Meekness and Rest

The following are points from the book, "The Pursuit of God", by A. W. Tozer, a man of God from Chicago, Illinois. What he wrote in 1948 is relevant even today. 

The purpose of including his message in point form is so that it would at least whet one's appetite for more, and that "there may be those who can light their candle at its flame."  

This book has been published by Christian Publications, Inc. Harrisburg, PA.

1. In the world of men we find nothing approaching the virtues of which Jesus spoke in the opening words of the famous Sermon on the Mount. Instead of poverty of spirit we find the rankest kind of pride; instead of mourners we find pleasure seekers; instead of meekness, arrogance; instead of hunger after righteousness we hear men saying, "I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing"; instead of mercy we find cruelty; instead of purity of heart, corrupt imaginings; instead of peacemakers we  find men quarrelsome and resentful; instead of rejoicing in mistreatment we find them fighting back with every weapon at their command.
    
2. All our heartaches and a great many of our physical ills spring directly out of our sins. Pride, arrogance, resentfulness, evil imaginations, malice, greed: these are the sources of more human pain than all the diseases that ever afflicted mortal flesh.
    
3. Into a world like this the sound of Jesus' words comes wonderful and strange, a visitation from above. It is well that He spoke, for no one else could have done it as well; and it is good that we listen. His words are the essence of truth. He is not offering an opinion; Jesus never uttered opinions. He never guessed; He knew, and He knows.
    
4. Jesus tells us more about meekness and applies it to our lives when He goes on to explain in the book of Matthew. "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light."
    
5. Here we have two things standing in contrast to each other, a burden and a rest. The burden is not a local one, peculiar to the first hearers, but one which is borne by the whole human race. It consists not of political oppression or poverty or hard work. It is far deeper than that. It is felt by the rich as well as the poor for it is something from which wealth and idleness can never deliver us.
    
6. The burden borne by mankind is a heavy and a crushing thing. The word Jesus used means a load carried or toil borne to the point of exhaustion. Rest is simply release from that burden. It is not something we do, it is what comes to us when we cease to do. His own meekness, that is the rest.
    
7. Let us examine our burden. It is altogether an interior one. It attacks the heart and the mind and reaches the body only from within.
    
8. First there is the burden of pride. The labour of self-love is a heavy one indeed. Think for yourself whether much of your sorrow has not arisen from someone speaking slightingly of you. As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal there will be those who will delight to offer affront to your idol. How then can you hope to have inward peace? The heart's fierce effort to protect itself from every slight, to shield its touchy honor from bad opinion of friend and enemy, will never let the mind have rest. Continue this fight through the years and the burden will become intolerable.
    
9. Such a burden as this is not necessary to bear. Jesus calls us to rest, and meekness is His method. The meek man cares not at all who is greater than he, for he has long ago decided that the esteem of the world is not worth the effort.
    
10. The meek man is not a human mouse afflicted with a sense of his own inferiority. Rather he may be in his moral life as bold as a lion and as strong as Samson; but he has stopped being fooled about himself. He has accepted God's estimate of his own life. He knows he is weak and helpless as God has declared him to be, but paradoxically, he knows at the same time that he is in the sight of God of more importance than angels. In himself, nothing; in God, everything. That is his motto.
     
11. The meek man knows well that the world will never see him as God sees him and he has stopped caring. He rests perfectly content to allow God to place His own values. He will be patient to wait for the day when everything will get its own price tag and real worth will come into its own. Then the righteous shall shine forth in the kingdom of their Father. He is willing to wait for that day.
     
12. In the meantime he will have attained a place of soul rest. As he walks on in meekness he will be  happy to let God defend him. The old struggle to defend himself is over. He has found the peace which meekness brings.
     
13. Then also he will get deliverance from the burden of pretense. By this I mean not hypocrisy, but the common human desire to put the best foot forward and hide from the world our real inward poverty. For sin has played many evil tricks upon us, and one has been the infusing into us a false sense of shame. There is hardly a man or women who dares to be just what he or she is without doctoring up the impression.
     
14. To all the victims of the gnawing disease Jesus says, "Ye must become as little children." For little children do not compare; they receive direct enjoyment from what they have without relating it to something else or someone else. Only as they get older and sin begins to stir within their hearts do jealousy and envy appear.
     
15. Another source of burden is artificiality. I am sure that most people live in secret fear that some day they will be careless and by chance an enemy or friend will be allowed to peep in their own poor empty soul. So they are never relaxed. This unnatural condition is part of our sad heritage of sins, but in our day it is aggravated by our whole way of life.
     
16. Artificiality is one curse that will drop away the moment we kneel at Jesus' feet and surrender ourselves to His meekness. Then we will not care what people think of us so long as God is pleased. Then what we are we will be everything; what we appear will take its place far down the scale of interest for us. Apart from sin we have nothing of which to be ashamed. Only an evil desire to shine makes us want to appear other than we are.
     
17. The heart of the world is breaking under this load of pride and pretense. There is no release from our burden apart from the meekness of Christ. Good keen reasoning may help slightly, but so strong is this vice that if we push it down one place it will come up somewhere else. To men and women everywhere Jesus says, "Come unto me, and I will give you rest." The rest He offers is the rest of meekness, the blessed relief which comes when we accept ourselves for what we are and cease to pretend. It will take some courage at first but the needed grace will come as we learn that we are sharing this new and easy yoke with the strong Son of God Himself. He calls it "My yoke," and He walks at one end while we walk at the other.

Restoring the Creator-creature Relation

The following are points from the book, "The Pursuit of God", by A. W. Tozer, a man of God from Chicago, Illinois. What he wrote in 1948 is relevant even today. 

The purpose of including his message in point form is so that it would at least whet one's appetite for more, and that "there may be those who can light their candle at its flame."  

This book has been published by Christian Publications, Inc. Harrisburg, PA.

1. It would be true to say that order in nature depends upon right relationships; to achieve harmony each thing must be in its proper position relative to each other thing. In human life it is not otherwise.
    
