecting him, we have quenched thy Holy Spirit, we have listened to the blandishments of men who ought to know better, and they have made us afraid to believe in the power of the Holy Ghost.

We grieve for this, and we apologize to thee for it. We pray thee, O God of grace, out of infinite grace, send to this church a sweet wave of power to be, a sweet wave of ability to be holy and good and faithful and temperate and joyful and bright.

Send, we pray thee, such a wave. We thank thee for the Blessed Spirit, Father, out of its sending to the earth to be our advocate, our indweller, to show us the Lord Jesus, to lead us as a shepherd leads his sheep, and to be a mentor and teacher, showing the things of Christ to us.

We've acted as if he didn't exist, and we're sorry. We apologize and we repent for our neglect of the Spirit and our mistreatment of the Spirit. O Father, wash us clean and make us white in the blood of the Lamb, and pour a horn of oil on our heads, for the poor world bleeds and dies, and we have not to help them.

They starve and we have not to give them. Forgive us, Lord. Behold, breathe thy breath upon us and say, Receive thee the Holy Ghost. Save us, we pray thee, our God, from logicians and men with pencils and rules and squares and levels, always driving us away from the fountain.

Lord, we would put them behind us and under our feet and rise on our dead selves for better things. Help us, we pray, over these evenings together. May the total result be that one after the other of us shall be filled with a new power and a new grace and a new ability to be and do, that we might show forth the excellency of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.

We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are going to be thinking this week about thy suffering and thy death. The next Lord's Day we are going to celebrate thy resurrection. O blessed Lord Jesus, we thank thee of all that is past, and while we may commemorate it now, it doesn't repeat.

It's not repeated. I am not going to die Friday, nor rise Sunday, nor send the Holy Ghost 50 days later. After all that's history and done, we are the beneficiaries of it all if we only dare believe it.

Christ’s Death, Resurrection, and Ascension

Help us to believe it, O Lord, and forgive us for doubting it. We are the recipients of all that is trusty and all that thou didst bring by death and suffering and tears and groans and sweat, and by resurrection and by ascension to the Father's right hand.

We are the heirs of the ages. Upon us the ages have converged. We, O Lord, are richer than angels, but thou didst do this not for angels but for men. We are thy church, Lord. We are a people set aside here that have met on this corner in this building which thou hast graciously provided for us.

Here we are, Lord. We're waiting, Lord. We're expectant, Lord. We need help, Lord. O Lord, we pray thee, put thy arms about us and squeeze us together so tight that there be no pockets between us, no non-conducting elements that ground or hinder the power from flowing.

Let it be this week, let it be on over Easter, let it be for the days ahead. We beseech thee, O Lord. Let one after another of us pray, O Lord, find the secret place and there wait with our open Bible until our vessels are clean and empty, and we are waiting and believing and then we believe that one after the other thou wilt give power and working forward, Lord Jesus, to that moment when there shall be a sudden nearness of the Savior instantaneously bestowed, lovingly bestowed upon a thirsty people.

Save us, we pray thee, from the cheap pattern of the worldly churches. Bring us back to Calvary, back to Pentecost, back to all that they meant and mean and have now perpetuated for us. O blessed Lord Jesus.

Prayer for Ministry and Gospel Witness

O God for thy work there in French Quebec where everything is stacked against the people, against the true people of God. Bless our young brother, we pray. May thine oil be upon his head in such measure that everybody there, even though they hate him for his Protestantism, may love him for the fragrance of his life and slowly turn and see that the fragrance of a holy life comes from the same doctrines that they hate and thus give up their opposition and turn to thee.

With mercy we pray thee, attend the ministry of this young man and all of those who labor there. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen. No weaker, no smaller, no less God is eternal. Going about like a roaring lion.

Repentance, Spiritual Coldness, and Holy Living

The temptations, maybe some of us are cooling off inside our hearts. Please, Lord, before it's too late, help us to get enough of it quick before it's too late. Please, Lord, save us. People that have lost their conscience because they no longer sorrow that they don't feel sorrow.

Look at us again today. In our hearts. We're no better than Peter. People who like Peter have sneaked out of bibleship, or at least inwardly they have. Look on us, Lord, and break our hearts. Look on us and make us weep.

Give the grace of tears this morning. Lord Jesus, a few tears. If we knew that we could have this morning $10 ,000 offering plates for the church and for missions, we'd be glad. But if we knew instead we were to have 10 ,000 tears of grief and repentance and penitence and faith and hope and joy, we'd lay the $10 ,000 away and take the tears that we might.

