Aiden Wilson Tozer Quotes

Forgive me, Spirit of my spirit, for this, that I have found it easier to read the mystery told in tears and understood Thee better in sorrow than in joy.

Sorrow is a fruit. God does not make it grow on limbs too weak to bear it.

Acceptance of the power of God in one's life lays the groundwork for personal commitment to both science and Christianity, which so often have been in conflict.

I must consider myself as the man of the cross and love the one that God gives me without thinking any further.

How many a holy and obsequious tear hath dear religious love stolen from mine eye, as interest of the dead!

'Tis sorrow builds the shining ladder up, Whose golden rounds are our calamities, Whereon our firm feet planting, nearer God The spirit climbs, and hath its eyes unsealed. True it is that Death's face seems stern and cold When he is sent to summon those we love; But all God's angels come to us disguised; Sorrow and sickness, poverty and death, One after another, lift their frowning masks, And we behold the Seraph's face beneath, All radiant with the Glory and the calm Of having looked upon the front of God.

Defeat may serve as well as victory To shake the soul and let the glory out. When the great oak is straining in the wind, The boughs drink in new beauty and the trunk Sends down a deeper root on the windward side. Only the soul that knows the mighty grief Can know the mighty rapture, Sorrows come To stretch out spaces in the heart for joy.

A sermon wept over is more acceptable with God than one gloried over.

But we are all sorry when loss comes for us. The test of our character comes not in how many tears we shed but in how we act after those tears have dried.

I am afraid that all the grace that I have got of my comfortable and easy times and happy hours, might almost lie on a penny. But the good that I have received from my sorrows, and pains, and griefs, is altogether incalculable … Affliction is the best bit of furniture in my house. It is the best book in a minister’s library.

How can you and I really expect to glide naively through life, as if to say, 'Lord, give me experience, but not grief, not sorrow, not pain, not opposition, not betrayal, and certainly not to be forsaken. Keep from me, Lord, all those experiences which made Thee what Thou art! Then, let me come and dwell with Thee and fully share Thy joy!'

God is inviting you today to appropriately grieve your pains and losses and to acknowledge the world is seriously broken.

Griefs, at the moment when they change into ideas, lose some of their power to injure our heart.

Loss as muse. Loss as character. Loss as life.

O, brothers! let us leave the shame and sin Of taking vainly in a plaintive mood, The holy name of Grief--holy herein, That, by the grief of One, came all our good.

Thank God for grace, Ye who weep only! If, as some have done, Ye grope tear-blinded in a desert place And touch but tombs,--look up! Those tears will run Soon in long rivers down the lifted face, And leave the vision clear for stars and sun.

WIDOW, n. A pathetic figure that the Christian world has agreed to take humorously, although Christ's tenderness towards widows was one of the most marked features of his character.

To how many is the death of the beloved the parent of faith!

I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature.

A person who is obsessed with Jesus is more concerned with his or her character than comfort. Obsessed people know that true joy doesn't depend on circumstances or environment; it is a gift that must be chosen and cultivated, a gift that ultimately comes from God (James 1:2-4).

The story of her life. God gave you everything just to take it away. Just so you knew exactly what you were missing.

Oh would I were dead now, Or up in my bed now, To cover my head now, And have a good cry!

We should strive to develop within ourselves the traits of character of the Savior.

No mother should lose her child.

He who is still laughing is he who hasn't heard the terrible news.