2. The cause of all our human miseries is a radical moral dislocation, an upset in our relation to God and to each other. For whatever else the Fall may have been, it was most certainly a sharp change in man's relation to his Creator. He adopted towards God an altered attitude, and by so doing destroyed the proper Creator-creature relation in which, unknown to him, his true happiness lay.
    
3. Essentially salvation is the restoration of a right relation between man and his Creator, a bringing back to normal of the Creator-creature relation.
    
4. A satisfactory spiritual life will begin with a complete change in relation between God and the sinner; not a judicial change merely, but a conscious and experienced change affecting the sinner's whole nature. The atonement in Jesus' blood makes such a change judicially possible and the working of the Holy Spirit makes it emotionally satisfying. The story of the prodigal son perfectly illustrates this latter phase.
   
   
5. In determining relationships we must begin somewhere. There must be somewhere a fixed center against which everything else is measured, where the law of relativity does not enter and we can say "IS" and make no allowances. Such a centre is God.
    
6. As the sailor locates his position on the sea by "shooting" the sun, so we may get out moral bearings by looking at God. We must begin with God. We are right when and only when we stand in a right position relative to God, and we are wrong so far and so long as we stand in any other position.
    
7. Much of our difficulty as seeking Christians stems from our unwillingness to take God as He is and adjust our lives accordingly. We insist upon trying to modify Him and bring Him nearer to our own images. We can get a right start only by accepting God as He is and learning to love Him for what He is.
    
8. Back of all, above all, before all is God; first in sequential order, above in rank and station, exalted in dignity and honor. As the self-existent One He gave being to all things, and all things exist out of Him and for Him, "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created."
    
9. Every soul belongs to God and exists by His pleasure. God being Who and What He is, and we being who and what we are, the only thinkable relation between us is one of full Lordship on His part and complete submission on ours. We owe Him every honor that it is in our power to give Him. Our everlasting grief lies in giving Him anything less.
    
10. The moment we make up our minds that we are going on with this determination to exalt God over all we step out of the world's parade. We shall find ourselves out of adjustment to the ways of the world, and increasingly so as we make progress in the holy way. We shall acquire a new viewpoint; a new and different psychology will be formed within us; a new power will begin to surprise us by its upsurging and its outgoings.
     
11. Our break with the world will be the direct outcome of our changed relation to God. For the world of fallen men does not honor God. Millions call themselves by His Name, it is true, and pay some token respect to Him, but a simple test will show how little He is really honored among them. Let the average man be put to the proof on the question of who is above, and his true position will be exposed. Let him be forced into making a choice between God and money, between God and men, between God and personal ambition, God and self, God and human love, and God will take second place every time. Those other things will be exalted above.
     
12. "Be Thou exalted" is the language of victorious spiritual experience. It is a little key to unlock the door to great treasures of grace. It is central in the life of God in the soul. Let the seeking man reach a place where life and lips join to say continually "Be Thou exalted," and a thousand minor problems will be solved at once. His Christian life ceases to be the complicated thing it had been before and becomes the very essence of simplicity. By the exercise of his will he has set his course, and on that course he will stay as if guided by an automatic pilot. If blown off course for a moment by some adverse wind he will surely return again as by a secret bent of the soul.
     
13. Let no one imagine that he will lose anything of human dignity by the voluntary sell-out of his all to his God. He does not by this degrade himself as a man; rather he finds his right place of high honor as one made in the image of his Creator. His honor will be proved by restoring again that stolen throne. In exalting God over all he finds his own highest honor upheld.
     
14. Anyone who might feel reluctant to surrender his will to the will of another should remember Jesus' words, "Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin." We must of necessity be servant to someone, either to God or to sin. The sinner prides himself on his independence, completely overlooking the fact that he is the weak slave of sins that rule his members. The man who surrenders to Christ exchanges a cruel slave driver for a kind and gentle Master whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light.
     
15. Made as we were in the image of God we scarcely find it strange to take again our God as our All. God was our original habitat and our hearts cannot but feel at home when they enter again that ancient and beautiful abode.
     
16. That place is His by every right in earth or heaven. While we take to ourselves the place that is His the whole course of our lives is out of joint. Nothing will or can restore order till our hearts make the great decision: God shall be exalted above.
     
17. "Them that honour Me I will honour," said God to Eli, a priest of Israel, and that ancient law of the Kingdom stands today unchanged by the passing of time or the changes of dispensation. The whole Bible and every page of history proclaim the perpetuation of that law. "If any man serve Me, him will My Father honour," said our Lord Jesus, tying in the old with the new and revealing the essential unity of His ways with men.
     
18. The utter tragedy upon Eli and his family was their failure to honour God. Set over against this almost any Bible character who honestly tried to glorify God in his earthly walk. Let it be Abraham, Jacob, David, Daniel, Elijah, or whom you will; honour followed honour as harvest the seed. The man of God set his heart to exalt God above all; God accepted his intention as fact and acted accordingly. Not perfection, but holy intention made the difference.
     
19. A saying of Jesus, and a most disturbing one, was put in the form of a question, "How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God alone?" If I understand this correctly Christ taught here the alarming doctrine that the desire for honour among men made belief impossible. Is this sin at the root of religious unbelief?
     
20. The whole course of the life is upset by failure to put God where He belongs. We exalt ourselves instead of God and the curse follows.
     
21. In our desire after God let us keep always in mind that God also hath desire, and His desire is toward the sons of men, and more particularly toward those sons of men who will make the once-for-all decision to exalt Him over all. Such as these are precious to God above all treasures of earth or sea. In them God finds a theatre where He can display His exceeding kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. With them God can walk unhindered, toward them He can act like the God He is.

The Gaze of the Soul

The following are points from the book, "The Pursuit of God", by A. W. Tozer, a man of God from Chicago, Illinois. What he wrote in 1948 is relevant even today. 

The purpose of including his message in point form is so that it would at least whet one's appetite for more, and that "there may be those who can light their candle at its flame."  

