Complete Surrender — A.W. Tozer

Since the book of Psalms, Psalms 67, the merciful unto me, O God, the merciful unto me, shall my soul be kept within thee, yea, in the shadow of thy wings, till I miss my refuge, until these calamities build upon me.

I will cry unto God most high, unto God that hath performed all things for me. He shall send from heaven and save me from the repose of him that was brought me up. God shall comfort, mercy unto me too.

My soul is among life, and I lie even among them that are set on fire, even the tongues, men, and feet of spirit, and all that there is coming unto me. These are the places, O God, above the heavens, that thy glory be above all the earth.

They have prepared a net for my face. My soul is bowed down with dignity before me, into the midst, whereof when I call unto thee, the Lord God of my heart will sing his praise, and I will wake early.

I will say, O Lord, I am in you, and I am in the heavens, and I speak unto thee, that thy glory be above all the earth. Among the disciples, like this, he did the same to him and to them, to turn this into a permanent victory.

But God did that. Now, after I have fulfilled this victory, make me invincible, and give me the victory, that day will come upon which he said, O God, above the heavens. God is in heaven, and man is on earth.

God's Order: God First and Man Second

God is holy, and man is unholy. God is the first in sequential order. He was before the world was. He was before man was, or angel, or archangel, or sultan. He was first, and the health of the universe requires that this order be preserved.

First, he was properly crowned. He belonged to the Lord, and he must be the Lord. And when he is the Lord, and man beholds, and man understands that, and believes it, and takes his position there, victory will be his without question.

But if a man has to keep himself above God, or tries to keep himself above God, Holy victory can come to him. God is a Lord who is worthy of dignity and in honor, and all this must be so. But no, men have turned it around the other way, and they're put down second, and they are first.

And this is the trouble with it. Now, I wish that I could say, they and we. I wish there were a line as sharp as a razor blade, and as wild as the gun that separates daddy and the rabbit. But there is no such separating line.

The Church's Absorption of Worldly Philosophy

The truth is that the church people are greatly influenced by the people of the world. We drink their philosophy, we listen to their radio, we watch their television, we read their newspapers, we listen to their politicians, we absorb their concepts, we drink their philosophy that our mothers milked, and then we are converted mostly to living a good job.

We bring our way with the church the same inverted philosophy that we live out in the world, and we make a lot over God. That's the way that the business makers of the teens, or United States, make over an eminent author, or an Eisenhower.

But when the church goes down, God is put down, and you'll find it that way. Now, millions of people call themselves by that name and pray to them, but the true place of God with relations to that person is known by their church, and let you answer them.

When the church is between God and mother, who will be very in the church? Who will? Now, I realize that there are some people who give very generously to the Lord's work. They give so generously that you can hardly believe it, but if you knew what they had left after they gave what they did, you would consider it heroic at all, because we give not according to what we give.

We give according to what we have left, and when it's finally the church has to be made between money and God, every Christian doesn't hesitate. Now, he's a strict talker, and he's a clear thinker, and he can even make a nice prayer about it, and he goes to God and tells him very kindly why he's got to be shut in.

But he, of course, doesn't put it like that. He doesn't put it that way at all. Like the old pastor that's about to be gone. He's been praying for years. It didn't work, so he gives him some flowers and a toothpick, and everybody gets up and lies and tells God what to do with it.

But actually, he sent it. He's gone, but they are kind as nice as they can be. I remember hearing this one speaker, Joe Martin, who lived out of his place in the Indian Center of Fort Lomas, that he gave him an automobile, and he said, flowers for the church.

That's all. Flowers for the church. Our poor boys in New York, we knew, we recognized, we smelled them, and we knew there were flowers for the church. And when a man has to choose between God and money, why, he goes to God and prayers and tells God how much he needs to earn, and then chooses money.

Choosing God Over Ambition and Fleshly Pleasure

And when a man has to choose between God and ambition, he has to live to the end of his days, even in church. He's not living a life chosen for a reason. If you were aware of knowledge, you knew a good number.

