The Pursuit of God by Tozer - Reflections (17)

 

“The Christian who is alive enough to know himself even slightly will recognize the symptoms of this possession malady, and will grieve to find them in his own heart. If the longing after God is strong enough within him, he will want to do something about the matter. Now, what should he do?” (pages 28 – 29).

 

“First of all, he should put away all defense and make no attempt to excuse himself either in his own eyes or before the Lord. Whoever defends himself will have himself for his defense, and he will have no other. But let him come defenseless before the Lord and he will have for his defender no less than God Himself. Let the inquiring Christian trample under foot every slippery trick of his deceitful heart and insist upon frank and open relations with the Lord” (page 29).

 

Our Father and Lord Jesus want the best for us, and that includes setting us free from being possessed by possessions, whether material or otherwise. As Tozer writes on page 22, “There is within the human heart a tough, fibrous root of a fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess” (italics mine). As we’ve pointed out, what this looks like in my life is probably not what it looks like in your life, our calling is not to evaluate one another, it is to stand before Jesus Christ and ask Him to search us and try us, to shine His Light upon us, and to ensure that only God is worshipped within the Holy of Holies of our hearts and souls.

 

I wonder how it is possible to have this conversation in the world and church in which we live, it is like speaking a different language; more than that, it is speaking a different language within an alien culture, one with different values than our own.

 

We exalt worldly success within the professing church, we talk about money as a central benchmark of our congregational health (and we are adept at justifying this focus), we justify hoarding money while neighbors are hungry and homeless, we are more interested in our children and grandchildren having well – paying jobs than knowing Jesus and living godly lives, we know the composition of our 401ks but not our Bibles, we are more prone to speak to one another of the financial markets at church than of how Jesus is revealing Himself to us.

 

We forget, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9).

 

I find it hard to conceive that in a society and a church that is obsessed with money and things and power and pleasure that we can even begin to approach the problem of the insidious idols within us; all the more reason to cry out to Jesus for mercy and help.

 

For sure, as Tozer writes, we must put away all defense and excuses – and this goes against our grain, for again we live in a church and society that tells us we deserve the best, that we deserve all that we can obtain. We can’t do this without the grace of Jesus, and we need His grace every day to do it.  Only the Holy Spirit can enable us to “trample under foot every slippery trick” of our deceitful hearts.

 

What a challenge this can be in the face of churches and so-called ministries that exalt material prosperity, that teach us to avoid the Christ of the Cross and laying down our lives for Christ and others.

 

Tozer writes that we ought to, “Insist that God accept his [our] all, that He take things out of his [our] heart and Himself reign there in power” (page 29). We ought not to be among those “Who coddle their feelings and insist upon caution in their dealings with God” (page 29).

 

Will we take the walk of Abraham with our Isaac up Mt. Moriah and offer to God that which is most precious to us? Will we say with David, “Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth” (Psalm 73:25)? Will we allow God to reorient our hearts and minds from the earthly and self-centered to the heavenly and Christ-centered?

 

Tozer says that we must experience this work of God in our hearts, that it is not a truth to be intellectually learned. He writes that we must “live through Abraham’s hard and bitter experiences if we would know the blessedness which follows them. The ancient curse will not go out painlessly…” (page 29).

 

I have never preached this nor taught it, and this shames me. O yes, I have preached the Way of the Cross, I have taught the intercessory life, I have quoted Mark 8:34 – 38 times without number. But O how I wish I could go back and lead my people with Abraham up Mt. Moriah, how I wish I could ask each one of us to bring our Isaacs to offer to God, how I wish we could ponder each step, one foot in front of the other, allowing the Holy Spirit to speak to us and to work deep within our hearts and souls.

 

Even now I am not sure I understand the depth of what Tozer is writing, I have been in the religious opium den too long. What was once familiar to me was lost in layer after layer of pragmatic American religion. Have we not become like Peter in trying to shield Jesus from the Cross, from His calling and destiny and glory? (Matthew 16:21 – 23). And let’s not forget, one minute Peter confessed Jesus, the next he played the role of Satan!

 

Do we not strive to shield one another from Mt. Moriah, from the Cross of Christ?

 

“If we would indeed know God in growing intimacy, we must go this way of renunciation. And if we are set upon the pursuit of God, He will sooner or later bring us to this test” (page 30).

 

Does this make any sense to you?

 

The Lord willing, we’ll take one more look at this before we conclude Tozer’s chapter on, The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing.

 

What might the “way of renunciation” look like in our lives?