The Pursuit of God by Tozer - Reflections (3)

“Current evangelicalism has…laid the altar and divided the sacrifice into parts, but now seems satisfied to count the stones and rearrange the pieces with never a care that there is not a sign of fire upon the top of lofty Carmel.” (pp. 8 – 9).

“There is today no lack of Bible teachers to set forth correctly the principles of the doctrines of Christ, but too many of these seem satisfied to teach the fundamentals of the faith year after year, strangely unaware that there is in their ministry no manifest Presence, nor anything unusual in their personal lives. They minister constantly to believers who feel within their breasts a longing which their teaching simply does not satisfy." (page 9).

While Tozer will develop the above statements, I am quoting them for their directness – with more to come. The first excerpt draws from 1 Kings 17:20 – 40, the confrontation of Elijah with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. 

“So with the stones he built an altar in the name of the LORD…Then he arranged the wood and cut the ox in pieces and laid it on the wood…Then the fire of the LORD fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.”

Paul tells Timothy that Timothy is to “rightly divide” or “accurately handle” the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15). This is more than an academic exercise, it is more than an expository verse-by-verse (stone-by-stone) exegesis that can be taught to anyone with basic intellectual skills, for Paul makes it clear that his message was “in demonstration of the Spirit and power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God” (1 Corinthians 2:4 – 5).  He further states, “The kingdom of God does not consist in word but in power” (1 Corinthians 4:20). Building an altar, arranging wood, and even killing and laying out an ox, is a sterile exercise without the fire and power of the Living God.

“For our Gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction…” (1 Thessalonians 1:5).  

Is our preaching and teaching essentially an exercise in rearranging stones in different combinations week after week? Do we offer an ox one week, a lamb another, a goat another, a heifer another…all without fire? 

What would we do if fire actually came from God? What would we do if the Holy Spirit replicated His manifestations of Acts? It might be the cause of some embarrassment.

Would we say, “O…hello God…we didn’t expect you”?

Tozer writes of those who “seem satisfied to teach the fundamentals of the faith year after year.”

I think this is one of the scandals of the professing church, we have good - hearted men and women who have attended church all of their lives and they know no more today than they did 70 years ago. In fact, it is likely that some had a deeper faith as trusting children than as senior adults whose hearts have been dulled by being fed the fundamentals year after year, fundamentals which have become rote and dry and without Divine relationship. 

This reminds me of people I’ve known in the workplace.  You can have two twenty – year employees in the same company; one has twenty years of experience, the other has one year of experience repeated twenty times. When the latter is confronted with this reality, he will either say, “O my, I didn’t realize this, teach me please, I want to learn.” Or he will be offended and quit. The same is true of folks in the professing church, including pastors. One difference between the workplace and church, is that in the church we are seldom confronted with our lack of depth, with the great chasm between our lives and the wonderful relationship to which God calls us. 

Perhaps, as we explore The Pursuit of God, we’ll gain some understanding of why these things are, and what we can do to change, how we can pray, how we can believe, how we can obey, how we can encourage one another. Of course this must all be by the grace of God, by the enabling of the Holy Spirit. 

I wonder if we really know how much God our Father loves us. For sure I don’t think we have an inkling of what it means to be the sons and daughters of the Living God, the sisters and brothers of Jesus Christ. This is a critical element of the Gospel, and yet we don’t know it, we don’t teach it – so how can we live it? 

God so loved the world, that He not only gave His Only Begotten Son, but that He births us as His sons and daughters in the Only Begotten Son – in Christ we are all begotten, the Son with an eternal uppercase “B”; Jesus’ many sisters and brothers with the Holy Spirit (in thist sense, with another Upper Case “B”).

Tozer writes that there are “believers who feel within their breasts a longing which their teaching [that of the Bible teachers] simply does not satisfy.”

Do you think this is true today? 

I don’t think it is true in the United States. I think those who attend church are typically satiated with programs, music, “how to” teachings, rearranging the stones and the sacrifices, with what amounts to group therapy, and with knowledge devoid of power. 

I seldom hear any professing Christian yearn for more of Jesus, just as I seldom hear professing Christians speak of Jesus, either of learning about Him or of living in friendship with Him. We seem to be satisfied where we are. O for sure we want church growth, we may want more programs, we may want more of this or that – but the only real question is whether we want more of Jesus. 

Do you hear folks talking about the Person of Jesus Christ and their relationship with Him? Do you hear folks desiring more of Jesus? Do you see people sharing Jesus with others? 

On the other hand, it is surely possible that many do desire Jesus, but they are accepting “Christian” substitutes, it may be that we have come to the point where we don’t know any better, surely a challenge for both pastors and congregations. 

Well, again, perhaps as we travel with Tozer our vision will improve, perhaps we will see Jesus as never before. 

Do I desire Jesus today?

Do you? 

The Pursuit of God by Tozer – Reflections (2)

“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? 