This book has been published by Christian Publications, Inc. Harrisburg, PA.

 

1. If an intelligent plain man approaches the Bible without any previous knowledge of what it contains, such a man will not have read long until his mind begins to observe certain truths standing out from the page. As he reads on he might want to number these truths as they become clear to him and make a brief summary under each number.
    
2. High up on the list of things which the Bible teaches will be the doctrine of faith. The place of weighty importance which the Bible gives to faith will be too plain for him to miss. He will very likely conclude: Faith is all-important in the life of the soul. Without faith it is impossible to please God. Faith will get me anything, take me anywhere in the kingdom of God, but without faith there can be no approach to God, no forgiveness, no deliverance, no salvation, no communion, no spiritual life at all.
    
3. Now if faith is so vitally important, if it is an indispensable must in our pursuit of God, it is perfectly natural that we should be deeply concerned over whether or not we possess this most precious gift. And our minds being what they are, it is inevitable that sooner or later we should get around to inquiring after the nature of faith. What is faith? would lie close to the question, Do I have faith? and would demand an answer if it is anywhere to be found.
    
4. Almost all who preach or write on the subject of faith have much the same things to say concerning it. They tell us that it is believing a promise, that it is taking God at His word, that it is reckoning the Bible to be true and stepping out upon it. The rest of the book or sermon is usually taken up with stories of persons who have had their prayers answered as a result of their faith.
    
5. In the Scriptures there is practically no effort made to define faith. Outside of a brief fourteen-word definition in Hebrews 11:1, I know of no Biblical definition, and even there faith is defined functionally, not philosophically, that is, it is a statement of what faith is in operation, not what it is in essence. We are also told from where it comes and by what means: "Faith is a gift of God," and Faith cometh by hearing and hearing the Word of God." This much is clear and to paraphrase Thomas à Kempis, "I had rather exercise faith than know the definition thereof." Therefore the complexion of our thoughts will be practical, not theoretical.
    
6. In a dramatic story in the book of Numbers faith is seen in action. Israel became discouraged and spoke against God, and the Lord sent fiery serpents among them. "And they bit the people; and much people of Israel died." Then Moses sought the Lord for them and He heard and gave them a remedy against the bite of the serpents. He commanded Moses to make a serpent of brass and put it upon a pole in sight of all the people, "and it came to pass, that everyone that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live." Moses obeyed, "and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived" (Num. 21:4-9).
    
7. In the New Testament this important bit of history is interpreted for us by no less an authority than our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He is explaining to His hearers how they may be saved. He tells them that it is by believing. Then to make it clear He refers to this incident in the Book of Numbers. "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:14,15).
    
8. Our plain man we introduced in the beginning, while reading this would make an important discovery. He would notice that "look" and "believe" were synonymous terms. "Looking" on the Old Testament serpent is identical with "believing" on the New Testament Christ. That is, the looking and the believing are the same thing. And he would understand that while Israel looked with their external eyes, believing is done with the heart. I think he would conclude that faith is the gaze of a soul upon a saving God.
    
9. When our man had seen this he would remember passages he had read before, and their meaning would come flooding over him. "They looked unto Him, and were lightened: and their faces were not ashamed" (Psa. 34:5). "Unto Thee lift I up mine eyes, O Thou that dwellest in the heavens. Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress; so our eyes wait upon the Lord our God, until that He have mercy upon us" (Psa. 123:1,2).
    
10. Our Lord Himself looked always at God. "Looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the bread to His disciples" (Matt 14:19). Indeed Jesus taught that He wrought His works by always keeping His inward eyes upon His Father. His power lay in His continuous look at God (John 5:19-21).
     
11. In full accord with the few texts we have quoted is the whole tenor of the inspired Word. It is summed up for us in the Hebrew epistle when we are instructed to run life's race "looking unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of our faith." From all this we learn that faith is not a once-done act, but in continuous gaze of the heart at the Triune God.
     
12. Believing, then, is directed the heart's attention to Jesus. It is lifting the mind to behold the Lamb of God," and never ceasing that beholding for the rest of our lives. At first this may be difficult, but it becomes easier as we look steadily at His wondrous Person, quietly and without strain. Distractions may hinder, but once the heart is committed to Him, after each brief excursion away from Him the attention will return again and rest upon Him like a wandering bird coming back to its window.
     
13. Faith is the least self-regarding of the virtues. It is by its very nature scarcely conscious of its own existence. Like the eye which sees everything in front of it and never sees itself, faith is occupied with the Object upon which it rests and pays no attention to itself at all. While we are looking at God we do not see ourselves - blessed riddance. The man who has struggled to purify himself and has had nothing but repeated failures will experience real relief when he stops tinkering with his soul and looks away to the perfect One. While he looks at Christ the very things he has so long been trying to do will be getting done within him. It will be God working in him to will and to do.
     
14. Faith is not in its self a meritorious act; the merit is in the One toward Whom it is directed. Faith is a re- direction of our sight, a getting out of the focus of our own vision and getting God into focus. Sin has twisted our vision inwards and made it self-regarding. Unbelief has put self where God should be, and is perilously close to the  sin of Lucifer who said, "I will set my throne above the throne of God." Faith looks out instead of in and the whole life falls into line.
     
15. When we lift our inward eyes to gaze upon God we are sure to meet friendly eyes gazing back at us, for it is written that the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout all the earth. The sweet language of experience is "Thou God seest me." When the eyes of the soul looking out meet the eyes of God looking in, heaven has begun right here on this earth.
     
16. Now, if faith is the gaze of the heart at God, and if this gaze is but the raising of the inward eyes to meet the all-seeing eyes of God, then it follows that it is one of the easiest things possible to do. It would be like God to make the most vital thing easy and place it within the range of possibility for the weakest and poorest of us.
     
