Collection of a.w. Tozer's Prayers - Volume 4 — A.W. Tozer

O Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus, how much we live in a world where perils and dangers are upon every hand, and lifetime is fleeting and judgment is coming, and Satan is busy, thugs are spurring themselves across the path, they're trying to prevent us from going ahead, but we hear you call on peace, and we want to know thee, and the power of thy resurrection suffering will be made conformable unto thy death, and we want to know the beauty and wonder that it is, and we pray to thee through requested prayer, O Christ Jesus, Christ Jesus, thou who didst come in olden times in the form of a dove into fire, and thou who didst come to Peter and to the Moravians and to thee, and to the Romans, thou who didst come, O Lord, and taught them their gift, O withhold not thy glory from us, who cry, show us thy glory, O Lord, show us thy glory and teach us how to go on.

Trusting God Through Darkness and Suffering

Grant, we pray, that this may be a good week, and if the devil makes it the worst week we've ever had, we'll have a naked intent and determination and we'll calmly, quietly believe, even though the darkness should settle over us, we'll know it's the cloud of unknowing, it's the dark night of the soul, the peace morning of the heart.

And we won't be frightened, for we know thou didst go through the garden and through the cross, and out of the darkness and into the tomb, and out of the tomb and into the glory. So wilt thou lead these, and lead us, and lead this church.

Praying for Spiritual Renewal and an Outpouring of Glory

And oh, we pray, bring us to a place where we may be under grace, spiritually prepared for a mighty outpouring of glory, an outpouring that shall bring in reality that which everybody's talking about and nobody else.

And we shall testament spirituality back to Book of Acts Christianity again. And may the out from us here there shall flow into the desert waves, and fire that shall touch churches and groups of us. It says, we pray, and above all things show us thyself, thyself, Lord, and show us thy glory.

For thou passest by, and show us thy glory, so that all the glory of this world shall appear as ashes to that wondrous sight. This we ask in the holy name of Jesus. Now, as we close the way to see, there's a little play before us, the opening verse of chapter two of that, what is it?

Hunger for God and the Oil of the Spirit

We pray, make us hungry. I know it's a trouble with thy church, Lord, that we're not hungry. We have the thing because we have the text that tells about it. We have the doctrine and think we have the object because we can describe it.

We think we've eaten when we're dying of malnutrition. We think we're full when we're about to cave in from empty. Oh, God, whet our appetites. Whet our appetites, we pray. Drive us, we pray, thee, like this, we roll by the way, until we're dehydrated and our tongues are hanging out.

Until we run to the water brook, crash a drink, a drink. Oh, God, upset us, disturb us, perturb us, worry us, make us anxious, until we're through with ourselves. Until we open our hearts like the sun in the rain.

Until we open our vessels as the widow's vessels were opened at the top and were filled with oil. Oh, oil of God, come and fill us. And make us so hungry we can't live until we're filled. This is Jesus' holy name.

But none compared with the deep knowledge of God himself. None, none. You know this knowledge of God, nobody can argue out of it. Nobody can argue out of it. They can come and point a fisthand or finger at you and call you every name the Lord permits.

And unless you feel bad about it, but you still know you're no God. They can come and argue with you, and give you scripture to prove you're all wrong, and one day you can say, well, you're a pretty good expositor, but I happen to know God.

You got things too late. You come to prove I can't, and I never came to prove it. So we can know God for ourselves, that I might know him. But those things, some of you know that. Some of you are trying through.

I've gotten letters, I've gotten phone calls, I have a hypothesis, and I know that some of you are finding the Lord in the new, rich, deep, and wonderful world, and I'm glad. But how about the direction?

The Call to Speak and Share What God Has Revealed

Can't we speak it? Now let's pray. Now before we do pray, we're going to send out a prayer letter to you today. I want you to remember me. The only one you have is talking back to you. Feeling you is bigger than you are.

You do not feel maybe quite about it all intellectually, but you're God. You want to know what Paul knew? Do you want to know what God has revealed and given to his Spirit of the Church down in the earth?