How many popular singers these days got their start in church choirs ?You wouldn't be high-pitched. They were in the church choir as long as that's all they could do, but when they found out that they were wandering somewhere else and could make a name for themselves in several few hundred thousand records, they promptly walked out of the church choir and went to the whirlwind.

And, yes, those same people, many of whom there are Christians, and I heard of one group of singers that left the church choir and had given ten percent of their money back to that church, but their whirlwinds, nevertheless, ambition has won over God.

Then, when it comes to fleshly enjoyment, is it God or is it the fleshly enjoyment? When we come to make our choice, shall we give up the fleshly enjoyment and take God, or shall we try to compromise, or shall we go away to fleshly enjoyment?

Most Christians choose fleshly enjoyment, but they have read enough Christian literature, particularly Christian fiction, that they know how to work it. They're smoothly up to themselves, but God knows who you want and who owes you your duties.

Surrendering Romantic Choice and Marriage to God

Then there is marriage. Now, I've been in the ministry since 1919. I've been in the Alliance ministry since 1919. I took my task in the Alliance in 1919. I was ordained in 1921, I think. And, of course, I've married a lot of people, and I have learned what I was saying.

Some of the natives say, and I say, yes, I know there's only one. It's not a proposal, it's a test. They say, will you marry me? And I say, well, is that certain you want to marry a Christian? And I try to keep my thought clean on that, but up to now I've never known but one case, never known but one case where God was put ahead of a romantic choice.

Now, there may be cases that I don't know about, because I don't know all that can be known, just almost all. I don't know all that can be known, and so it could be that you know cases where a woman carefully, tenderly, and with a broken heart gives up a man for Christ's sake.

I don't know where they are. I don't know. Maybe I've forgotten some, but up to now I can only think of one couple. They could not have married, and so they asked me about it. One called me and said, I'd like to talk with you, and I said, do I know what you want to talk to me about?

And he said, yes, and I said, you don't want to talk to me at all. You know what a Christian is. You're what God tells you. Then, in a little while, he called me, and she said, could I talk to you and you want to talk to me about the same thing that Paul told me?

He said, yes, and I said, you don't want to talk to me either. You know what you should do, not do it. So that night, they met in her apartment, or home, and they got down on their knees, and she told me afterwards, she said, Mr. Tozer, you could have seen them die.

He said, you died, and they never asked each other again that image. You died, they died, because they knew they ought not to marry. And he said, God loves their children, but it's not very often that God loves you.

That's a man, I think I'd say. Not very long after that, he's an engineer on the railroad. Not very long after that, he was hurled from a ferry, two cranes, and he said, but God loves you. It's not very often.

I go to Niagara, I call it Cambodia. Another one calls it Vietnam. It may be, but he calls it California, not even Niagara. And when it's choice between God and friends, you and I are no friends. When it's choice between God and self, the sun means God.

The Cross as Total Discipleship

Nature goes on, but whenever man is called, we are this inversion of God. And he said, if God, this is the kind of news to make news, that if it hadn't been here this year, that I wouldn't break my wrist hiding underneath that.

They knew that. And they knew that I would not bring any banana oil with me. They knew that. They knew I wouldn't bring it, and they wanted me. So, I'm going to tell you this. There is no God on your face, you're in the grave.

You may have accepted Christ, you may have spoken the Bible, you may have paid semester extension in Niagara for worship, you may be teaching in the Bible, you may be doing other things, but if you are God's son, you're in prison.

You're not a terrorist, so you can't do what you want to do. Things won't be right, and this is an integral part of the teaching of Jesus Christ. Let him take up his cross and follow me. Let him take up his cross and follow me, and I obey this as he cometh in me.

But, do not expect that everybody will take it seriously. We smile at Jesus' cross as being wonderful, but in fact we're mad at him now, and we don't take up the cross. We make our own plans. The man who's taken up his cross has no plan.

He knows that if he doesn't know it, he'll be dead, and no doubt somebody else has made his plans for him. The man who's taken up his cross isn't coming back home. He lives in his house for the last time to his family.

