This book is less about how to function as the preacher from the pulpit and more about the soul that is thirsty for God. This theology is not of the head, but of the heart. It is such a shame to have so many of God’s people earning a seat at Christ’s table through their salvation yet remain perpetually hungry. The Bible itself is not the end, but the means that brings us to an intimate knowledge of God that will move the very center of our being, the Spirit.
During my time in The Fellowship Residency Program, I read a long list of powerful books. To read more about my residency experience click here. One aspect of my assignments is to summarize and write key takeaways from each of the books. This is a summary of "The Pursuit of God". by A. W. Tozer.
Following Hard After God -- Before any man can actually seek God, he must first have been sought out by God. Unfortunately, he may have received Christ without gaining a true desire for Christ. Since we are made in the image of God, we have the ability to know Him, we only lack the power. Our salvation begins our ability to seek and know God, but the process is never ending. The men and women of the scriptures had a burning desire for God. When they found Him, their reward was even greater due to the long pursuit of Him. Unfortunately, “complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth.” Part of the issue is that we have made following God difficult with programs, methods, and activities that occupy our times and checkbooks but go without receiving total satisfaction for our hearts. If we were to lay down our need to impress and seek Christ as children seek their parents, we would be all the better for it. We must thirst to be made more thirsty.
The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing -- God created a world to serve and bless mankind. However, sin brought about corruption to the gifts from God that now lead to the destruction of one’s soul. Our obsession with “my” and “mine” is unhealthy and ever apparent. However, the way to know and pursue God in a deep way is through poverty of the soul and sacrificing our belongings. God Himself understands this truth when Jesus wrestled in the garden of Gethsemane. He fervently sought God’s nearness and love in that moment. Likewise, God allowed Abraham to get almost to the point of no return before showing mercy on Isaac and offering a substitutionary sacrifice. Abraham was rich, but scriptures tell us that “he possessed nothing.” It is in this truth that we find spiritual significance. Abraham finally understood that nothing, even his promised son Isaac, belonged to himself. All that he had was a gift from God. Our hearts must follow suit in understanding the blessedness that follows immense heartache. We must come to Him, trembling or not, to be tested before Him so that we may understand our utter poverty.
Removing the Veil -- God created us for Himself and only Himself. It was always our design to be in righteous standing before God to dwell with Him. Yet sin leads us to experience life apart from His presence. The entirety of God’s work of redemption is to reverse the effects of our sin and bring us back into a justified relationship with Himself for all of eternity. The tearing of the temple’s veil “opened the way for every worshiper in the world to come by the new and living way straight into the divine presence.” We no longer need to fear being in the presence of God. Instead, God desires for us to pursue His presence and live our entire lives doing so. However, we are falling apart due to our lack of understanding of who God is, and the church fails to desire his presence. God is eternal and apart from time. “To it, He pays no tribute, and from it, He suffers no change. He is immutable.” God is omniscient, loving, merciful, righteous, and holy in ways that no other example will ever compare. Eternity is not long enough to know all that there is to know of our Lord or to worship every attribute of God. Yet, somehow, that doesn’t matter. All that matters is that for eternity we will be with Him, and there is no greater gift. We don’t fully appreciate this gift. We occasionally hear God call for us, but we still fail to seek His face. What keeps us from going all in? Sin. The veil of our hearts. “They are not something we do; they are something we are, and therein lies both their subtlety and their power. To be specific, the self-sins are these; self-righteousness, self-pity, self-confidence, self-sufficiency, self-admiration, self-love, and a host of others like them.” “Self is the opaque veil that hides the face of God from us. It can be removed only in spiritual experience, never by mere instruction. To seek Christ, we must die to the veil of self. And it is truly a death, to say otherwise removes the power of the cross. We must only yield, trust, confess, forsake, repudiate the self-life, and declare it crucified within us.
Apprehending God -- God is often deduced from evidence while remaining completely unknown to the individual. There is a spiritual world all around us that is circling us waiting for us to become aware of its existence. “Imagination projects unreal images out of the mind and seeks to attach reality to them. Faith creates nothing; it simply reckons upon that which is already there.” We consistently affirm the world of the visible and question that of which we cannot see. However, we must become certain that the spiritual is real as well. Christ is alive and well. We simply lack the disciplined soul to hear and see His work.
