Why You Should Read (or Re-Read) Tozer’s The Pursuit of God
This week, I (Bryan) thought it'd be fun to do a deep dive into one of my favorite and most influential reads: A.W. Tozer's The Purusit of God. Tozer wrote this classic work to stir believers toward an ever deepening intimacy and life with God. His words not only resonated when he wrote them nearly 70 years ago, but feel more and more prophetic for our day and age.
But first: a quick background into why this book has been a favorite of mine since I first became a Christian in high school. As I was growing in my new faith, my mentor suggested some books to read. He told me that I should "read books by dead people," and one of the books he highly recommended was The Pursuit of God. I picked up a copy at a conference and after allowing it to sit on my shelf for a year or so, I finally read it. I didn't totally understand it or resonate with his style of writing on my first read, but enough of it stuck with me that I read it again a year or so later. Since that time, it has become a close companion and remained my favorite book outside of scripture, returning to it again and again.
I recently reread it and found it to be just as powerful and refreshing as ever. It felt like a return to my roots and a lot of what underlies my vision for my life and our ministry. It makes me want to pursue God and pray- right here and right now. So many times the effect of reading it drove me towards prayer. It's more than just what Tozer wrote, but rather the fact that you can feel that it was written in a spirit of prayer. His end goal is peppered throughout the book- that we would know God more, not just know about him, and that our lives would continue to grow more and more into the likeness of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.
There are so many treasures in this book, but I want to briefly highlight four that I believe speak powerfully to us in this current moment:
KNOWLEDGE OF GOD
In his preface, Tozer writes: “There is today no lack of Bible teachers to set forth correctly the principles of the doctrines of Christ, but too many of these seem satisfied to teach the fundamentals of the faith year after year, strangely unaware that there is in their ministry no manifest Presence, nor anything unusual in their personal lives” (pg. 9).
Oh how much more true that feels today! We are inundated with technology, and have access at our very fingertips to the best teaching from all over the world at any time we’d like. During this last year of COVID, over one-third of believers attended a different online service than their own. And why not, you can access the best there is without leaving your couch or changing out of your sweats! To desire great teaching isn't a bad thing (although there are community and embodiment questions to be asked, but that's a post for a different time), but it does beg the question that Tozer is essentially touching on here: are we substituting an ever-deepening life with Christ for a good sermon? Preaching is meant to ignite our affections for Christ, not replace them.
He goes on to say, “Exposition may be carried on in such a way as to leave the hearers devoid of any true spiritual nourishment whatever. For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience they are not the better for having heard the truth" (p. 10). In our lives, are we finding God in personal experience that is changing us, or are we just content to hear a good word and go on with our daily lives as if it doesn't apply?
FOLLOWING HARD AFTER GOD
His first chapter may be his most potent one. Tozer doesn't waste many words. One of the most powerful lines I have read outside of scripture sums up the ideal Christian life:
“You and I are in little (our sins excepted) what God is in large. Being made in His image we have within us the capacity to know Him. In our sins we lack only the power. The moment the Spirit has quickened us to life in regeneration our whole being senses its kinship to God and leaps up in joyous recognition. That is the heavenly birth without which we cannot see the Kingdom of God. It is, however, not an end but an inception, for now begins the glorious pursuit, the heart's happy exploration of the infinite riches of the Godhead. That is where we begin, I say, but where we stop no man has yet discovered, for there is in the awful and mysterious depths of the Triune God neither limit nor end” (p. 14).
This is the grandest invitation that we have ever been given. Numerous saints, including the apostles, gave their entire lives to this vision. But the invitation isn't reserved for the most holy; it is extended to everyone. God desires that we would desire him in the same way that he desires us. While we won't ever comprehend the fullness of God, we are invited to experience more and more of Him, here and now. This isn't an invitation reserved solely for the next age, but for today. He's just waiting for us to notice Him, to say an emphatic "YES!" to His invitation to merely scratch the surface of who He is.
DETACHMENT
In the spiritual formation world there's a popular term: detachment. Detachment is the process in which we begin to shed both our exterior attachments (material objects, success, etc.) as well as our interior ones (our longings, our dreams, our hopes) in order to follow God fully. It is the cultivation of a holy indifference. Now, this doesn't mean that we don't care about things that we ought to care about (like our loved ones), but this indifference allows us to hold all things with open hands, knowing that anything in the world may be employed in the service of God--nothing more, and nothing less.
In the second chapter of The Pursuit of God, Tozer spurs us on toward this end, and he acknowledges that this isn't easy. He writes, “There is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets 'things' with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns 'my' and 'mine' look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do” (p. 22).
Learning detachment is a lifelong journey. It doesn't happen overnight. And it only happens by the power of the Holy Spirit. We cannot cultivate this on our own, but as we walk in step with the Spirit, we will find this resonating more and more in our hearts. This doesn't necessarily mean that we won't have certain things in our lives, but rather, that they won't have us. Tozer reminds us that in the journey toward knowing the fullness of God, we can't bypass this process. It’s arduous and it’s painful, yet if we want to find life, we must take up our cross and follow after Christ. “If we would indeed know God in growing intimacy we must go this way of renunciation,” Tozer writes (p. 30).
OUR INTERIOR LIFE
Finally, that last thing that I'll touch on is the importance of our interior life. The emphasis on spiritual formation in this day and age is often criticized for what can be seen as introspective navel gazing. When spiritual formation goes wrong, it can certainly devolve into that, and it's worth being conscious of.
But the emphasis on the interior life is important for two reasons:
First, we act from out of what is within us. Jesus says that from the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks (Matthew 15:18). Maturity isn't simply to fix what comes out of our mouths, but rather to attend to the heart, so that what naturally flows out of the mouth is life-giving.
Second, we pay attention to our interior life because it is subtle, and some of the most devious vices within our hearts are often celebrated, even within Christian culture. Tozer notes, “It is woven of the fine threads of the self-life, the hyphenated sins of the human spirit. 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. They dwell too deep within us and are too much a part of our natures to come to our attention till the light of God is focused upon them. The grosser manifestations of these sins, egotism, exhibitionism, self-promotion, are strangely tolerated in Christian leaders even in circles of impeccable orthodoxy” (p. 45).
Ouch.
We have to be attentive to these sins, along with the Holy Spirit, in order to know what is happening within, and how that's being expressed without. The psalmist cries out: "Search me and know my heart" Psalm 139:23); may that be our cry as well.
Even after years of reading Tozer's The Pursuit of God, its content is still so consistently relevant. I hope this post will whet your appetite for picking it up and reading it yourself!
I will leave you with this prayer from the first chapter:
“O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, that so I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, "Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away." Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long. In Jesus' Name, Amen” (p. 20).