He's finished. The cross ends him. But, for you and me, and this bachelor's day, the cross is a way to take care. It's something you sing about. It's something you talk about with people. And Jesus said in Montgomery that he forsakes house and home and husband and parents and his life-affairs.

Everything that he has, he shall forsake. You can figure that through, and we say we should still be young people. They'll forsake us and leave, and we can't hold them. I don't want any value from my young people like that.

I know better. I happen to know better. Young people are just as eager to follow Christ all the way as some of you older people who have lost your youth. And you don't drive young people away by preaching the cross to them.

You may drive some of the Rockefellers away, but they have never been there in the first place. But you certainly will not drive them away in numbers. The people of God are afraid that if they tell the truth, people will run and leave them.

Never let that war, never. If it was Jesus, it would be over in years. Now you know that in our time we believe a measure of the arrangement is Jesus whereby he does all the suffering and we do all the hands up and we do all the rocks and we do all the jenny.

But in a very long blues and blues and blues, in our country such as this and Delaware and Manhattan and Glen Rocks and all over the continent, you will find old folks sitting there. They've been coming to St. Petersburg now since the first Bolsheviks was in power.

And they feel the heroes because they give up their television for ten days. And they come and arrest us, arrest us. They say, arrest me if you want to go to St. Petersburg. Well, anyhow, they don't want to go there, but they're the same old boys they were.

The only difference is they don't have as much hair and they have more girth and they don't want to talk. But they get older and older and settled down into a society of half and half, half spiritual, half worldly, half God, half flesh kind of Christianity.

And Jesus said, I'll skew you out of my mouth in that day. Those same middle-aged people were bred as young people, looking to the youth evangelists. They even came and worked for an altar, maybe, but they wouldn't go all the way.

They just wouldn't do it. As a result of that, now they're compromised. They're back home. They're on the door. And there are pillars in the church back home, but they haven't got anything. And the young people that have been bred under the church label as the pastors, looking at them, just assuming that Christianity isn't much of anything, because there's no examples to any of that.

They took their last witness, and they read days of heaven upon earth, but they haven't got anything, nevertheless. They haven't got what we write about. They haven't got what they sing about. They haven't got what the church stands for.

And it started when they came to a place where there was a shake-up across, and they wouldn't say it. And they wouldn't say, be thou besotted. They said, God, we are really very besotted, but don't forget me.

I forget who it was, maybe C .S. Lewis, who said this penetrating thing. He said, there are two kinds of Christians. The Christians that say, thou wilt be done, and the Christians that say, I don't know how to handle it.

I'll tell you what, that's penetrating, my brethren. Some say, thou wilt be done, and some say, I don't know how to handle it. I'll tell you what, that's a true way. And there's so many ways. There are silent Christians who have surrendered all right, but they've done it thoroughly.

Entrusting Every Possession to God's Will

They haven't come and said a good drop between them and the trouble, and said, dear Lord, why am I so worried that you're not going over all of the earth? But the last, the last, I want to put it in your hands.

I want to put it in your hands, and let it move mountains if you'll take it. I want to put it in your hands. I don't care, you may as well go, but you will. I want you to say up from here, who could say that I was in the deep of your soul, I would rather have that I said to myself.

If that I said to myself, let it cost me anything, down his breast, let it cost me anything. Well, let that throne be upon my possession. I will never be able to say that, but to come to God, and have an understanding, and say, God, I want that throne to be upon my possession.

That's a slick car that you will get pinched in that garment, fellow, that's a rare little rattle when you pull away from the curb, especially if it's a girl looking hot. Do not let fire that burns my possessions, O God, and all that you have from your rulers, people.

You know where life seems, and you know where the trouble has been around a long while, but if you're in Missouri, you'll see so many things you wish you hadn't seen. You know what I've seen in these young people now, they grow up, three of their families, they live in an apartment or in some simple place, they struggle and bring them up, and then they get married and go, and they leave a couple and live a life, and there's not so many expenses, and a little more income, and so they decide that they can afford a split-level house in the first half, and so they do, and they go out there, and pretty soon it's too far in, and the church begins to lose, and they sit around and then compromise themselves with a religious teaching program coming out of the church.