Let's believe God together. Now we're going to close. When you go to him and sing tonight, don't sing junk. I know you don't think you do. But sing only that which warms your heart and makes Jesus Christ glorious.

And then slip away home, and don't waste your time selling jokes and making quips. Lose everything you've got today in the house of God. Let it stand. Jesus, God, won't you friends have dealings with God before you close your eyes and slumber this night?

Father, we pray that we have light on this. We want to thank thee that in thine infinite mercy thou hast not let us go like cattle to the slaughter, not knowing where we're going because we're fat and sleep, imagining that we're all right when actually we've been fattened for the slaughter.

We thank thee, Lord, that we've got light on this. Now help us to walk in it. Bless us, everyone. Take away all false hopes, all unscriptural expectations. Pull us back to the word of the Lord. As we go down the steps and onto the sidewalk tonight, mark the forehead of them that sigh and cry.

Praise God. Have mercy upon our America. Have mercy, we pray, upon our America. Dozens of gods, at least a dozen gods, have mercy, Father, and help us to turn from idols to sermons and to wait for light to come from heaven.

God’s Nearness and the Way Through Temptation

If this is now, we ask it in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. I want to talk about the doctrine in the Bible. God and Father of our Lord Jesus, we thank thee this hour. Thou hast not allowed us to wander into the serpent-infested valley and left us there.

But thou hast allured us and wooed us, and even there hast placed the door. Wherever we are, there's a way out and a way in from that spot. Thou hast so arranged it in thy grace. Thou hast sent thy Son, Jesus, to die, to rise, to live, to feed, to be for us, to advocate above as Savior by the throne of love.

While he's there and we are here, the door is within touch. We bless thee. We will not despair. We will not give up. We will not surrender to the kins of the enemy. We will dare to believe that with every temptation thou wilt make a way.

Thou wilt turn our tin into silver and our silver into gold. Thou wilt give us the garments of praise for the garments of heaviness. Bless thou the word spoken this morning. We ask it of Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Belonging to Christ and Justification

Dear Lord Jesus, we're unworthy to be members of thy, but we are not going to be tricked by the devil into letting our unworthiness make us morbidly unbelieving, even though we're not worthy to be. We're accepted in thee, and thou hast made us members of thy body, and we accept it.

And we leave the matter of our work with thee. And if angels or archangels question our right to be there, we look to thee as a sheep looks to his shepherd and say, Answer for me, Lord, answer for me.

I admit I'm not worthy, but answer for me, dear Lord, and thou wilt answer for us. For thou didst come from high heaven to low earth from the immortal and eternal liberty of the Godhead to confines of the virgin's womb, that we might be redeemed.

And thou didst die on the cross of shame and suffering and rise that we might be justified and forgiven, and be reunited again with the Father from which we fell in the fall. Lord, all this is true, and we leave it with thee.

Now wilt thou bless and help us to see how wonderful it is to be a member of however small a group that believes in thee. We leave the great, top-heavy Christendom to find its own way. We shall pray, O God, for all the Church, all who call themselves Christians.

We shall be tolerant and kind and charitable and loving and friendly to them all. But we will only go with those that love thy name, that trust the precious work of Christ on the cross, and that are ready to leave all and follow him.

Prayer for Toronto and the Churches of the City

We pray, O God, for every Christian in Toronto. We pray for all the ministers of the truth, and we thank thee there are many who preach the truth. Bless them all, Father. Grant that over these weeks that lie before us we may see a constant rising tide that shall eventuate and flow, that it shall be like the river that flows out from the throne of God.

All this.

Grant the world, yes, that they're us. We want it to be the other way around. We want to see the victorious always as our victorious today. We pray for these who have trusted in us. We pray to God. Take them between them and thee.

No education, no ambition, no money, no property. Between them and thee. Indeed, we pray thee. We pray for the day that God will bless. Let there be a harvest as a result of these weeks. Holy God. Jesus the Lord.

And indeed, and to do for these people, for the churches of this city, for the people who will be here, whether there be many or few. We pray thee. Do it over and over. God, we pray thee, as clearly as raising a dead man or healing a sick man or as in olden days.

For now, let's do these mythical miracles. Do thou, we pray thee, within the hearts and lives of people, miracles to sharpen fear as though it were. And when the meetings are over, those will have a deposit of power and grace within their hearts they didn't have when the meetings began.

Oh, God, I have a new power. Lift our voices. Repentance of our sins.