And you say, Pastor, you mean to suppose that I might have the Spirit of the Church arise and sit behind me under my feet? Whatever it is, friendship, ambition, a plan, or gifts or victories or anything that prevents me from speaking, would you raise your hand and you would say for me.

Anybody here would just say, I do want to speak. Put your hand up and say, yes, I do. Do it. You want to know, yes, I shall speak. Do it. You want to, yes, do it. God put a hand to this garment. Now let's pray.

Returning to the Beginning Through Christ and the Word

Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was with you in the beginning. We thank you, Lord Jesus, that when we come to you, we go back to the beginning.

That is Paul and Dr. Moses, Dr. Abraham, Dr. Adam. We go back to the beginning. Christ, the light of heaven and earth. Indeed, it is through the power, through these Lord's powers, through the cross of Christ the Lord.

Leaving the Past Behind and Looking Forward in Faith

In the name of our son Jesus, we pray, Father, that thou wilt take these people and these older ones and lead them in these houses, in these ways that may be rough and hard and even painful and chastening, but lead them until all is behind them, everything is behind them, and they put behind them everything, everything, what they are proud of and what they are ashamed of and what victories they have had and the defeats they have had and the mistakes they have made.

Lord, we pray that you lead these things on and teach them how to look forward and not backward. And we know, Father, that when we talk about these things, some come because they feel that there are gifts they can swallow or there are texts they can memorize or some wonderful gift they can do, Lord, that it is not thus received, but rather by the cultivation of the knowledge of God and by faith and humility and prayer and trust and confidence and obedience and trusting onward and at last to mount and talk with them.

Dear Heavenly Father, we have no doubt of what thou hast done for us, but we pray that thou would open our eyes to behold and our hearts to understand and feel and our spirits to see and penetrate to all the glory that thou hast brought to us, that we may receive into our own souls and lives.

We pray that thou help us that we may hear the voice again today, that voice that created all things, that voice that raised the dead, that voice that speaks and men are clean, and that voice that will someday untune the sky.

We pray that thou help us to hear it. Father, we are both unworthy to speak and to hear, but we come by grace alone, through faith, and that not of ourselves, it is thy gift to us. Will thou make us, we pray thee, to speak worthily, enable us to hear worthily, O Lord, this hour?

Gratitude for Scripture, Christian Witness, and Creation

For Christ's sake, amen. Father, we pray thy blessing on what has been human, Lord. Maybe some things were said that should have been said, expunge them from our minds, everything that should have been said, impress them upon our minds.

May we go out from here humbly glad we are Christians, humbly glad for our fathers who taught us the Bible, for our fathers who translated the Bible for us, for our fathers who wrote expositions and commentaries and devotional books and beat our hearts on in a day of pollution and pornography.

Great God, we thank thee for all the good men, we thank thee for every worshiping Saint. We thank thee for Wesley, who wrote these great hymns, and Grant, and Watts, and Montgomery. We thank thee for that fountain of all hymnology, David, who now gets to stand and say, O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.

God help us today to go out from here, we pray we may go all the beauties that are about us, but appreciate him as Christians, seeing him not as pagans, but seeing him as Christians, birds and trees, worshiping the God who made the birds and trees.

Living by Mercy, Rejecting Sin, and Pursuing Godliness

Amen. Father, we pray, bless thou, thy mercies are abundant, thy mercies full and free, and have they not, O God, found out me. We thank thee for thy mercies, thy many abundant, full mercies. Now we pray that thou wilt help us to lean back and trust and not be afraid, hate sin and love righteousness, flee from iniquity and follow after godliness.

But always know that in all that we do, mercy is around us like the air underneath us, as the earth above us as the stars. We live in a merciful world to serve a merciful God, and live and soar, being in the abundant mercies of the Triune God.

Graciously grant us, we pray thee, and to apply it to our hearts. And we give thee praise through Jesus Christ. Forgive him, Father, O forgive him. He knows not that by, it is by me he lives. Father, we pray thy blessing upon the word given.

