The Pursuit of God by Tozer - Reflections (11)

 

 

“We need not fear that in seeking God only we may narrow our lives or restrict the motions of our expanding hearts. The opposite is true. We can well afford to make God our All, to concentrate, to sacrifice the many [things, whether religious or otherwise] for the One” (page 18).

 

“The man who has God for his treasure has all things in One. Many ordinary treasures may be denied him, or if he is allowed to have them, the enjoyment of them will be so tempered that they will never be necessary to his happiness. Or if he must see them go, one after one, he will scarcely feel a sense of loss, for having the Source of all things he has in One all satisfaction, all pleasure, all delight. Whatever he may lose he has actually lost nothing, for he now has it all in One, and he has it purely, legitimately and forever” (pp. 19 – 20).

 

In Tozer’s time, there were men and women still preaching and teaching Jesus, I am not sure about our own time. I’m not saying there are none, but I am saying that they are harder to find. As Tozer pointed out, we seem to be seeking Jesus and, God and, the Holy Spirit and. God alone is not enough. We are such products of this thinking and practice, we have grown up in it, that we don’t know what we don’t know, we don’t know what it is to seek Jesus and only Jesus.

 

We are so embedded in this way of life, that to threaten it is to threaten our existence, our identity, our movements, our organizations, the core of our beings – it is to suggest that we have brought idols into the Temple, and since the idols are our livelihood – our religious and emotional and psychological and financial currency - what shall we do?

 

We think that if we make Jesus our only desire that we will have nothing, yet Tozer tells us that we will have all things. What do we believe? Do we believe this is possible?

 

Is it worth the risk to try? To try only Jesus?

 

Let’s remind ourselves that we are not speaking of bad things, but of good things, of moral things, of ethical things. Yes, they can be self-centered things, and at their core I suppose they are; but there could be worse things…or could there?

 

Let’s also recall Tozer’s warning that the Bible is not an end in itself but a means by which we may know God intimately. We can know the Bible and not know God.

 

Let’s remember, that we are talking about knowing God as a Person, as a person knows a person; progressively, revealingly, deeply; so that we know and sense His desires, His joys, His sorrows, His love, His holiness, His justice, His mercy, His grace, His very Personhood, and character. Are we seeing the face of God?

 

Are we making Jesus Christ our All in all? Are we pursuing Him with all that we have and all that we are?

 

“The man who has God for his treasure has all things in One…Having the Source of all things he has in One all satisfaction, all pleasure, all delight. Whatever he may lose he has actually lost nothing, for he now has it all in One.”

 

Perhaps we could ask, “What music are we playing?” What is the keynote of our message, our demeanor, our practice, our gatherings, our conversation throughout the week, our lives at work, at school, at play, in the civic arena, in entertainment, with our neighbors?

 

I cannot, I must not, depart from Mark 8:34 – 38, Jesus calls me to deny myself, to lose my life, to take up my cross, and to follow Him…always and forever Him. My heart is to be wedded to Him; not to a tradition, a group of doctrinal distinctives, a way of worship or music or preaching or experience or economic or political agenda or exegesis or self – help or sociology; I am to be wedded to Jesus with all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength – He is to be the total source of my life, forever and always.

 

In Jesus Christ are “hidden ALL the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). I am to be always “Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of my faith” (Hebrews 12:2).

 

While Mark 8:34 – 38 has been a foundational passage for me since my early weeks as a Christian, there have been others, one is Psalm 73:25 and another 1 Corinthians 1:30 – 31.

 

There are, I think, two types of Christians, those who know and live by Psalm 73:25 and those who don’t. (Yes, there are other passages that express the same sentiment, such as John 6:68. What similar passages do you know? Not “know” intellectually, but “know” as your way of life?)

 

“Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth” (Psalm 73:25).

 

This verse, this declaration, this cry of the heart, was a core theme in my early Christian reading, for the people I read, Andrew Murray, A. W. Tozer, Oswald Chambers, Watchman Nee, and others, desired Jesus and only Jesus. Later writers continued that pursuit of God, they added to the theme of “seeing only Jesus” (Matthew 17:8).

 

To be sure I have had my seasons of “Jesus and,” to be sure I have had seasons of sin; but Psalm 73:25 and its companions has pulled me back to Jesus, I have never outrun its cords (by God’s mercy!) The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin – this is a promise to the Christian, to the child of God (1 John 1:5 – 2:2). I know what it is to eat swine’s food, and I know what it is to return to the Father’s House and fall into His embrace.

 

Nothing can take the place of God’s embrace in Jesus Christ.

 

“But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, ‘Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord’” (1 Corinthians 1:30 – 31).

 

This is, I suppose, the sum of all true Christian theology, and without it there is no true north. If you have graduated from seminary and do not know this, get your money back. If you have been “attending” church and do not know this, ask your pastor why you do not know it.

 

I was taught this by my friend George Will when I was a lad, a dumb lad, a stupid lad, a self-centered lad. I heard this from George when I was 16 years old, and I continued to hear it from him until I was into my 60s, in which season he went into the Presence of Jesus. George was teaching me all that I ever really needed to know, and I was too dumb for much of my life to realize it.