And still, they find a lot of people that the reason they stand for the fourfold gospel. And yet long ago, and they're not worth killing, they're not worth burying, they're not worth the beast that would come out and go, and there's Henry in the corner, and there's this exalted man.

While they were young, they couldn't have enough money to live close to the church in the center of it. When they got older and got enough money, they got out somewhere where they couldn't have changed.

And the city churches, many of them in the East, are dying that way. Dying. Because we have had no job. We got a job, but not over my split-level house in the first half. We got a damn good job, but not over my new car and my little foreign car for a vacation.

It's in the day when Christ shall come to make up his joy. Practically, I am the man who has an ear of this spirit. Time will call us to judgment and ask us what we were doing while we were down. I have a thousand times over my friendship, a thousand times over our friendship, or a few thirds on our way.

Forsaking Worldly Friendships for Fellowship With Christ

Friendships are deadly. I have seen down the years how one man may come to the altar and be converted, child-raised in deserts, get up, take his new testament, begin to pray, and come to family meetings, and then slowly go back to his parents that he gave up.

And then after the passing of a few months, you don't see him around anymore. And when you do see him, and I must even say I haven't seen him in this past few streams, he's back to the old crowd. He's still a Christian, but he's back to his old friendship.

He's a Christian, but he's not a Christian. Just victory over your friendship. Tender oneself. You give up your friends in order to get the friends. You give up friends in order to get the friends. The one friend, that friend that I could...

I read this a little earlier in my book, and finally I can look at some text. It was used to talk about the man that takes a friend that's taken closer than a friend. Some of those sweet old Christians, old brothers of Coles, old brothers of Cables, and some of those...

There is a friend that takes a stick that's closer than a brother. Well, this is what Scripture says to Jesus. And he's a friend. He's the kind of friend that'll stick. But the others don't. Friendship.

Young fellas are here at camp, but back home, you at least rub elbows with my own. You don't cry for anything much, and yet you don't cry for any more wisdom, and you're miserable. You know what you need to do?

You better praise yourself because you're supposed to see the notice. Because you love Jesus Christ, and there's such a fine-looking, handsome, male, romantic, that looks at you, and you like him, and will never let him, never want to go out with him.

And you can't decide whether it's Jesus or that guy. And some of you are weary, and you're trying to carry on. You carry on. He's a man where he should be. He's a totally young person where he should be.

And, well, there is a family in the world. You wouldn't be hurt for Jesus' sake. I don't believe that we're a new-fashioned Christian until we have reached the place where God's the only friend we have, and we'll give up everything for God's sake, so that we'll have God all that we need.

And then you'll send us a thousand friends, but they'll be good friends, and they'll be good for us, and we'll be good for them. And you'll have friends all over the world, of all colors. You'll have good friends, but they'll be friends that help you and don't harm you.

Recovering the Serious Meaning of the Cross

And then, as I say, some people are going to have fun no matter, and we'll even make fun out of the cross. The cross is a jolly thing now. The cross never was jolly in the day when they nailed men on it.

Never was it jolly. The cross was the instrument of execution, and the instrument of execution is never a pleasant thing. Nobody jokes about it, or is embarrassed to tell you that. They had a party in New York, and I went in to sing.

We were shown through, and they tucked me in the electric chair and strapped me in. So I was sitting there, about a twat, and they were showing me around. Fine-looking young fellow, blond, handsome young fellow, and I said to him, Are you a, are you a, one of these, are you a, oh yes, he said.

He interrupted him. I'm one of these legalized killers. Then he showed me his strap. He said, he's got a broken strap. He said, there's a great big Hungarian. How awkward, those men. He was electrocuted here a few days ago, and he was so powerful that when the Jews hit him, he lurched forward and broke that strap.

And I asked him about those thirteen steps from the green door of his chair. I asked him what part he had, and he told me his part was to move them away and put them in the refrigerator. Well, everybody was shocked, and they were told there was, quote, more forgery.

