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?