 

Let us not glory is our doctrinal distinctives, in our traditions, in our worldviews, in our spiritual experiences, in our insights into social dynamics, in our nationalism, in our methods of worship, in our attendance numbers (nor be discouraged by them), in our exegetical methods…let us glory in Jesus and only in Jesus.

 

Why O why do we insist on exchanging our glory in Jesus for oxen that eat grass, why do we reject our identity in Him and His inheritance in us? (Psalm 106:19 – 21).

 

Is Jesus our treasure? For where our treasure is, there our hearts will be also (Matthew 6:21).

 

Is Jesus our All in all?

 

Is He mine?

 

Is He yours?

 

Will Psalm 73:25 and 1 Corinthians 1:30 – 31 become your way of life?  

 

Will you pursue God today?

The Pursuit of God by Tozer - Reflections (10)

 

 

“The simplicity which is in Christ is rarely found among us. In its stead are programs, methods, organizations and a world of nervous activities which occupy time and attention but can never satisfy the longing of the heart. The shallowness of our inner experience, the hollowness of our worship, and that servile imitation of the world which marks our promotional methods all testify that we, in this day, know God only imperfectly, and the peace of God scarcely at all” (pp. 17 – 18).

 

“If we would find God amid all the religious externals, we must first determine to find Him, and then proceed in the way of simplicity…We must simplify our approach to Him” (page 18).

 

As I pondered the above, it occurred to me that programs program us. We have become programmed to program, and now we have come to the point where AI is taking this beyond the comprehension of most of us. Now those who programmed are being programmed. Tozer writes, “The evil habit of seeking God and effectively prevents us from finding God in full revelation. In the and lies our great woe” (page 18).

 

Jesus is no longer enough for professing Christians, Jesus is no longer enough for the church, Jesus is no longer enough for our congregations.

 

Tozer writes of the simplicity of Christ being rare in his time. Paul writes, “I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:3). What would Tozer say about our time? Is the simplicity of Christ rare, or is it virtually nonexistent?

 

Of course, it is hard to argue with success, and if some churches are growing and others are closing, well, that’s just the way it is. If the social sciences work better than the Holy Spirit, if marketing is more fruitful than the Holy Spirit and the Word, if we are meeting the needs of the people, then even if they don’t really know Jesus Christ, that is just the way it is. We can’t have unrealistic Biblical expectations these days, bills need to be paid, organizations must be sustained, the world is changing and we need to change with it. We may say that our message hasn’t changed, but do we really believe that?

 

In the previous reflection there was a quote from page 16 that included, “How tragic that we in this dark day have had our seeking done for us by our teachers.” I’m not sure what Tozer meant when he wrote this, but I do want to say that we are all products of a system from which we cannot very well extricate ourselves, even if we want to. I think this was probably true when Tozer wrote The Pursuit of God, and I am sure it is truer today after 77 years.

 

When we do have pastors and teachers and leaders and professors who understand, in some measure, that we are captives in Babylon, there is usually little that they can do to help us – for we have been programmed to want programs, we have been addicted to what Tozer terms “nervous activities,” and our servile adoption of the world’s promotional methods has far exceeded anything that Tozer dealt with a generation ago.  Jesus is no longer enough for us, gathering together in His Name and Nature is no longer enough.

 

Tozer saw a hunger for God in his time, I don’t see that today. I see people satiated with programs, with Gnosticism (a perpetual looking inward instead of beholding Jesus), with entertainment that is termed “worship,” with a view of justification that, as Tozer says, actually keeps us from God, with humanistic approaches to the Bible – many cloaked in what is supposed to be a “high view” of Scripture, with a rejection of the Cross of Christ as the way of life...well…I could go on. The seeds which Tozer saw being planted, the plants coming up from the earth that Tozer discerned, have now had a generation to grow – what would Tozer say today?

 

What would Tozer say to our capitulation to economic, political, social, and nationalistic agendas? What would he say to our prostitution to these spirits which are not the Holy Spirit of God, which are not the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Jesus is not really enough, is He? It must always be, as Tozer writes, God and.

 

What shall we do?

 

Let us seek Jesus, let us pursue God.

 

“Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you. For behold, darkness will cover the earth and deep darkness the peoples; but the LORD will rise upon you and His glory will appear upon you” (Isaiah 60:1 – 2).

 

I do believe these words of God through Isaiah with all of my heart, and I deeply believe the trajectory we see in Romans Chapter 8 of the manifestation of the sons and daughters of God…otherwise, why would I continue on this pilgrimage? Am I not looking for that City (Hebrews 11)? Must we not follow the Lamb wherever He goes (Revelation 14:1 – 5)?

 

Yet, perhaps even Tozer contributed to the problems he saw. Perhaps we all do. I know I have been part of the problem more than once – I thought I was doing what I could and should for the people I was serving, but as I look back I would most certainly do some things differently…trusting Christ (I hope!) more than making things happen (Psalm 127).

