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.