17. Since believing is looking it can be done at any time. No season is superior to another season for this sweetest of all acts. God never made salvation depend upon new moons nor holy days or sabbaths. A man is not nearer to Christ on Easter Sunday than he is, say on Saturday, August 3, or Monday, October 4. As long as Christ sits on the mediatorial throne every day is a good day and all days are days of salvation.
     
18. Neither does place matter in this blessed work of believing God. Lift your heart and let it rest upon Jesus and you are instantly in a sanctuary though it be a berth in a coach or a factory or a kitchen. You can see God from anywhere if your mind is set to love and obey Him.
     
19. When the habit of inwardly gazing Godward becomes fixed within us we shall be ushered onto a new level of spiritual life more in keeping with the promises of God and the mood of the New Testament. The Triune God will be our dwelling place even while our feet walk the low road of simple duty here among men.

The Speaking Voice

The following are points from the book, "The Pursuit of God", by A. W. Tozer, a man of God from Chicago, Illinois. What he wrote in 1948 is relevant even today. 

The purpose of including his message in point form is so that it would at least whet one's appetite for more, and that "there may be those who can light their candle at its flame."  

This book has been published by Christian Publications, Inc. Harrisburg, PA.

In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. - John 1:1

1. A word is a medium by which thoughts are expressed, and the application of the term to the Eternal Son leads us to believe that self-expression is inherent in the Godhead, that God is forever seeking to speak Himself out to His creation.
    
2. The whole Bible supports the idea. God is speaking. Not God spoke, but God is speaking. He is by His nature continuously articulate. He fills the world with His speaking Voice.
    
3. The briefest and only satisfying cosmogony is this: "He spake and it was done." The why of natural law is the living Voice of God immanent in His creation. And this Word of God which brought all worlds into being cannot be understood to mean the Bible, for it is not a written or printed word at all, but the expression of the will of God spoken into the structure of all things.
    
4. This Word of God is the breath of God filling the world with living potentiality. The Voice of God is the most powerful force of nature, indeed the only force in nature, for all energy is her only because the power-filled Word is spoken.
    
5. The Bible is the written Word of God, and because it is written it is confined and limited by the necessities of ink and paper and leather. The Voice of God, however, is alive and free as the sovereign God is free. "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." The life is in the speaking words. God's word in the Bible can have power only because it corresponds to God's word in the universe. It is the present Voice which makes the written Word all-powerful. Otherwise it would lie locked in slumber within the covers of a book.
    
6. The Bible teaches us: "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. ... For He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast." "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God." His world-filling Voice is meant, that Voice which antedates the Bible by uncounted centuries, that Voice which has not been silent since the dawn of creation, but is sounding still throughout the full far reaches of the universe.
    
7. The Word of God is quick and powerful. In the beginning He spoke to nothing, and it became something. Chaos heard it and became order, darkness heard it and became light." And God said - and it was so."
    
8. That God is here and that He is speaking - these truths are back of all other Bible truths; without them there could be no revelation at all. God did not write a book and send it by a messenger to be read at a distance by unaided minds. He spoke a Book and lives in His spoken words, constantly speaking His words and causing the power of them to persist across the years.
    
9. "That the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." The Word of God affects the hearts of all men as light in the soul. In the hearts of all men the light shines, the Word sounds and there is no escaping them. Something like this would of necessity be so if God is alive and in His world. Even those persons who have never heard of the Bible have still been preached to with sufficient clarity to remove every excuse from their hearts forever.
    
10. The universal Voice of God was by the ancient Hebrews often called Wisdom, and was said to be everywhere sounding and searching throughout the earth, seeking some response from the sons of men." "Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her voice?" It is spiritual response for which the Wisdom of God is pleading, a response which she has always sought and is but rarely able to secure. The tragedy is that our eternal welfare depends upon hearing, and we have trained our ears not to hear.
     
11. This universal Voice has ever sounded, and it has often troubled men even when they did not understand the source of their fears. Could it be that this Voice distilling like a living mist upon the hearts of men has been the undiscovered cause of the troubled conscience and the longing for immortality confessed by millions since the dawn of recorded history?
     
12. When God spoke out of heaven to our Lord, self-centered men who heard it explained it by natural causes: they said, "It thundered." The believing man does not claim to understand. He falls to his knees and whispers, "God." The man of earth kneels also, but not to worship. He kneels to examine, to search, to find the cause and the how of things. Just now we happen to be living in a secular age. Our thought habits are those of the scientist, not those of the worshipper. We are more likely to explain that to adore. "It thundered," we exclaim, and go our earthly way. But still the Voice sounds and searches. The order and life of the world depend upon that Voice, but men are mostly too busy or too stubborn to give attention.
     
13. The Voice of God is a friendly Voice. No one need fear to listen to it unless he has already made up his mind to resist it.
     
14. Whoever will listen will hear the speaking Heaven. This is definitely not the hour when men take kindly to an exhortation to listen, for listening is not today a part of popular religion. Religion has accepted the monstrous heresy that noise, size, activity and bluster make a man dear to God. But we may take heart. God says, "Be still, and know that I am God," and still He says it, as if He means to tell us that our strength and safety lie not in noise but in silence.
     
15. It is important that we get still to wait on God. And it is best that we get alone, preferably with our Bible outspread before us. Then if we will we may draw near to God and begin to hear Him speak to us in our hearts.
     
16. The Bible will never be a living book to us until we are convinced that God is articulate in His universe. A man may say, "These words are addressed to me," and yet in his heart not feel and know that they are. He is the victim of a divided psychology. He tries to think of God as mute everywhere else and vocal only in a book.
     
17. I believe that much of our religious unbelief is due to a wrong conception of and a wrong feeling for the scriptures of Truth. A silent God suddenly began to speak in a book and when the book was finished lapsed back into silence again forever. Now we read the book as the record of what God said when He was for a brief time in a speaking mood. With notions like that in our head how can we believe?
     
18. The facts are that God is not silent, has never been silent. It is the nature of God to speak. The second Person of the Holy Trinity is called the Word. The Bible is the inevitable outcome of God's continuous speech. It is the infallible declaration of His mind for us put into our familiar human words.
     