 

I think Tozer does miss the mark on page 14 when he downplays the importance of the body of believers in our communion with God – for we need one another in our pursuing God, in our knowing God, in our growing in Christ. Our pursuit of God is personal, but it is also communal. Yes, there most certainly are private elements to our koinonia with the Trinity, but we do not have a privatized communion – that would hardly be the Nature of the Trinity! I will even say that our vision of the Body of Christ (Ephesians 4:11 – 16) ought to motivate us to obedience and faithfulness and our pursuit of God. Yes, I want to know God for me, but I also want to know God so that others may know Him in Jesus Christ – I cannot separate the two.

 

(The first full paragraph on page 14, that begins with, “This intercourse between God and the soul…” is, I think, the weakest paragraph in this chapter; it is exceptionally problematic. It betrays a parochial view of the Body of Christ, rather than a view that embraces the many streams of the Church which contribute to our heritage. This is all I’ll say about this because it is not central to Tozer’s theme, it is a tangent that perhaps should have been omitted in the final draft.)

 

When Tozer writes that, “We must simplify our approach to Him,” we need only ask, “Where is Jesus?”

 

Where is Jesus in this Bible passage?

 

Where is Jesus in this sermon or teaching?

 

Where is Jesus in this curriculum?

 

Where is Jesus in our congregation?

 

Where is Jesus in marriage and family?

 

Where is Jesus in my soul, my heart, my mind?

 

Is my friendship with Jesus growing and deepening daily?

 

Is Jesus my Way of Life?

 

Tozer concludes Chapter One on a challenging and positive note, we’ll explore that in our next reflection, the Lord willing.

 

The Pursuit of God by Tozer - Reflections (9)

 

 

“God is a person, and in the deep of His mighty nature He thinks, wills, enjoys, feels, loves, desires, and suffers as any other person may.  In making Himself known to us He stays by the familiar pattern of personality. He communicates with us through the avenues of our minds, our wills and our emotions. The continuous and unembarrassed interchange of love and thought between God and the soul of the redeemed man is the throbbing heart of New Testament religion” (pp. 13 – 14).

 

When I was a lad in Christ I learned Psalm 103:7, “He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the sons of Israel.” It is one thing to know about God, it is another thing to know Him. It is one thing to know what He does, it is another thing to know who He is. Jesus says that eternal life consists in knowing the Father and the Son (John 17:3).

 

As much as we attempt to justify Martha, Jesus is clear that “only one thing is necessary” (Luke 10:42), “Mary has chosen,” what are we choosing? Are we choosing to know Him?

 

Paul’s desire, after years of knowing and serving Jesus, was to know Him yet more, “That I may know Him” (Philippians 3:10).

 

On page 15 Tozer writes, “Moses used the fact that he knew God as an argument for knowing Him better.”

 

In the beginning quote above, Tozer tells us that God reveals Himself to us through the “familiar pattern of personality.” We see this throughout the Old and New Testaments, we see this in His relationship with Abraham, Moses, and David; we especially see this in the Incarnation. Jesus revealed Himself while on earth, and He continues to reveal Himself, as He said to Paul, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:5). Paul would spend the rest of his life learning to know Jesus.

 

While to be sure, the personality of God is with an upper case “P,” transcendent and engulfing us, He is also intimate and personal, for He is our dear Father. He invites us into a relationship in which we can “fully know as we are fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

 

When Tozer writes about God’s mighty Nature, that God thinks and wills and enjoys and feels and loves and desires and suffers, do we relate to this? What do we know of our God in these areas? Are we sharing in His Nature in these things? Are we knowing Him in His desires and sufferings? Do we know God in His joys?

 

“The continuous and unembarrassed interchange of love and thought” with God is what we are called to experience every day of our lives, it is to live in the Trinity and to know the Trinity living within us – as individuals and as His People, the Body of Christ. This is why John could write that to know him and his fellow Christians was to know the Father and Jesus Christ (1 John 1:3) – this is how intimate our koinonia with God is, this is what it is to know God. In the Person of God we discover our own person, we truly begin to discover who we are…for it is only in Him that we sense who we are.

 

“How tragic that we in this dark day have had our seeking done for us by our teachers. 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” (page 16).

 

We’ll return to this in our next post, the Lord willing, because Tozer has more to say that may help us understand his perspective. As I’ve said before, I think we are pretty much all the prisoners of a system that is self-perpetuating separation from God in Christ even though we claim a high view of Scripture and often insist on doctrinal preciseness and various “distinctives” and even though we know how to orchestrate a good Sunday morning experience – across the theological spectrum.

 

Perhaps what we have developed is a “readers theatre” in which we show up, are given scripts, enact the play and then go home. We even have choirs, as did the ancient Greeks.

 

We are more likely to talk about our favorite author or teacher than we are to speak of Jesus, who ought to be our true Author and Teacher to the point where we share the fruit of our relationship with Him with others, both within and without the Church.

 

Vickie and I have always had vegetable gardens, and we have often worked with others who have had vegetable gardens. In every instance that I can recall, working with folks who have vegetable gardens means that there will be vegetables in the office for folks to take home – people that grow and harvest produce tend to share their produce with others. We have always done this, others we have worked with have done this.