He kept talking about dead people. But listen, Frank, listen. The modern cross. In the days of the Romans, they didn't have electric chairs. They had cross. And when a man was considered not worthy to live any longer, they put him on the cross till he died.

Just as when we consider a man's society to be bad, a man's unworthy to live, they put him in an electric chair till he died. And yet, we're going to have our pleasure with his children, and we're going to have our fun in that country, and then our reputation.

Dying to Reputation and Personal Ambition

There are those of us who want a reputation. We're ready to suffer, and we're ready to give up a lot of things in order that we might have a reputation. I want a reputation as a great preacher. I want a reputation as a good singer.

I want a reputation as a leader. I want a reputation as a writer. I want a reputation, we say. Well, just as long as you want a reputation, you're still not very hard to be, brethren. My wife said all that now, that if you want to be known as somebody, if you want to stay in the gate and have people bow to you and have a reputation, no good, no good, until you die of a reputation, and are willing to do nothing at all, and willing not to be known at all, willing to work behind the scenes unheard of, you're not for God to use.

Remember, I'm talking to any young fellow who has got ambitions to be another Billy Graham. God has mercy on you, junior. You'll never amount to killing in the kingdom of God until you're ready to never be heard of at all, until you're ready to drive the garbage truck that carries the camp.

Now listen to me. Until you're ready to go down and down and down just like a usual, your whole church will use you. Sure, if you're good-looking and got a lot of personality and got a bunch of, a lot of bounties and your needs, the church will use you.

Sure, the modern church, the modern evangelical church is geared to that kind of thing. Man doesn't have to die and be filled with the Holy Ghost to be used in the modern evangelical church. He just has to have a lot of personality and flip fast.

That's all. Or has somebody prayed for him? No. He bounces in there and found something, and bounces on and found something else, but it's a small flesh. The world is in it. He's never died. He's ambitious, and wants pure Jesus after the latter for him to climb up to fame on.

They put Jesus out and said, he wants this to live, and he uses the cross to kill Jesus as a symbol of his ability. He endures, my friend. Reputation and ambition to be known. You've got to die for your reputation, and name me your right finger in this glass, too.

You've got to die for that. You've got to die for your health. Many of the Lord's dear children are so afraid they won't be healthy that they won't do anything. I'll tell you what I mean. I used to be a superintendent one time, not this one.

Sacrificial Faith and Risking Comfort

I asked a district superintendent, a mutual friend of ours, I said, would you tell me, how is my friend's son-in-law getting on? How is he getting on spiritually? Well, he said, I'll tell you. So, just like this, he said, he's all right.

He's a good fellow, and he's a good pastor, but he said he has worked out a scheme, a plan, whereby he's going to perfect himself. He's not ready. He's not willing to turn. He won't do anything sacrificial.

He won't risk anything. He won't gamble. He won't take a pill. He just surrounds himself. You know, that's how many hours he can do this, and how many days he can do that, until he gets himself a rest.

He's got no party of the various things he has to have to protect him. He said he's protecting himself all the time. No party ever yet. Seven world goggles around protecting himself. God's people are, are, are, are.

You can give them up, you know. You can sacrifice them. They're sacrifices. They're ready to die. The Lamb didn't surround himself. It stood waiting for some man of God's will, and offered him a sacrifice.

The Prophet didn't surround himself. Those two hundred, or what? Two hundred back-slitting conquerors, they're the names that he liked. They hated him, but they were no good. But now, the man didn't hide.

Yes, but they were outbursts of tandem. Jesus walked among them, all with outbursts of detest. You've got to sacrifice yourself, put yourself on the altar, and be willing to give up and die. And then the glory comes.

This is how it's supposed to go, somebody else's glory. And if I've got to kill myself working for this, well, I suppose that would be something glorious. It can't be. And then, finally life itself. Now, you'll find it hard to comprehend what I'm telling you tonight, because, you see, what I'm telling you is way out of mood with the modern, the modern Christianity.

Now, as you know, we have examples on the other side. We have completely self-confident Christians, with little affinity for Christ and his cross. We have the John F. Lewis, you know, with his mouth out there, and acting to look as much like that as far as possible.