19. I think a new world will arise out of the religious mists when we approach our Bible with the idea that it is not only a book which was once spoken, but a book which is now speaking. The prophets habitually said, 'thus saith the Lord." They meant their hearers to understand that God's speaking is in the continuous present. We may use the past tense properly to indicate that at a certain time a certain word of God was spoken, but a word of God once spoken continues to be spoken, as a child once born continues to be alive, or a world once created continues to exist. And those are but imperfect illustrations, for children die and worlds burn out, but the Word of God endureth forever.
     
20. If you would follow on to know the Lord, come at once to open Bible expecting it to speak to you. Do not come with the notion that it is a thing which you may push around at your convenience. It is more than a thing, it is a voice, a word, the very Word of the living God.

Christ, the Eternal Son

Wherever we turn in the church of God, there is Jesus. He is the beginning, middle and end of everything to us. ... There is nothing good, nothing holy, nothing beautiful, nothing joyous which He is not to His servants. 

No one need to be poor, because if he chooses, he can have Jesus for his own property and possession. No one need to be downcast, for Jesus is the joy of heaven, and it is His joy to enter into sorrowful hearts. We can exaggerate about many things; but we can never exaggerate our obligation to Jesus, or the compassionate abundance of the love of Jesus to us. 

All our lives long we might talk of Jesus, and yet we should never come to an end of the sweet things that might be said of Him. Eternity will not be long enough to learn all He is, or to praise Him for all He has done, but then, that matters not; for we shall be always with Him, and we desire nothing more.

- Frederick Faber, in one of his sermons

(An extract from The Pursuit of God, by A. W. Tozer)

The Universal Presence

The following are points from the book, "The Pursuit of God", by A. W. Tozer, a man of God from Chicago, Illinois. What he wrote in 1948 is relevant even today.The purpose of including his message in point form is so that it would at least whet one's appetite for more, and that "there may be those who can light their candle at its flame."  

This book has been published by Christian Publications, Inc. Harrisburg, PA.

1. The Universal Presence is a fact. God is here. The whole universe is alive with His life. God dwells in His creation and is everywhere indivisibly present. This is divine immanence.
    
2. This is boldly taught by prophet and apostle and is accepted by Christian theology generally. That is, it appears in the books, but for some reason it has not sunk into the average Christian's heart so as to become a part of his believing self.
    
3. What does the divine immanence mean in direct Christian experience? It means simply that God is here. Wherever we are, God is here. There is no place, there can be no place, where He is not. Ten million intelligences standing at as many points in space and separated by incomprehensible distances can each one say with equal truth, God is here. No point is nearer to God than any other point. It is exactly as near to God from any place as it is from any other place. No one is in mere distance any further from or any nearer to God than any other person is.
    
4. If God is present at every point in space, if we cannot go where He is not, cannot even conceive of a place where He is not, why then has not that Presence become the one universally celebrated fact of the world? The patriarch Jacob, gave the answer to that question. He saw a vision of God and cried out in wonder, "Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not." Jacob had never been for one small division of a moment outside the circle of that all-pervading Presence. But he knew it not. That was his trouble, and it is ours. Men do not know that God is here. What a difference it would make if they knew.
    
5. The Presence and the manifestation of the Presence are not the same. God is here when we are wholly unaware of it. He is manifest only when and as we are aware of His Presence. On our part there must be surrender to the Spirit of God, for His work it is to show us the Father and the Son. If we co-operate with Him in loving obedience God will manifest Himself to us, and that manifestation will be the difference between a nominal Christian life and a life radiant with the light of His face.
    
6. Our pursuit of God is successful just because He is forever seeking to manifest Himself to us. The revelation of God to any man is not God coming from a distance upon a time to pay a brief and momentous visit to the man's soul. The approach of God to the soul or of the soul to God is not to be thought in spatial terms at all. There is no idea of physical distance involved in the concept. It is not a matter of miles but of experience.
    
7. A man may say, "I feel that my son is coming nearer to me as he gets older," and yet that son has lived by his father's side since he was born and has never been away from home more than a day or so in his entire life. What then can the father mean? Obviously he is speaking of experience. He means that the boy is coming to know him more intimately and with deeper understanding, that the barriers of thought and feeling between the two are disappearing, that the father and son are becoming more closely united in mind and heart.
    
8. So when we sing, "Draw me nearer, nearer, blessed Lord," we are not thinking of the nearness of place, but of the nearness of relationship. It is for increasing awareness that we pray, for a more perfect consciousness of the divine Presence. We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts.
    
9. Why do some persons "find" God in a way that others do not? Why does God manifest His Presence to some and let multitudes of others struggle along in the half-light of imperfect Christian experience? Of course the will of God is the same for all. He has no favorites within His household. All He has ever done for any of his children he will do for all children. The difference lies not with God but with us.
    
10. Pick at random a score of great saints whose lives and testimonies are widely known. Let them be Bible characters or well known Christians of post-Biblical times. The one vital quality which they had in common was spiritual receptivity.
     
11. Something in them was open to heaven, something which urged them Godward. These great saints had spiritual awareness and they went on to cultivate it until it became the biggest thing in their lives. They differed from the average person in that when they felt the inward longing they did something about it. They acquired the lifelong habit of spiritual response. They were not disobedient to the heavenly vision. As David put it neatly, "when Thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek."
    
    
12. Spiritual receptivity can be present in degrees. We may have little or more or less, depending upon the individual. It may be increased by exercise or destroyed by neglect.
     
13. Let any man turn to God in earnest, let him begin to exercise himself unto godliness, let him seek to develop his powers of spiritual receptivity by trust and obedience and humility, and the results will exceed anything he may have hoped in his leaner and weaker days.

Apprehending God

The following are points from the book, "The Pursuit of God", by A. W. Tozer, a man of God from Chicago, Illinois. What he wrote in 1948 is relevant even today.  
The purpose of including his message in point form is so that it would at least whet one's appetite for more, and that "there may be those who can light their candle at its flame."  
This book has been published by Christian Publications, Inc. Harrisburg, PA.

