DISCIPLE

 June has been proclaimed LGBT Pride month. There are marches and other public manifestations. But they have nothing to be proud of, and have forgotten or lost the ability to be ashamed. Proverbs 6:17 lists "a proud look" at the top of the list of seven things that God hates, that are an abomination to him. Long ago Isaiah, a faithful prophet of God, was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write these words denouncing sinful pride. "The expression of their faces bears witness against them. And they display their sin like Sodom; They do not even conceal it. Woe to them! For they have brought evil on themselves... Woe to the wicked! It will go badly with him" (Isaiah 3:9-10). Society may change, and man's laws, too, but God's Word is forever settled in heaven, and all will be judged one day by His word, not theirs. Instead of pride, there should be humbling and repentance. "Seek ye the LORD, while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near."  God i...

by A. W. Tozer Only God is self-sufficient. When men boast of being self-sufficient, they are indulging a fiction that can be proven fictitious just by taking a quick look around...      The human body cannot live on itself. To live it must have constant help from the outside.  Though filled with pride and overflowing with self-assurance, men and women must humble themselves to receive aid from the lower creation.  Every monarch must trust the common cow for food.  Every strutting lord of the manor must beg his dinner from the barnyard hen.  The cold prima donna manages to stay alive only by the grace of pigs and fish.  The genius must look to bees, shrubs, seeds and berries.  From these things come the energy without which all people would die, the great as well as the lowly...      The tragic history of the world is, at the bottom line, the record of sinning min trying to live on their own resources and n...

Chapter 12 of  THIS WORLD: PLAYGROUND OR BATTLEGROUND? by A. W. Tozer Books and Moral Standards     The late Jimmy Walker, playboy mayor of New York during the roaring 20s, was widely quoted for a quip viewed as the distilled essence of gospel truth by those who wanted to believe it. "I never heard," said Jimmy, "of anyone who has ruined by a book."     These profound words were tossed off, as near as we can remember, during an official inquiry into the effect of certain questionable literature upon the morals of the reading public. Now, we can offer no proof that Mr. Walker had ever heard of anyone who had been ruined by a book, but that could only mean that the man's knowledge of the subject was vastly small or that his idea of what it meant to be "ruined" was not the same as that of the more conscientious persons within our population who still feel bothered about the effect of bad reading upon the collective public mind. Whatever t...

by A. W. Tozer "The thoughts of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord; but the words of the pure are pleasant words." Proverbs 15:26      It is my belief that we Christians are bound in all conscience to discourage the reading of subversive literature and to promote as fully as possible the circulation of good books and magazines.     Just what part evil literature has played in the present moral breakdown throughout all the world will never be known till men are called forth to answer to a holy God for their unholy deeds, but it must be very great indeed!     For thousands of young people the first doubt about God and the Bible came with the reading of some evil book. We must respect the power of ideas, and printed ideas are as powerful as spoken ones. They may have a longer fuse, but their explosive power is just as great.       Our Christian faith teaches us to expect to answer for every...

by William MacDonald                             Spiritually we are in a shocking condition. The status of many local fellowships is bad news, and deteriorating by the minute.     It is fairly well known that there have been scandalous cases of immorality involving even elders and full-time workers. Of course this type of news never gets into the magazines; there everything is sweetness and light. But the awful truth is that some respected spiritual leaders have fallen into gross sin in recent months and the only reaction seems to have been to hush up the whole thing, lest the word get out and our reputation be impaired.     We have been arrogant, and have not rather mourned (1 Cor. 5:2).     And that isn't all. We have become materialists to the core. Supposing that gain is godliness, we have degraded ourselves to the worship of money. ...