“The modern scientist has lost God amid the wonders of His world; we Christians are in real danger of losing God amid the wonders of His Word,” states A.W. Tozer in his Pursuit of God. Wow. So profound a statement, and yet so simple and true. This remind me of how the Pharisees knew the legalism of the law so well and yet missed out on knowing who Jesus really is. I pray to know my Bible well, but more importantly to encounter its Author in an amazing love relationship.
Later, Tozer notes that “Everything is made to center upon the initial act of ‘accepting’ Christ (a term, incidentally, which is not found in the Bible) and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls. We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him, we need no more seek Him.” I pray that this may never again be truly said of me. Rather, I pray that it be said of me that I have tasted of the Lord and seen that He is good, but one taste is not enough to satisfy me. I want to taste again and again. I want to taste Him in His entirety. I hardly know my God, and I desire to ardently desire to know more of Him.
“If God is present at every point in space, if we cannot go where He is not, cannot even conceive of a place where He is not, why then has not that Presence become the one universally celebrated fact of the world?” questions Tozer. Why does not the whole world understand and respect this fact. Why is so much of the world in such terrible darkness with no light shed on the presence of God all around them? In Genesis 28: 16 Jacob says, “Surely the Lord was in this place; and I knew it not.” God is there whether we entirely realize it or not.
Tozer continues: “Men do not know that God is here. What a difference it would make if they knew. The Presence and the manifestation of the Presence are not the same. There can be one without the other. God is here when we are wholly unaware of His presence. On our part, there must be surrender to the Spirit of God, for His work is to show us the Father and the Son. If we cooperate with Him in loving obedience, God will manifest Himself to us, and that manifestation will be the difference between a nominal Christian life and a life radiant with the light of His face. Always, everywhere God seeks to discover Himself to each one.” I like this notion of God desiring to “discover Himself” to us. Jeremiah 29:13 says, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart.” Matthew 7:7 says, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” If Tozer’s notion that God desires to “discover Himself” to us is true, then it takes so much pressure off of us and our seeking. We’re sinful human beings whose blundering attempts at seeking after God so often fall incredibly short. What a comfort to know that God is seeking us out as we seek Him out wholeheartedly!
Tozer has some insightful ideas about God speaking, too. “Every one of us,” he says, “has had experience which we have not been able to explain—a sudden sense of loneliness, or a feeling of wonder or awe in the face of universal vastness. Or we have had a fleeting visitation of light like an illumination from some other sun, giving us in a quick flash an assurance that we are from another world, that our origins are divine.” Upon reading that, I was immediately inclined to think of moments such as these that I’ve experienced at Lake Forest Ranch, or at God’s Green Acres (my parents’ farm). Even at school or at home or on the beach I have had such moments. Such moments are incredibly unexplainable, but they are moments when you can’t help but know that God is making His presence known to you in some unspeakable but reassuring way.
Philippians 3:20-21 says, “But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.” I think that when Paul wrote those words, he’d had done of those moments Tozer is talking about, and he knew without a doubt that it was a sure sign that he was not meant for this word.
A contemporary artist, “Between the Trees” has a song entitled “Scarecrow” that I think expresses similar sentiments. The lyrics to the song go as follows: “It ain’t so bad/just try and fit in this hollow mat/’cause you’ve traveled so far from where it all began…./ I think I took the wrong path/and I need to find my way back./ They say you’re never too far/ to start it all again,/ am I too far?” And the chorus: “Maybe I wasn’t made for this world./ All the space in between/ the soul and the seams./ Maybe I wasn’t made for this world.”
Tozer goes on later in his book to talk about the Bible as God’s speaking, living Word. “The Bible,” he says, “will never be a living Book to us until we are convinced that God is articulate in His universe. To jump from a dead, impersonal to a dogmatic Bible is too much for most people. They may admit that they should accept the Bible as the Word of God, and they try to think of it as such, but they find it impossible to believe that the words on the page are actually for them…Now we read the book as the record of what God said when He was for a brief time in a speaking mood…The facts are that God is not silent, never has been silent. It is the nature of God to speak…[the Bible] is not only a book which was once spoken, but a book which is now speaking.” His statement certainly rings true. I so often find myself reading the Bible not as if God is speaking to me as I ready it, but as just another textbook among many others I must read. I feel like He’s silent, but, truly, I just have forgotten how to listen and hear Him speak…or perhaps I never knew how. So many people today pick and choose which parts of the Bible are relevant to them, especially relating to current events and social issues. If it’s convenient, then it’s God’s voice to them. If it’s not, then God spoke it thousand of years ago and it no longer applies to them.
A final Tozer quote that I will include is this word of caution: “Let no one imagine that he will lose anything of human dignity by this voluntary sell-out of his all to his God. He does not by this degrade himself as a man; rather he find his right place of high honor as one made in the image of His Creator. His deep disgrace lay in his moral derangement, his unnatural usurpation of the place of God. His honor will be proved by restoring again that stolen throne. In exalting God over all he fins his own highest honor upheld…The man of God set his heart to exalt God above all; God accepted his intention as fact and acted accordingly. Not perfection, but holy intention made the difference.” This notion that God considers our holy intentions to be fact is quite interesting to me. I’m not sure yet what I think about it. If it’s true that intentions matter most to God, then this notion could upturn and revolutionize my life. It could help me forgive myself and others for past mistakes and injuries. I could move on in a greater sense of new life and peace, further grasping my role as my Father’s treasured possession.
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