Christ’s Sacrifice, Resurrection, Ascension, and the Lord’s Supper

We pray that thou wilt help us, that our faith might mount up like an eagle, stretch its broad wings and soar so high that nothing can pull it down. And as the eagle can look upon the sun, we pray that we may look upon thy Holy Son at the right hand of the Majesty, and that we may be grateful to the point of tears and tenderness that he who was God and very God of very God, gave himself and hung on yonder tree.

Bless us as we receive of the Lord's Supper. In Christ's name, amen. We thank thee, thou hast in our sins, in Christ Jesus thy Son, our Lord, worked it out by blood and tears and groans and death and the miracle of resurrection and the wonder of ascension to the right hand of the throne.

Thou hast sent the Holy Ghost to say everywhere throughout the world, He that believeth on him shall not perish. Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. O, we thank thee, heavenly Father.

A Renewed Interest in the Gospel and Concern for the Lost

The time is running out, and it is later than we know. Thou hast warned us gently and carefully to be careful of what we do with this message. Be careful lest we take too much for granted. To be careful lest the devil get the seed, lest the carriers of life take the seed, lest we be Christians only in name and have a name that we live.

It would be better that we should perish from the naked slopes of the bombing valley and from the rich precincts of Toronto. Better that we should die pagans cutting off the necks of chickens. I will appease some bestial God than to die Canadians and Americans and Englishmen and Scotsmen who heard from their childhood this wondrous message.

We'll let it go. O God, what do we say to thee in that time? What answer can we have? From the bawling, naked, savage men smeared with pig grease and clay, we can stand up and say we never heard it. But who here can say, O God, we've heard it, and we've heard it, and we've heard it until we're bored with it.

O God, forgive us. Give us a new something, a new baptism of interest, a new and new athletics of fresh interest in the things of the gospel. O God, we pray that the whole house of friends here tonight, Lord, we pray for those who are well saved, that they might become so keenly concerned for others that aren't saved, that they would continue to work for their salvation hard and struggle and pray and labor until, one by one, they're gathered in.

Praying for a Harvest of Souls and a Soul-Winning Church

Grant, we pray, O God, that there may be a harvest of souls at Avenue A. We're overdue, Lord. It's long overdue. But, God, we're not giving up. We expect to see it. We expect to see it, Father. We expect thee to give us a harvest.

We expect to see young people, and brought in, and older people. We expect to see the new faces, and hear new voices, and see the travail of thy soul, O Lord. We expect this. For thou art God, and because Jesus Christ thy Son said, ask in his name, and you'll give it to us.

Because that's why the gospel is being preached. That's why we're here. So, we expect to see it, God. We don't believe that thou dost speak to men vainly, or say anything to anybody carelessly. We believe that when thou dost make a promise, that promise is as good as gold.

So, we're expecting, Father, we're expecting thee to do it. O God, around the margins, our relatives, our friends, our neighbors, people all around here that are not here tonight, but they can be here, and they can be brought in, and they can be one.

We pray, O God, fall on the churches. Fall on this church. Fall on our people. We pray with a new affluence of love for men, that we may not depend on the word from the pulpit only, but that we might supplement that word with earnest, soul-winning efforts.

A Strong, Bible-Based, Loving Church

Now, come on us, Father. We're looking for help, O God. Once more, we remind thee that we have for this church a vision of a strong, Bible-based, morally right, solid, vigorous, active, loving church that the people will feel when they come in here, that surely the Lord's in this place of the truth.

The Lord may be slow, but we believe it'll come. Now, as I said, first the sprout, and then the stalk, and then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear. So, put us through those stages fast, Lord, because we need the corn, and we need it fast.

We need it soon. Pray, God, meet us for trusting thee. We pray thee for any tonight that are not committed, that the Holy Ghost has found them somewhere there among the rocks, or on the wayside, or among the thorns.

The Spirit of God has found them, we pray thee, that they might come out from there and be good ground, and receive the truth into honest hearts, and bring forth the truth with patience and a perfection.

We ask this in Christ's name.