1. Scripture clearly shows us that God can be known in personal experience. A loving Personality dominates the bible, walking among the trees of the garden and breathing fragrance over every scene. Always a living Person is present, speaking, pleading, loving, working and manifesting Himself.
   
   
2. We have in our hearts organs by means of which we can know God as certainly as we know material things through our familiar five senses. We apprehend the physical world by exercising the faculties given us for the purpose, and we possess spiritual faculties by means of which we can know God and the spiritual world if we will obey the Spirit's urge and begin to use them.
   
   
3. That a saving work must first be done in the heart is taken for granted here. The spiritual faculties of the unregenerate man lie asleep in his nature, unused and for every purpose dead; that is the stroke which has fallen upon us by sin. They may be quickened to active life again by the operation of the Holy Spirit in regeneration; that is one of the immeasurable benefits which come to us through Christ's atoning work on the cross.
   
   
4. Chronic unbelief is why a vast number of Christians today know so little of habitual conscious communion with God which the scriptures seem to offer. Faith enables our spiritual sense to function. Where faith is defective the results will be inward insensibility and numbness towards spiritual things.
   
   
5. A spiritual kingdom lies all about us, enclosing us, embracing us, altogether within reach of our inner selves, waiting for us to recognize it. God Himself is here waiting our response to His Presence. This eternal world will come alive to us the moment we begin to reckon upon its reality.
   
   
6. In the natural realm, man knows that the world is real. He finds it when he wakes to consciousness, and knows that he did not think it into being. It was here waiting for him when he came, and he knows that when he prepares to leave this earthly scene it will be here still to bid him good-bye as he departs.
   
   
7. By this same definition also God is real. He is real in the absolute and final sense that nothing else is. All other reality is contingent upon His. The great Reality is God who is the Author of that lower and dependent reality which makes up the sum of created things, including ourselves. God has objective existence independent of and apart from any notions we may have concerning Him. The worshipping heart does not create its Object. It finds Him here when it wakes from its moral slumber in the morning of its regeneration.
   
   
8. Imagination is not faith. The two are not only different from, but stand in sharp opposition to, each other. Imagination projects unreal images out of the mind and seeks to attach reality to them. Faith creates nothing; it simply reckons upon that which is already there.
   
   
9. God and the spiritual world are real. We can reckon upon them with as much assurance as we reckon upon the familiar world around us. Spiritual things are there (or rather we should say here) inviting our attention and challenging our trust.
   
   
10. Our trouble is that we have established bad thought habits. We habitually think of the visible world as real and doubt the reality of any other. We do not deny the existence of the spiritual world but we doubt that it  is real in the accepted meaning of the word.
    
    
11. The world of sense intrudes upon our attention day and night for the whole of our lifetime. It is clamorous, insistent and self-demonstrating. It does not appeal to our faith; it is here, assaulting our five senses; demanding to be accepted as real and final.
    
    
12. Sin has so clouded the lenses of our heart that we cannot see that other reality, the City of God, shining around us. The world of sense triumphs. The visible becomes the enemy of the invisible; the temporal of the eternal.
    
    
13. At the root of the Christian life lies belief in the invisible. The object of the Christian's faith is unseen reality.
    
    
14. If we would rise into that region of light and power plainly beckoning us through the scriptures of truth we must break the evil habit of ignoring the spiritual. We must shift our interest from the seen to the unseen. For the great unseen Reality is God. "He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." This is basic in the life of faith.
    
    
15. If we truly want to follow God we must seek to be other-worldly.  The "other worldly" is not future, but present. It parallels our familiar physical world, and the doors between the two worlds are open. The soul has eyes with which to see and ears with which to hear. Feeble they may be from long disuse, but by the life-giving touch of Christ alive now and capable of sharpest sight and most sensitive hearing.
    
    
16. As we begin to focus upon God the things of the spirit will take shape before our inner eyes. Obedience to the word of Christ will bring inward revelation of the Godhead (John 14:21-23). It will give acute perception enabling us to see God even as is promised to the pure in heart. A new God-consciousness will seize upon us and we shall begin to taste and hear and inwardly feel the God who is our life and our all. There will be seen the constant shining of the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. More and more, as our faculties grow sharper and more sure, God will become to us the great All, and His Presence the glory and wonder of our lives.

Removing the Veil

The following are points from the book, "The Pursuit of God", by A. W. Tozer, a man of God from Chicago, Illinois. What he wrote in 1948 is relevant even today.  
The purpose of including his message in point form is so that it would at least whet one's appetite, and that "there may be those who can light their candle at its flame."  
This book has been published by Christian Publications, Inc. Harrisburg, PA.

1. God formed us for His pleasure, and so formed us that we as well as He can in divine communion enjoy the sweet and mysterious mingling of kindred personalities. He meant us to see him and live with Him and draw our life from His smile.
   
   
2. But we have ceased to obey Him or love Him and in guilt and fear have fled as far as possible from His Presence.
   
   
3. The Omnipresence of the Lord - that He is everywhere - is one thing, and is a solemn fact; the manifest Presence is another thing altogether, and from that Presence we have fled, like Adam, to hide among the trees of the garden, or like Peter to shrink away crying, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord."
   
   
4. So the life of man upon the earth is a life away from the Presence, wrenched loose from that "blissful center" which is our right and proper dwelling place, our first estate which we kept not, the loss of which is the cause of our unceasing restlessness.
   
   
5. The whole work of God in redemption is to undo the tragic effects of that foul revolt, and to bring us back again into right and eternal relationship with Himself. This required that our sins be disposed of satisfactorily, that a full reconciliation be effected and the way opened for us to return again into conscious communion with God and live again in the Presence as before.
   