The Pursuit of God by Tozer - Reflections (1)

 

Vickie and I recently had breakfast with friends visiting our area from Richmond, VA. It was a delightful and refreshing time, especially since it had been about six years since we’d seen them. During the course of our time together the husband mentioned that a small group he is in is reading A. W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God. Since that breakfast I’ve taken The Pursuit of God off my bookshelf and have been pondering it once again. I first encountered Tozer’s writings in 1966, and one of my treasured memories is working through The Pursuit of God with a friend about 35 years ago, which included a Friday night and a Saturday set aside to wrestle with the book. 

I’m going to attempt to explore the book in a series of posts and I hope they will be beneficial to you. The Pursuit of God is readily available from booksellers, and it is also available for free online. It is a classic and has remained in print. 

My edition is produced by Christian Publications, Camp Hill, PA. It is only 128 pages, with a preface and 10 chapters, so it is a short book, but it is a dense book. I hope you will consider reading the book as well as participating in this journey with me. 

Tozer has been called a 20th century prophet. You can make your own judgment about that, I think there is some truth to the observation. 

The Pursuit of God was first published in 1948, 3 years after the end of WWII. If you are young, 1948 may seem like a long time ago; if you are my age it is part of your continuum of experience, and if you are of a certain temperament, it is as if it were yesterday. Yet, I am struck by how far apart Tozer’s time is from ours, it is more than 77 years, it is more than chronological, it is the way we think, the things we think important, our sense of Christ and the Father and the Holy Spirit, our understanding of mission; it is as if we have traveled from one planet to another. Again, you must form your own judgment about this.

Reading Tozer may require patience, both in terms of content and in terms of writing style. Good content often requires patience because it challenges us. Every book that has been a lifelong friend to me challenges me when I open its pages. Is not the Bible our best examples of this? 

Tozer’s writing style is closer to the 19th century than the 21st century. Consider that his first pastorate was in 1919. Frankly, we are adults and we ought to learn to read unfamiliar styles. Our propensity to want our spiritual food pureed has contributed to our collective spiritual infancy – we discard the treasures of the past for the entertainment of the present. Our sugar – coated diet has led to our teeth falling out and we can no longer chew the meat of the Word.

Just as the ONLY way to know the Bible is to actually read the Bible, the only way to learn to read different styles of English is to read different styles of English. One benefit of reading an unfamiliar style is that it s-l-o-w-s us down and requires us to think a bit more about what we read. I have more patience with the styles of Tozer or Andrew Murray than I do with many contemporary authors, for Murray and Tozer are challenging me, while many contemporary authors are seeking to either entertain me with religious cotton candy or are focused on man rather than the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ. 

Ponder the difference between what we are typically fed today with this quote from Bonhoeffer, "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.” 

We’ll begin with Tozer’s preface, but not with the beginning of the preface because that will require more comment than I want to write in this first post, which is itself a preface. Instead, let’s look at this statement:

“To great sections of the Church the art of worship has been lost entirely, and in its place has come that strange and foreign thing called the “program.” This word has been borrowed from the stage and applied with sad wisdom to the type of public service which now passes for worship among us.” (page 10).

Is it possible that we have expanded what Tozer term “program” into every area of church life? That is, what was once the main “program” is now complemented, or supported, by many programs. 

Do we have the equivalent of Johnny Carson, Ed McMahon, and Doc Severinsen before us on Sunday mornings? (My apologies in using an older group to illustrate a point, I am out of the entertainment loop). Are our Sunday morning programs as tightly scripted, if not more so, as the Tonight Show? 

Why do people “attend” a church? What part does the Sunday program play in this decision? What part do programs offered by the church contribute to this decision? How does this way of thinking compare with what the Bible teaches about the Church and our relationship to our brothers and sisters? 

It is said that we don’t know what we don’t know. There are things we are simply unaware of, we just don’t know anything different from our own experience and knowledge. This is one reason why knowing the Bible is critical for the Christian, for one question that should always be before us is, “What is the Biblical standard? What is the Biblical norm?” If we do not have a sense of the Biblical norm, then we cannot judge our own norm, our own experience, our own goals and desires…as individuals or as a people.

Seventy-seven years ago A. W. Tozer wrote, in essence, that we were moving into the entertainment industry.  Many of us cannot conceive of anything other than what we’ve experienced, and if we’ve been raised in a “Chirstian” entertainment culture we can’t imagine anything else. If we have been raised (chronologically or spiritually) in a church culture that caters to the wants and desires of people, rather than calling us to follow Jesus and be Jesus to others, laying down our lives for Him and for one another, then it is a challenge to conceive of any other way of life. (Mark 8:34 – 38; John 15:12 – 13; 1 John 3:16). 

In the publisher’s introduction to the book, we are told that Tozer’s “great spiritual discovery [is] that to seek God does not narrow one’s life, but brings it, rather, to the level of highest possible fulfillment.” 

Perhaps as we explore what Tozer has to say we’ll better understand what he means by “programs.” Perhaps then we’ll be better able to judge the truth of what he writes about our slide into entertainment. 

Is God worth pursuing? 

Is Christ Jesus worth knowing?