 

Why don’t Christians do this? Why don’t Christians share with their fellow believers the richness of their relationship with Jesus Christ? Why don’t they share Jesus with others? Why aren’t people bringing squash and tomatoes and okra and string beans and lettuce and cucumbers, all of various varieties, to church on Sunday, in their conversations during the week, to their jobs, to their schools, to their civic and recreational activities?

 

Another thing about gardeners, they talk to each other about their experiences, about their successes and failures, they exchange knowledge and experience as a way of life – why don’t professing Christians do this? I have known folks who have sat in pews next to each other for decades and have never shared the life of Christ together, never shared about their experience with Jesus, never prayed together, never shared joys and sorrows, never shared insights from Scripture.

 

This is, frankly, nuts…just plain nuts…yet we not only perpetuate it, we think the notion that something may be amiss is dangerous.

 

We can’t share about Someone whom we don’t know. We can’t share about a Land that we’ve never lived in. To know someone as a child is not the same as knowing that person as an adult. To serve as a child or adolescent or young adult in a family business is not the same as serving with a parent in the ownership of the family business (see Galatians 3:23 – 4:11). I have known many good folks who have been attending church for decades, but I have met few adults who have been attending church for decades.

 

As so Tozer can argue that our view of justification by faith has been made a barrier to our relationship with God…exquisitely tragic…and, I think, tragically true.

 

All we need do to test Tozer’s point is to ask others when we gather, “What have you brought from your garden of relationship with Christ to share today?”

 

Shall we try it?

 

Shall we share?

The Pursuit of God by Tozer - Reflections (8)

 

 

Earlier I mentioned that The Pursuit of God is dense, and now we come to a section which I experience as exceedingly dense. (As if the previous section in which Tozer writes that our interpretation of justification by faith now actually bars men from the knowledge of God isn’t dense!)

 

I wonder if, for those of us who find Tozer’s writing style difficult, that the difficulty isn’t the style so much as it is the content, for if the style is from a different time, the content is from a different place, a foreign place. Tozer’s concepts and concerns and reading of the Bible, Tozer’s knowing God, is so far different than ours that he might as well be writing in early 20^th century Greek as early to mid-20^th century American English.

 

Chapter One consists of pages 11 – 20. On pages 11 and 12 Tozer makes it clear that we can only pursue God because God pursues us. Then at the bottom of page 12 and at the top of page 13 Tozer makes his claim that our understanding and practice of justification by faith has become a barrier to men knowing God, and that the idea of “receiving Christ” is a problem (which he returns to on page 16). Then from the balance of page 13 through the conclusion of the chapter, page 20, Tozer moves into the heart of the matter; God is a Person and we are to know Him as a Person, we are to be in ongoing and unfolding relationship with Him.

 

This is so dense that I really don’t think it can be understood without rereading, and meditating, and reading again, with our hearts and minds attentive to the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. It is so dense that I don’t think its depths can be plumbed in a lifetime. This is a mark of a classic, whether by Augustine, or Fenelon, or Murray, or Chambers, or Lewis, or MacDonald; a classic is a lifetime companion that challenges and encourages us and keeps pointing us to Jesus, keeps revealing Jesus to us. A classic does not run the race for us, it does not do our work for us, but it helps us run the race.

 

I am reminded of ultra marathons, like the Moab 240. Runners often have pacers at various points in the race. These are companions who help the competitor pace himself (or herself) for a section of the race, for example it might be 30 miles or 50 miles, pacers usually pick the runner up at a rest stop or aid station and continue with the runner for a predetermined distance. While there are volunteers who help with encouragement, nourishment, and medical attention at the various stops along the way, the pacers actually run with the competitors – helping to keep them on track, awake, alert, and on time.

 

We all need folks at aid stations and nourishment stops, and we most certainly all need pacers, folks we can trust to run with us for segments of the ultra-marathon. I never know when Oswald Chambers will show up at a rest stop and run with me for a day or two or three, run with me in a season of life…or Tozer. Then there are friends I’ve known, and who have known me, and we have run together. Some have crossed their finish lines, and I will cross my finish line before others – I want to cross strong…what about you?

 

You really need to be reading Tozer to benefit from the fulness of his writing, for while I am tempted to quote extended sections I need to resist the urge, after all, this is a blog and space is limited – his writing is so tightly interwoven that I will not be able to do it full justice, but I will do my best by God’s grace. I hope what you read here will encourage you to read The Pursuit of God.

 

“We Christians are in real danger of losing God amid the wonders of His Word. We have almost forgotten that God is a person and, as such, can be cultivated as any person can. It is inherent in personality to be able to know other personalities, but full knowledge of one personality by another cannot be achieved in one encounter” (page 13).

 

“All social intercourse between human beings is a response of personality to personality, grading upward from the most casual brush between man and man to the fullest, most intimate communion of which the human soul is capable. Religion, so far as it is genuine, is in essence the response of created personalities to the creating personality, God. “This is life enteral, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3)” (page 13).

 

What do you see in these passages? As you read it, what do you think, how do you feel? What are the key threads? How is Tozer challenging us?

 

When Tozer writes that we “are in real danger of losing God amid the wonders of His Word,” let’s recall that in his preface he has already told us that “The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence…”(page 10).