   
6. The interior journey of the soul from the wilds of sin into the enjoyed Presence of God is beautifully illustrated in the old testament tabernacle:
   (a) The returning sinner first entered the outer court where he offered a blood sacrifice on the brazen altar and washed himself in the laver that stood near it.
   (b)Then through a veil he passed into the holy place where no natural light would come, but the golden candlestick which spoke of Jesus the Light of the World threw its soft glow over all. There also was the shewbread to tell of Jesus, the Bread of life, and the altar of incense, a figure of unceasing prayer.
   (c) Though the worshiper had enjoyed so much, still he had not entered the Presence of God. Another veil separated from the Holy of Holies where above the mercy seat dwelt the very God Himself in awful manifestation.
   (d) It was this last veil which was rent when our Lord gave up the ghost on Calvary. This rending of the veil opened the way for every worshipper in the world to come by the new and living way straight into the divine Presence.
   
   
7. God wills that we should push into His Presence and live our whole life there. It is more than a doctrine to be held, it is a life to be enjoyed every moment of everyday.
   
   
8. The Flame of the Presence was the beating heart of the Levitical order. Without it all the appointments of the tabernacle had no meaning for Israel or for us. The greatest fact of the tabernacle was that Jehovah was there; a Presence was waiting within the veil.
   
   
9. Similarly the Presence of God is the central fact of Christianity. At the heart of the Christian message is God Himself waiting for His redeemed children to push in to conscious awareness of His Presence.
   
   
10. With the veil removed by the rending of Jesus' flesh, with nothing on God's side to prevent us from entering, why do we tarry without? Why do we consent to abide all our days just outside the Holy of Holies and never enter at all to look upon God? What but the presence of a veil in our hearts? a veil not taken away as the first veil was, but remains there still shutting out the light and hiding the face of God from us. It is the close-woven veil of the self-life which we have never acknowledged, of which we have been secretly ashamed, and which for these reasons we have never brought to the judgment of the cross.
    
    
11. Self-righteousness, self-pity, self-confidence, self-sufficiency, self-admiration, self-love and a host of others like them are the fine threads of the self-life woven to form this veil.
    
    
12. Self is the opaque veil that hides the face of God from us. It can be removed only in spiritual experiences, never by mere instruction.
    
    
13. There must be a work of God in destruction before we are free. We must invite the cross to do its deadly work within us. We must bring our self-sins to the cross for judgment.
    
    
14. When we talk of rending the veil, there is nothing pleasant about it. In human experience it is made up of living spiritual tissue. To tear it away is to injure us, to hurt us and make us bleed.
    
    
15. God must do everything for us. Our part is to yield and trust. We must confess, forsake, repudiate the self-life, and then reckon it crucified. But we must be careful to distinguish lazy "acceptance" from the real work of God. We must insist upon the work being done in very truth and it will be done.
    
    
16. The cross is rough, and it is deadly, but it is effective. It does not keep its victim hanging there forever. There comes a moment when its work is finished and the suffering victim dies. After that is resurrection glory and power, and the pain is forgotten for joy that the veil is taken away and we have entered in actual spiritual experience the Presence of the living God

How Great is our God!

Who is this God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ?

He is eternal, which means that he antedates time and is wholly independent of it. Time began in Him and will end in Him. To it He pays no tribute and from it He suffers no change.

He is immutable, which means that He has never changed and can never change in any smallest measure. To change He would need to go from better to worse or from worse to better. He cannot do either, for being perfect He cannot become more perfect, and if He were to become less perfect He would be less than God.

He is omniscient, which means that He knows in one free and effortless act all matter, all spirit, all relationships, all events. He has no past and He has no future. He is, and none of the limiting and qualifying terms used of creatures can apply to Him.

Love and mercy and righteousness are His, and holiness so ineffable that no comparisons or figures will avail to express it. Only fire can give even a remote conception of it. In fire He appeared at the burning bush; in the pillar of fire He dwelt through all the long wilderness journey. The fire that glowed between the wings of the cherubim in the holy place was called the "shekinah", the Presence, through the years of Israel's glory, and when the Old had given place to the New, He came at Pentecost as a fiery flame and rested upon each disciple.

In our being given the privilege to come into His Presence, what a broad world we have to roam in, what a sea to swim in is this God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The above is an extract taken from "The Pursuit of God", by A. W. Tozer

The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing

The following are points from the book, "The Pursuit of God", by A. W. Tozer, a man of God from Chicago, Illinois. What he wrote in 1948 is relevant even today. 

The purpose of including his message in point form is so that it would at least whet one's appetite, and that "there may be those who can light their candle at its flame." 

This book has been published by Christian Publications, Inc. Harrisburg, PA.

1. Before the Lord God made man upon the earth He first prepared for him by creating a world of useful and pleasant things for his sustenance and delight.
   
   
2. They were made for man's uses, but they were meant always to be external to the man and subservient to him. 
   
   
3. In the deep heart of the man is a shrine where none but God is worthy to come.
   
4. Our woes began when God was forced out of his central shrine and "things" were allowed to enter. Within the human heart "things" have taken over.
    
5. The heart covets "things" with a deep and fierce passion. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended.
   
6. When the Lord Jesus spoke of denying oneself and taking up one's cross, he referred to the self-life whose chief characteristic is its possessiveness.
    
7. The blessed ones who possess the kingdom are they who have repudiated every external thing and have rooted from their hearts all sense of possessing (Mt. 5:3).
   
8. These blessed poor are no longer slaves to the tyranny of things. They have broken the yoke of the oppressor; and this they have done not by fighting but by surrendering. Though free from all sense of possessing, they yet possess all things.
   
9. The story of Abraham and Isaac dramatically pictures the example of a surrendered life:
    
   Abraham was old enough to be Isaac's grandfather when the latter was born. 
   
   The child became at once the delight and idol of his heart.
    
   God went out of His way to comment on the strength of this affection.
    
   As the boy grew, the heart of the old man was knit closer and closer with the life of his son, till at last the relationship bordered upon the perilous.
    
