Aiden Wilson Tozer was born in 1897 in Pennsylvania. He gave his life to the Lord as a teenager and eventually became a pastor within the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination. In his lifetime he wrote twelve books and numerous other published articles and sermons.
“The Pursuit of God“, Tozer’s third book, is a Christian classic originally published in 1948. If I had a Mount Rushmore of books in my library, “The Pursuit of God” would sit high on that shelf, and for ample reason. For me, the appeal is his ability to wield the pen as a capable wordsmith. His thoughts are convicting and encouraging. His words are thought-provoking and action-oriented.
Some of my favorite quotes from ‘The Pursuit of God’ are listed below.
A.W. Tozer, a man of God, passed away on May 12, 1963. He is laid to rest at the Ellet Cemetery in Akron OH. It is an ordinary burial site that matched his non-materialistic simple life.
Chapter 1
How tragic that we in this dark day have had our seeking done for us by our teachers. Everything is made to center upon the initial act of “accepting” Christ (a term, incidentally, which is not found in the Bible) and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls. We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him, we need no more seek Him.
Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people.
The man who has God for his treasure has all things in One.
Chapter 2
On things: They were made for man’s use, but they were meant always to be external to the man and subservient to him. In the deep heart of the man was a shrine where none but God was worthy to come. Within him was God; without, a thousand gifts which God had showered upon him. But sin has introduced complications and has made those very gifts of God a potential source of ruin to the soul.
Our woes began when God was forced out of His central shrine and things were allowed to enter.
The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God’s gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.
The way to deeper knowledge of God is through the lonely valleys of soul poverty and abnegation of all things. 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.
Chapter 3
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.
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?
Chapter 5
On our part, there must be surrender to the Spirit of God, for His work is to show us the Father and the Son. If we cooperate 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.
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 once upon a time to pay a brief and momentous visit to the man’s soul. Thus to think of it is to misunderstand it all. The approach of God to the soul or of the soul to God is not to be thought of 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.
Chapter 6
To a people caught in the tempest of the last great conflict God says, “Be still’ and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10), and still He says it, as if He means to tell us that our strength and safety lie not in noise but in silence. 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.
Chapter 7
Faith is the gaze of a soul upon a saving God.
While we are looking at God we do not see ourselves—blessed riddance.
As long as Christ sits on the mediatorial throne, every day is a good day and all days are days of salvation.
Chapter 8
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 to bring Him nearer to our own image. The flesh whimpers against the rigor of God’s inexorable sentence and begs like Agag for a little mercy, a little indulgence of its carnal ways. It is no use. We can get a right start only by accepting God as He is and learning to love Him for what He is.
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.
Chapter 9
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.
Chapter 10
Let every man abide in the calling wherein he is called and his work will be as sacred as the work of the ministry. It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it. The motive is everything. Let a man sanctify the Lord God in his heart and he can thereafter do no common act.
Establish my footsteps in Your Word ~ Psalm 119:133 