 

Knowing the Bible is not the same as knowing Jesus. Knowing the Bible is not the same as living in intimacy with God. Just as a false understanding of justification is a barrier to people knowing God, so a false understanding of the role of the Bible, of the Nature of Scripture, is a barrier to relationship with God – this is exquisitely tragic, and yet we see it in the Pharisees and Sadducees, we see it throughout Church history, and if we will have the courage to look around us, we will see it today.

 

I am reminded of a friend who shared her experience of a Sunday school in a congregation which professes a high view of Scripture. The class dutifully had its study guide, it read the Scripture for the week, and it engaged in discussion. Our friend said, “But they didn’t speak as if they knew Jesus. They spoke of Him as a stranger, as someone far away, far away in the present, far away in the past, not as their Friend.” Our friend was not judgmental; she was perplexed and was hurting for the group.

 

If we are unwilling to acknowledge the possible truth of what Tozer writes, then we likely have a problem. I do not say that we must agree with Tozer (though I do agree with him), I only think that we ought to consider the possibility that he has a point. When we are not open to discussion, then we are likely defending an indefensible position. And consider, Tozer’s one motive, as far as I can discern, it that we pursue God and know Him deeply.

 

The Bible is not an end in itself. This can garner harsh criticism from professing Christians, who see their salvation and righteousness rooted in Bible knowledge; a Bible knowledge that usually is rooted in humanistic interpretive processes and exegesis and teaching and preaching.

 

“We have almost forgotten that God is a person.”

 

This is, I think, the crux of Chapter One, indeed of the entire book, God is a Person. Do we know God as a Person? Are we coming to know God more deeply as our way of Life?

 

Tozer writes that “full knowledge of one personality by another cannot be achieved in one encounter.” Here we go back to Tozer’s warning that our view of conversion “has been made mechanical and spiritless.”

 

As Jesus says to the Father in John 17:3, knowing God is eternal life…not knowing about God, not believing is a set of propositional truths, not reciting a Creed (and I do value the ancient creeds)…it is in actually knowing God as a Person, as The Person, that we have eternal life in and through Jesus Christ.

 

“God is a person, and in the deep of His mighty nature He thinks, wills, enjoys, feels, loves, desires, and suffers as any other person may.  In making Himself known to us He stays by the familiar pattern of personality. He communicates with us through the avenues of our minds, our wills and our emotions. The continuous and unembarrassed interchange of love and thought between God and the soul of the redeemed man is the throbbing heart of New Testament religion” (pp. 13 – 14).

 

The Lord willing, we will pick this quote up in our next reflection. In the meantime, as you read the above paragraph, what does it look like in your own life? Do you know God as a Person?

 

How is your relationship with God unfolding in your life?

 

If I asked you to tell me about your best friend and your relationship with him or her, what would you say and how would you say it?

 

If I asked you the same question about God, how would you respond?

 

 

 

The Pursuit of God by Tozer - Reflections (7)

 

“The doctrine of justification by faith…has in our time fallen into evil company and been interpreted by many in such a manner as actually to bar men from the knowledge of God. The whole transaction of religious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless. Faith may now be exercised without embarrassment to the Adamic ego. Christ may be “received” without creating any special love for Him in the soul of the receiver. The man is “saved,” but he is not hungry nor thirsty after God. In fact, he is specifically taught to be satisfied and is encouraged to be content with little” (pages 12 – 13).

What was Tozer thinking when he wrote these words in 1948? How might they relate to our own time? If Tozer was seeing the beginning of a problem in the way we think of justification by faith – or if he was seeing a problem that already had well – established roots - has that problem continued into our own time and what are its ongoing results? 

Might Bonhoeffer have something to say to us when he writes, “Like ravens we have gathered around the carcass of cheap grace. From it we have imbibed the poison which has killed the following of Jesus among us”?

Tozer writes in the context of the pursuit of God, Bonhoeffer in the context of following Jesus in discipleship – both streams merging into the River of the Gospel.  

On page 16 we read, “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.” 

When Jesus calls us to discipleship, He does not call us to accept Him, but rather to follow Him, taking up our cross, denying ourselves, losing our lives for His sake and the Gospel’s, laying our lives down for Him and others, and not being ashamed of Him in witness (Mark 8:34 – 38: John 15:12 – 13). 

Is this not a far cry from the passive acceptance that is marketed to us, in which we are asked to make a profession of faith without committing our lives to Jesus Christ in obedient discipleship? 

Biblical repentance is NOT centered on asking forgiveness for sins, it IS centered on turning around from our own way of life to following Jesus the True Way. This turning, this repentance, does indeed involve confession of sins and seeking and accepting forgiveness, but that is NOT the Biblical focus, Jesus Christ is the focus, following Him is the focus, discipleship is the focus, koinonia in Christ is the focus. 

We might say that we can have forgiveness of sins and yet have nothing, for if we do not have the life of Jesus Christ then we are still dead in our trespasses and sins – and dead is dead is dead. (Consider Ephesians 2:1 – 10; 2 Corinthians 5:14 – 21). 

Justification by faith is not, by itself, the Gospel. To teach only from Romans 1:1 to 5:11 is not to teach the Gospel, the Gospel includes all of Romans chapters 1 – 8…and beyond. 