   It was then that God stepped in to save both father and son from the consequences of an uncleaned love.
    
   An imagination of the agony that night may give us the view of Abraham's bent form and convulsive wrestling alone under the stars.
    
   Even if Abraham had his heart to will, how was he to reconcile the act with the promise?
    
   Before the morning, Abraham had made up his mind that he would offer his son as God directed him to do, and then trust God to raise him from the dead.
   
   God let the suffering old man go through with it up to the point where He knew there would be no retreat, and then forbade him to lay a hand upon the boy.
   
   Now he was a man wholly surrendered, a man utterly obedient, a man who possessed nothing.
   
   Abraham possessed nothing but this "poor" man was rich.
    
   Everything he had owned was still his to enjoy. He had everything, but he possessed nothing.There is the spiritual secret.
   
10. Because possessive clinging is so natural, it is rarely recognized for the evil that it is; but its outworkings are tragic.
     
11. We are often hindered from giving up our treasure to the Lord out of fear for their safety. But we need have no such fears. Everything is safe which we commit to Him, and nothing is really safe which is not so committed.
    
12. The Christians who is alive enough to know himself will recognize the symptoms of this possession malady. Now what should he do?
    He should put away all defense and make no attempt to excuse himself either in his own eyes or before the Lord.
     
    He should remember that this is holy business. No careless or casual dealings will suffice.
    
    He must come in full determination to be heard.
    
    He must insist that God accepts his all, that He takes "things" out of his heart and Himself reign there in power. It may be he will need to become specific.
    
    He would need to go through the experience if he is to know the blessedness which follows. The experience of being freed from the tough old miser within us. Self-life must be torn out of our heart like a plant from the soil; it must be extracted in agony and blood like a tooth from the jaw. It must be expelled from our soul by violence as Christ expelled the money-changers from the temple.
    
13.  If we would indeed know God in growing intimacy we must go this way of renunciation.
     
14. And if we are set upon the pursuit of God, He will sooner or later bring us to the test.
     
15. At that testing place there will be no dozen possible choices for us; just one and an alternative, but our whole future will be conditioned by the choice we make.

Following Hard after God

The following are points from the book, "The Pursuit of God", by A. W. Tozer, a man of God from Chicago, Illinois. What he wrote in 1948 is relevant even today. 

The purpose of including his message in point form is so that it would at least whet one's appetite, and that "there may be those who can light their candle at its flame."

This book has been published by Christian Publications, Inc. Harrisburg, PA.

1. Before a man can seek God, God must first have sought the man. We pursue God because, and only because, He has first put an urge within us that spurs us to the pursuit. This is prevenient grace.
   
2. All the time we are pursuing Him we are already in His hand. (Psalm 63:8)
   
3. It is inherent in personality to be able to know other personalities, but full knowledge of one personality by another is achieved only after long and loving mental intercourse. God is a person, and in the deep of His mighty nature thinks, wills, enjoys, feels, loves, desires and suffers as any other person may. He communicates to us through the avenues of our mind, 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.
   
4. Our heavenly birth is not an end but the beginning of glorious pursuits - exploration of the infinite riches of the Godhead.
   
5. To have found God and still to pursue Him is the paradox of our soul.
   
6. The hungry heart is not satisfied with just "accepting" Christ. It wants to taste, to touch, to see with its inner eyes the wonder that is God.
   
7. The longing heart can never be satisfied by programmes, methods, organizations and a world of nervous activities but by simplicity which is in Christ.
   
8. The man who had God for his treasure has all things in One. For having the Source of all things he has in One all satisfaction, all pleasure, all delight.

Beautiful Rendition of the Holy Trinity

Who is this within the veil who dwells in fiery manifestations? It is none other than God Himself, "One God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible," and "One Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God; begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God; begotten, not made; being of one substance with the Father," and "the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, Who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified."

Yet this holy Trinity is One God, for "we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one: the glory equal and the majesty co-eternal."

So in part run the ancient creeds, and so the inspired Word declares.
 

- The Pursuit of God, A.W. Tozer

Our dependence, God's glory

If you quote James 1:2 when sharing with people, not many would be too enthusiastic in their response. You would only need to look at their faces to gauge that.

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers whenever you face trials of many kinds."

I have begun to realize what a great opportunity it is to use times of trials to prove the faithfulness of the word of God. The times of testing of faith are able to develop perseverance to depend on God. It is often our reluctance to persevere in times of trial that makes us choose the easy way out. I have several times been guilty of this and that is why I now see it as a great opportunity to remain joyous in times of trial and testing.

Times of trial make us completely dependent on God. We look to Him for help. We bring our cares to Him crying, “Lord, I cast my anxieties on You because You care for me.” (1Pet. 5:7) “You are my Helper; I will not be afraid.” (Heb. 13:6) Day and night our thoughts are on Him – looking to Him to save us. 

It is this dependence on God that pleases Him. Psalm 147:10,11 says: “His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse, nor His delight in the legs of a man; The Lord delights in those who fear Him, who put their hope in His unfailing love.” 

When through perseverance we delight in our dependence on God and His word – verses on our wall calendar; our favourite scripture; that beautiful chorus or hymn we sing in church – all jump alive in our heart. Our faith begins to affirm in all sincerity, “You are my God who never fails. You remain faithful forever.” 

It is this faith, (this dependence; this perseverance) that pleases God immensely. It glorifies Him. He is exalted. 

There is no way our times of trial can compare with those of the Lord Jesus. Yet, to understand how joyous obedience to God’s will (and dependence on His perfect ways) glorifies God, look at John 12:27,28. “Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father glorify Your name!” 

We need to persevere so that when we have done the will of God, we will receive what He has promised. (And let us not forget that it is always the best.) For in just a very little while, He who is coming will come and will not delay. But His righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, God will not be pleased with him.” (Heb. 10:36-38) Praise God for the abundant grace He gives to believe in His unfailing, faithful and perfect character. Let us cling to this grace and make use of such opportunities while it is still ‘Today’.