“In this hour of all-but-universal darkness one cheering gleam appears: within the fold of conservative Christianity there are to be found increasing numbers of persons whose religious lives are marked by a growing hunger after God Himself. They are eager for spiritual realities and will not be put off with words, nor will they be content with correct “interpretations” of truth. They are athirst for God, and they will not be satisfied till they have drunk deep at the Fountain of Living Water.”
Thus does Tozer begin his book, The Pursuit of God.
It may take us a while to understand what Tozer means, both in this first paragraph and throughout the preface, for 77 years separates us from 1948 and it just may be that 77 years might as well be 500 hundred years.
I wonder if Tozer’s contemporaries saw the “all-but-universal” darkness that Tozer did. WWII had ended in August 1945, the Iron Curtain had fallen over Eastern Europe, Americans were recovering from the horror of war, experiencing relief that the war was over, facing global uncertainty, and on the threshold of the prosperity of the 1950s. We cannot grasp what our European and Asian neighbors were facing in terms of starvation, marginal food and housing, economic viability, and political turmoil. The United Kingdom was under food rationing well into the 1950s. The global war may have ended, but peace had not been won.
Perhaps the foregoing helped create the “hunger after God Himself.”
In this first paragraph Tozer sees a “cheering gleam” in the midst of darkness; a thirst for more than words and interpretations, a thirst for God.
Do we know what Tozer means when he distinguishes between words and interpretations and God Himself? Does this differentiation make sense to us, or is the contrast unfamiliar? If it makes no sense to us, hopefully we will come to understand its meaning as we follow Tozer on this journey. As I wrote above, it may be that the 77 years between us and Tozer might as well be 500 years. It may be that Tozer’s concepts, concerns, and perspectives are like an unfamiliar language. It may also be that we will benefit from understanding them. It may be that they will help us draw closer to God.
I want to give a word of caution about the term “conservative Christianity.” This likely does not mean today what it meant in 1948. I write “likely” because I’m sure there is someone who could argue that the meanings are close, even if not identical, but I don’t think so. For sure the terms “liberal” and “conservative” were loaded then as they are loaded now, but I am not sure that there was the melding of religion and politics in 1948 for the average professing Christian that we see today. I also sense that in the world of theological academia there has been an erosion of distinction and a mixing of thinking and practice that may not have existed in Tozer’s time. This probably makes no sense to the average reader, and that’s okay. I’m not going to spend any more time on this, other than to say that we are better off to ignore the term “conservative” so that it doesn’t sidetrack us – it is not material to what Tozer writes.
Tozer writes about drinking at the Fountain of Living Water, an allusion to Jesus and the woman at the well of John Chapter 4.
“Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up to eternal life” (John 4:14).
The woman met Jesus carrying a waterpot in which to put water, she left her waterpot to go tell others about Jesus. Are we people who carry waterpots, again and again and again; constantly filling them, emptying them, and filling them again? Is this the picture of our spiritual lives and the lives of our congregations?
Or are we people in whom Jesus has placed a fountain of Living Water, His very Presence, and are our lives pouring forth the Presence and Life of God to those around us?
When we gather as God’s People, do we come carrying water pots, or do we come flowing with Living Water to share with one another?
“If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water” (John 737 – 38).
Jesus calls us to lay our waterpots down, to receive His Living Water, His Fountain of Life within us, and in so doing we move from being consumers to being producers; we transition from looking to the outside for sustenance to giving to others from Christ in us and us in Christ (John 15:1 – 5).
To know Jesus as the Fountain of Living Water is to experience a reorientation of life, of thinking, of understanding, of perspective. It is to experience God.
Are we experiencing God…today?
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