When Tozer writes that justification by faith can be interpreted in such a way as to bar people from the knowledge of God he means, at least in part – for he may mean more, that justification is presented in such a way as to create a barrier between the seeker and God. The seeker is told to get his or her passport to heaven stamped and then go his or her own way, as long as they show up for church things will be fine. They ought not to expect too much from this point on, all they need do is to believe they are going to heaven, no need to truly have a relationship with Jesus Christ in unfolding richness.

This is exquisitely diabolical when we consider that what Luther risked his life for, what others died for, has become a Nehustan when isolated from the Person of Jesus Christ and the full Gospel. To go through a wedding ceremony and to receive a signed marriage license from the officiant is not enough. The marriage must be consummated. 

How many people are on church membership rolls; how many men, women, and young people attend Sunday gatherings, having gone through motions, having said words that amount to professions of faith or confirmation affirmations, and yet do not have consummated relationships with Jesus Christ…not to mention ongoing deep relationships with Him?

This, of course, ignores passages such as the Parable of the Sower (Mark 4:1 – 20) and the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18 – 20) with its command to “make disciples” by teaching them to “observe all that I commanded you.” There are many mysteries with the Gospel and the Kingdom, but one thing that ought not to be a mystery is that we are to enjoy deep unfolding relationships with Jesus Christ and with one another.

Are Tozer’s observations relevant for today? 

Are we engaged in a “mechanical and spiritless” method of religious conversion? 

(And this applies to our more emotional approaches too, we can be mechanical and spiritless while being emotional, let us not deceive ourselves – having a good time isn’t the equivalent of worshipping God in Spirit and in truth.)

A generation has passed (or is passing) since Tozer wrote The Pursuit of God, if what he wrote is true, then my generation has grown up in an environment that has substituted “receiving Jesus” for the call of Jesus Christ to follow Him in discipleship, in self-denial, in losing our lives for His sake and the Gospel’s, and in laying down our lives for others. We don’t know what we don’t know, and what we don’t know is the Gospel.

Is Jesus enough for us? Is devotion to Him enough? Are we pursuing Him as He pursues us? 

Does a fish know that it lives in an aquarium? 

Do we know that we are products of systems that have substitutes for the Person of Jesus Christ? 

There are folks in our churches who think they have a life they simply do not have; and there are also folks who have a life of which they are unaware. If we preach and teach Jesus Christ then we can trust Him to do His work in both groups…but if we persist in substituting programs and self-help therapy and entertainment and our various Nehustan’s (which were at one time blessings!) then we will only strengthen the bars of our prisons. 

And as Tozer has written, let us remember that the Bible is not an end in itself – the Bible is to lead us into the depths of Jesus Christ.

How is our relationship with Jesus Christ unfolding today?

The Pursuit of God by Tozer – Reflections (6)

Chapter One is titled, Following Hard after God, it begins with Psalm 63:8, “My soul follows hard after You, Your right hand upholds me.”

Tozer’s first statement is, “Christian theology teaches the doctrine of prevenient grace, which, briefly stated, means that before a man can seek God, God must first have sought the man.” Later on page 11 he continues, “We pursue God because, and only because, He has first put an urge within us that spurs us to the pursuit. “No man can come to me,” said our Lord, “except the Father which has sent me draw him,” and it is by this prevenient drawing that God takes from us every vestige of credit for the act of coming.” 

Tozer thus lays the foundation for the rest of the book, for he wants us to make no mistake, our pursuit of God is initiated by God’s pursuit of us – Jesus is the Author and the Completer of our faith (Hebrews 12:2).

The psalmist writes, “Unless the LORD builds the house, they labor in vain who build it; unless the LORD guards the city, the watchman keeps awake in vain” (Psalm 127:1). As Jesus says, “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). 

An often-misquoted verse is Philippians 2:12, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” It is misquoted because it leaves out the rest of the sentence, “for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13). We can only work because God is already working, we can only respond to what God is already doing. God pursues us so that we can respond by pursuing Him. 

Consider Paul’s statement at the beginning of Philippians, “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” Jesus began His work in us and Jesus will perfect His work in us – in this confidence in Jesus we can pursue God and encourage one another.

On page 12 Tozer writes, “On our part there must be positive reciprocation if this secret drawing of God is to eventuate in identifiable experience of the Divine” [italics mine]. As Tozer will develop, to know God is to experience God; it is not simply to know about Him, it is to be in relationship with Him. To pursue God is to pursue relationship, to pursue friendship, to pursue familial intimacy, to pursue koinonia. 

If someone asks me about my relationship with my wife I ought to be able to describe it, should this not also be the case if someone asks me about my relationship with God? (I’ll also note that some elements of relationships are private, and ought to be private.)  Just as with earthly fathers and mothers, each child’s relationship is personal, private, and also shared as common ground with other siblings. (Note that personal and private are two different things.)