The Universal Presence -- God dwells in His creation as is evident in all of His works. Pantheism error is that God is the entirety of all created things and gives immediate access to God to all who desire to know Him. Though God dwells with us, He is separated by the valley of sin. He has always been with us. It was not “in the beginning was the law or the mind” but “in the beginning was God.” We cannot escape Him even in the imagination of our minds. Nothing is apart from His special presence. God’s promises are grand, but His fulfillment of those promises is even grander. Revelation to our soul is not the result of a God with sporadic visits but with a creation that sporadically engages with God. There are great mysteries of our God, and the best way to deal with those truths is to look to god and acknowledge His ability to know. When we stop in for our weekly tune-up with God, it is unable to make up for the deep inward bankruptcy of our souls. “Any man who by repentance and a sincere return to God will break himself out of the mold in which he has been held, and will go to the Bible itself for his spiritual standards, will be delighted with what he finds there.”
The Speaking Voice -- God is speaking. He always has and always will be speaking to His creation through His voice and His words. The words in the Bible have power only because it has been supported by God’s words in His universe. “The tragedy is that our eternal welfare depends upon our hearing, and we have trained our ears not to hear.” Whoever listens WILL hear God speak. However, the religious have assumed the lie that noise, activity, numbers, and volume makes one near to God. However, it is through careful consideration and listening to His words. First, it is a whisper. Over time, it will come to be the word of a friend that brings life and rest. The second person described in the scriptures is the Word. “The Bible is the inevitable outcome of God’s continuous speech. It is the infallible declaration of His mind for us, put into our familiar human words.”
The Gaze of the Soul -- Man is wholly concerned with faith as it is a vital component of our pursuit of God. Faith must be described in operation rather than in essence. Looking on Christ is utilized interchangeably with believing. Therefore, our faith is built as we continue to gaze upon the Lord. Unbelief occurs when we put faith where God should be and exalt ourselves above Him. Faith is intended to look out rather than inwards. “Now, if faith is the gaze of the heart at God, and if this gaze is but the raising of the inward eyes to meet the all-seeing eyes of God, then it follows that it is one of the easiest things possible to do.” Believing can happen at any time and any place. When the habit of looking and gazing at Jesus becomes second nature, we will experience spiritual life in ways like never before.
Restoring the Creator-Creature Relation -- To achieve equilibrium, all things must be in their proper place with regard to all of creation. Salvation is the restoration of a right relationship between humankind and their Creator. Everything and everyone is measured in comparison to Him for He does not change. We are only right when we are in right position relative to God. Our pursuit of Him requires that we align all of who we are with Him. This is not simply through justification, but surrender, sacrifice, and sanctification. To exalt God as Lord of All is to be right and free. “God winked at weaknesses and overlooked failures as He poured upon His servants grace and blessing untold….Not perfection, but holy intention made the difference.” All God wants is all we’ve got, and He will put up with nothing less.
Meekness and Rest -- God is not merely wise or sharp in knowledge, but He is fully God and the Truth itself. Rest is a release of the crushing burden of mankind. It is not that act of “doing,” but what we cease to do. We walk with the burden of pride. We tell God that we need Him, yet refuse to live as if our promise is true. On our owns, we are nothing. In God, we are everything. In that truth, we accurately estimate God’s love for us. We also are burdened by the need to wear a mask. Appearance becomes more important than who we actually are. First, we must be brave to trust in the rest of God, but eventually, we will learn that the rest of God is pure and good.
The Sacrament of Living -- We as believers fall into a trap of separating our life into the sacred acts and the secular acts. The sacred includes prayer, Bible reading, worship, and serving while the secular acts involve the acts of the flesh, the dull, and the necessary. However, there is no Biblical foundation for this assumption. Jesus knew no divided life. We are called to do everything for the glory of God. The mindset of hating the body is in direct conflict with the written Word of God. God is not ashamed of the work of His creation nor is he surprised by our own needs. We must offer all that we do to God and trust that He will accept them. There is no holiness in things, words, or actions but in our perfect and righteous God. Everything that we do is not of equal importance nor is every man equally useful. However, “The ‘layman’ need never think of his humbler task as being inferior to that of his minister. Let every man abide in the calling wherein he is called, and his work will be as sacred as the work of the ministry.”