And yet they are doing it for Jesus' sake. They're here for Christ. He's not doing it for Jesus' sake at all. He's doing it for his own eternal pleasure, and he's using the church as a theater because he has yet to take where the illegitimate theater would take.

That's a broad end of where we're at. That's why we don't have the joy we ought to have. That's why we don't have the treatments we ought to have. That's why we don't have the glory we should have and could have and God wants us to have, because we won't pay the price.

God is glorified. We want a cup. We want a cup. We want a percentage, and it's this cry for a percentage of the glory that ruins so many of God's future. Well, I'm wondering this morning, and today, with my brother, if there might be those here having in mind the saints of God, Abraham, and St. Joseph, and knew the price they paid, I'm wondering if there are those who would come to the Lord and say, Oh God, tonight, I want to make a vow.

I want to make a prayer. It is, Be Thou with the prophets at my expense. Honor Thy name. Glorify Thy self. Take Thy proper place above all that I have. Above all the precious things. Everything God, be Thou above all, and let's trust in what it wills.

“My Kingdom Go”: Surrendering to God's Rule

I wonder if there are some, and, oh, I think there are, at any cost to us, we are as long as over me. Someone said this, and perhaps the eschatology isn't sound, but this devotion is sound. Mary said this.

She said, "'Nobody can pray, "'Thy kingdom come,' without the corollary prayer, "'My kingdom go.'. Before God's kingdom can come, my kingdom must go. As long as I have a kingdom, a little kingdom, a poor little flat-sack kingdom, poor little kingdom with barber chair thrown and a wire cropped, no matter what poor wretched little kingdom I have, as long as I have it, the kingdom of God can't come within my reach.

But when His kingdom comes, my kingdom has to go, and before His kingdom can come, my kingdom must go. My kingdom.'. You know, you've been, young lady, and I've seen lovely young women around the ground, but the trouble is, I mean to know them, and it's your kingdom, and it's got to go.

I thought about it when I was taking a walk this morning, and some fellows standing up there in back, and I thought to the back of the White House in Chicago, the way they stood and the power they seemed to have.

But the trouble is, boys, be anonymous. It's your kingdom. You're private. It's you. It's your flesh. "'My kingdom go. Thy kingdom go.'. Are there those who would make this?". Not a Bible, but would have this understanding with God.

It would come to God and say, "'O God, beginning tonight, set in motion a chain of circumstances. that will result in thee being glorified, and me being saved, and thy kingdom, O Lord, places thy poor and humble servant.'".

If you will do that, if you will take that faith, now I don't say that you can come to the office tonight and finish this. I don't say you can come tonight and kneel, spend five minutes, get up, dust off your knees, and go.

A perfect example of what an entirely Christian ought to be. I don't believe that, but I'll tell you what to do. I believe that you can come and make your vow and set yourself, and serve towards God. And then, from there on and from now on, it'll be victory following victory, and glory following glory.

And then, from there on and from now on, it'll be victory following victory, and glory following And in your own words, tell God that you want him to be exalted over you as it costs you everything down to yours.

Tell him that you're not strong enough to follow him. Tell him that you can't keep your mind made up. Tell him you're weak. But tell him you're counting on him to work in you to will and to do all these good things.

He'll accept that. God will. He'll accept that. And you'll begin to work progressively. I'll tell you. It cuts you down, it builds you up. To take away and to give back. To take away the pink, it gives you the silver.

To take away the black, it gives you the gold. To take away all friends, it gives you friends that'll be yours through eternity. To take away a cheap claim, it gives you a lasting claim along the same path.

The Call to Make a Permanent Surrender

Are you ready? Would you do that? Are those here? You know, somehow I have a feeling that there will be some. There won't have to be disappointment. But I believe there are some who will at night come and kneel and say, Now this is it tonight, God.

I have really put my faith towards that. From here on, God, I'm nothing and now I'm everything, and you work it out, I can. God will take you over. Amen? Let's text. It's a book of psalms. Psalm 967. Psalm 67.

Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me. My soul shudders in fear. Yea, in the shadow of that fear will I make my refuge.