People who know me know that I am married to Vickie. In my business career not only did my direct reports (and others) know I was married to Vickie, they knew Vickie, they spent time with Vickie in our home as we regularly gathered as a group to enjoy meals and hospitality as we engaged in business. There were other times when Vickie was invited to functions. When I was involved in serving in our industry’s trade association my competitors and suppliers knew Vickie, for she attended many functions with me.  We have enjoyed a lifetime of friendships and associations from my business career…and from hers.

People who know us, who truly know us, know who and what is at the core of our lives, they know what our hearts beat for. 

Men and women who worked for me also knew, in various degrees of understanding, that Jesus Christ is at the core of my life and marriage. Why would I hide either Jesus or Vickie? For sure there were times when others no doubt thought I was a poor example as a Christian or pastor, and I have had times when I needed to witness to others by asking forgiveness and apologizing and saying I was sorry (but that’s not a bad thing, is it?) And looking back I see that I missed many opportunities for more apologies and to be a more faithful witness. (These jars of clay that Paul writes about keep getting in the way!)

Might we say that we can hide what we believe and think, but we can’t hide what and who we love? 

I wonder if perhaps we’ve substituted things for Tozer’s identifiable experience? 

Do we know the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, or do we only know about them? 

Are we loving them with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength in an identifiable experience, an identifiable way of life?

Are we pursuing God as He pursues us? 

The Pursuit of God by Tozer - Reflections (5)

 

“Sound Bible exposition is an imperative must in the Church of the Living God. Without it no church can be a New Testament church in any strict sense of that term. But 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.

“The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts.” Tozer, page 10.

During my first year of pastoral ministry I came to a frightening realization, I had been so well trained in exegesis and in sermon preparation and delivery that I didn’t need the Holy Spirit, I could do it on my own. Of course, in the most important sense, I couldn’t do it on my own, for without the Holy Spirit the Bible is not alive and the Word preached is not the Word at all but rather an academic or religious naturalistic distillation of humanistic thought and motive. However, the fact remained that I could do it on my own if I desired and few, if any, would notice or care, I’d just be doing my pastoral job. I could educate people in the Bible, but would they see Jesus? Would they come to experience Jesus, the Living Christ?

To return to Tozer’s image of Elijah on Mount Carmel, I was trained to rearrange the altar stones in ways that would capture hearers’ attention and draw them into Sunday messages. I was also trained to lead folks into careful exegesis. I was trained to educate and communicate, to communicate and educate. Now to be sure, I was also taught to submit to Scripture, and I truly value that discipline and mindset – but was I taught to look for Jesus? Was Jesus our interpretive lens? In seminary, did we speak of our need to rely on the Holy Spirit? Did we focus on our calling to wed the hearts of our people to Jesus and only Jesus (2 Cor. 11:1 – 3)?

When Tozer writes that “the Bible is not an end in itself,” I’m reminded of John 5:39 - 40, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.” 

We can know the Bible and not know Jesus. This ought to be a sobering thought, but I’m not sure it is, I’m not certain we realize what a warning this is to us. The scribes, Sadducees, and Pharisees “knew” the Scriptures and yet crucified Jesus – we have never done that…have we?

This is a difficult subject to think about, at least for me. I do so love the Bible and if you know me you know that I love the Bible. I love the Bible for in and through the Bible as the Word of God I meet Jesus Christ and the saints – this is why I love the Bible, for the Bible reveals Jesus from Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is, I suppose you could call it, my primary sacrament. Through the promises of God we become “partakers of the Divine Nature,” isn’t this sacramental? Yes, I think it is. (2 Peter 1:4). 

Yet, if we are not seeing and experiencing Jesus Christ in and through the Bible we are perhaps better off without the Bible, for we may deceive ourselves into thinking we have something that we don’t. The Pharisees had the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings and yet they were, as a class, blind – not only were they blind, they helped engineer the crucifixion of God.

We can believe statements the Bible makes and yet not see and experience Jesus Christ. Here is an example:

There is something called the Ark Encounter in Kentucky. I have never been to see this full-size Noah’s Ark, and I imagine it is a fine exhibit and that the folks who own and operate it are fine people.  What follows is no reflection on them. 

Of the folks I know who have visited the Ark Encounter I do not recall one of them talking to me about how the experience brought home to them that Jesus is our Ark. One of my friends who visited the Ark Encounter participated in a teaching series at his church that was focused on getting people to believe that Noah’s Ark was indeed a factual event – which I believe. 

Now here is my point. What good does it do to believe in a literal and factual Noah’s Ark if we don’t know and experience Jesus Christ as our Ark? If Jesus isn’t our Ark, if we aren’t seeing Jesus in the Bible’s passages about Noah’s Ark, then we aren’t really reading and experiencing the Bible. As Jesus said in the above verse, the Scriptures testify of Him.

If we see that Jesus is our Ark, then at least two things ought to happen. We ought to see Jesus as our refuge from the world, the flesh, and the devil; we ought to know Him as our shelter as opposed to economic, political, nationalistic, military, and other world systems. We ought to also be about our Father’s business and do all we can, by God’s grace, to bring others into the Ark of Jesus Christ. 

O yes, and we ought to see the judgments around us for what they are, God giving us up to our own ways, we ought to see the tsunami swirling around us for what it is – a flood of judgment and iniquity – and yet since we are in the Ark we are safe in Jesus, and hopefully we want others to know that safety. 

The Ark that matters is Jesus Christ, and if we aren’t seeing and sharing Jesus as our Ark then we are missing the point. Just as, in the Creation account, Jesus is what matters; He is the Beginning, He is the Light of the world, we have been formed in the image of God and in Jesus Christ we are made new creations. 

We are not called to believe in Noah’s Ark, we are called to believe in and know the One to whom Noah’s Ark points. 

As Tozer writes, “the Bible is not an end in itself.” 

When I was a young Christian, I was taught that there is a difference between knowing about someone and actually knowing the person. I have used this commonsense point to share Jesus over the decades. Yet now it strikes me that many of us within the professing church do not talk and act as if we actually know Jesus Christ. We may talk about church, we may talk about this preacher or that teacher, we may on occasion talk about doctrine (some groups more than others), we may…on rare occasions, talk about Jesus – but this is very rare. The rarest thing is to hear a professing Christian speak as if he or she actually knows Jesus Christ. 

How is it that in much of our evangelism we say that Jesus wants a personal relationship with us and then, once someone makes a commitment to Jesus, that the whole idea of a personal relationship is effectively quashed? 

Well, since this anticipates the first chapter of The Pursuit of God we’ll close for now. 

The Bible is not an end in itself, and when we make it our end we substitute it for Jesus Christ and we twist the Scriptures, we turn the Bible back upon ourselves and away from Jesus – this is tragic.

The Pursuit of God by Tozer - Reflections (4)

“I trust I speak in charity, but the lack in our pulpits is real. Milton’s terrible sentence applies to our day as accurately as it did to his: “The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed.” It is a solemn thing, and no small scandal in the Kingdom, to see God’s children starving while actually seated at the Father’s table. This truth of Wesley’s words is established before our eyes: “Orthodoxy, or right opinion, is, at best, a very slender part of religion. Though right tempers cannot subsist without right opinions [beliefs], yet right opinions may subsist without right tempers. There may be a right opinion about God without either love or one right temper toward Him. Satan is proof of this.”” (Page 9). 

While the heart of Tozer’s preface is yet to come, I share this quote, as I did the previous one, because of its directness and imagery. 

As James writes, “You believe that God is one, you do well, the demons also believe, and shudder” (James 2:19). 

To return to Tozer’s image of Elijah on Mount Carmel, we can construct a perfect altar and yet not see the fire of God fall upon it. We can set a perfect table and yet serve unpalatable food.

When I was a boy, my two brothers and I, along with our Dad, visited an elderly relative who gave us her homemade cookies – she had lost her baking touch, and the cookies could not really be eaten – they were like Styrofoam.  When her eyes were turned, we put the cookies in our pockets. The cookies were so bad that, when we arrived home and gave one to our dog, he refused it. I suppose if we had never had cookies we might have eaten them and made the best of it, but we knew what cookies were supposed to taste like, we knew what their texture ought to be. 

Do we know what it is like when the fire of God falls on the altar? Do we know what the psalmist means when he says, “Taste and see that the LORD is good”? Is the Word of God “sweeter than honey and the honeycomb” to us?

We can have right beliefs and yet our hearts may not be right toward God and others. We can have right doctrines and yet not have right hearts. Our table settings may be worthy of a magazine cover, and yet the food we serve may be tasteless.  

When Jesus speaks about the Great Commandment, loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, He does not speak of doctrine but of the heart. When He speaks of loving our neighbor as ourselves, He does not speak of doctrine but of the heart (Mark 12:29 – 31).

When Jesus gives us His new and holy commandment, it is that we love one another just as He has loved us, laying our lives down for one another; He speaks of our hearts in action, He does not speak to us of doctrine - as we normally conceive doctrine (John 13:34 – 35; 15:12 – 13). We might say that the doctrine that Jesus teaches is a doctrine of the heart in action. 

When the Apostle John writes of us following Jesus, he writes that we are to love as He loved and to lay down our lives for one another as Jesus laid down His life for us (1 John 3:16). 

When Paul writes of what the heart of the Church should look like, when he writes of what holds the Body of Christ together, he writes of the more excellent way of love, he writes that “the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13). Without love, without the doctrine of the heart, knowledge means nothing, sacrificial works mean nothing, miraculous faith means nothing – love must be our heartbeat, love for God and for others. 

Peter writes that we are to love one another fervently (1 Peter 1:22), and James writes of the Royal Law, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (James 2:8). 

If we get the doctrine of the heart right, there may be other teachings we may not clearly see, but we will have the foundation of our life in Christ and of life with one another. If our hearts are aflame with the love of God, there will be fire on the altar, there will be food to share. 

We might say that right doctrine without right hearts is dead, just as “faith without works is dead" (James 2:17). 

I suppose we could say that we don’t really have right doctrine if our hearts are not also right, for if we leave out the doctrine of the heart everything else is lifeless and we’ve deceived ourselves and others. As Paul writes, “Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies” (1 Cor. 8:1). 

This is one of those subjects we could, and should, ponder for the rest of our lives.

How are our hearts looking today? 

Are we loving God and others?