It is not thinking about Me, but dwelling with Me that brings perfect fearlessness.
There can be no fear where I am. Fear was conquered when I conquered all Satanic power. If all My followers knew this, and affirmed it with absolute conviction, there would be no need of armed forces to combat evil.
You have entered now upon a mountain climb. Steep steps lead upward, but your power to help others will be truly marvelous.
Not alone will you arise. All towards whom you now send loving, pitying thoughts will be helped upward by you.
Looking to Me all your thoughts are God-inspired. Act on them and you will be led on. They are not your own impulses but the movement of My Spirit and, obeyed, will bring the answer to your prayers.
Love and Trust. Let no unkind thoughts of any dwell in your hearts, then I can act with all My Spirit-power, with nothing to hinder.
I will lift up mine eyes until the hills, from whence cometh my help. Psalm 121:1
Deep life-giving draughts of My Spirit are yours. Think of the aridness, the thirst, that is unquenched till the whole unsatisfied being is age-worn.
Can you help man in any better way than by proving to him that the cleansing waters of My Spirit have power to wash away all that hinders growth, and to satisfy to the full every thirst of your nature?
Be watchful to hear My Voice and instantly to obey. Obedience is your great sign of faith. “Why call ye Me Lord, Lord and do not the things that I say” was My word when on earth to the many who followed and heard, but did not do.
I likened the man who heard and did not do to the man who built his house on the sand. In times of storm and trouble he is overthrown, his house falls.
I likened the man who obeyed Me implicitly to the man who built his house upon a rock. In times of storm he is steadfast, immovable.
Do not feel that by this I mean only the keeping of My Commandments, even the living My Sermon on the Mount. I mean more than that to those who know Me intimately. I mean the following, in all, the Inner Guiding that I give, the little injunctions I speak to each individual soul, the wish I express – and desire to have carried out.
The secure, steadfast, immovable life of My disciples, the Rock Home, is not built at a wish, in a moment, but is laid, stone by stone, foundations, walls, roof, by the acts of obedience, the daily following out of My wishes, the loving doing of My will.
He that heareth these sayings of Mine and doeth them is like unto a man who built his house upon a rock, and the rain descended and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house and it fell not, for it was founded upon a Rock.
And it is in that Rock-Home, manmade but divinely inspired – the House of Obedience – the truest expression of a disciple’s adoration and worship – it is there I come to dwell with My loved one.
Am I not giving you work, hope? Work for the gray days? Just little plain bricks of duties done and My Wishes carried out. All strengthening you and making of your character that steadfast, immovable Christian Character of which My servant Paul spoke and which he urged his followers to have.
Therefore, now amend your ways and your doings,
and obey the voice of the Lord your God. Jeremiah 26:13
Dear Lord, teach me to obey Thee in all things.
You are Mine, pledged to serve Me.
Every want of yours has been anticipated. Look back and see how each failure has been due to your not having obeyed implicitly the instructions I gave you in preparation for that task or trial.
Listening to My Voice implies obedience. I am a tender Lord of Love, but I am a Captain with whose words there must be no trifling.
You are a volunteer, not conscript, but if you expect the privileges of My Service you must render Me the obedience of that service.
The way of obedience may seem hard and dreary, but the security of My ordered life the untrained soul can never know. March in step with your Captain.
O Lord, we thank Thee for Thy great gift of Peace.
That is the Peace, that only I can give in the midst of a restless world and surrounded by trouble and difficulty. To know that Peace is to have received the stamp of the Kingdom – the mark of the Lord Jesus Christ. My Mark.
When you have learned that Peace you are fit to judge of true values, the values of the Kingdom, and the values of all the world has to offer.
That Peace is loving faith at rest.
These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace.
In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer;
I have overcome the world. John 16:33
Cultivate the habit of thinking about Me. God is everywhere. My Presence is always with you, but recollection brings consciousness of that Presence and closer friendship.
Deliberately recall some event in My life, some teaching of Mine, some act of love. So you will impress Me upon your character and life.
Your learning and accomplishments are valueless without My Grace, which is sufficient for you. Leave planning to Me. Leave Me to open or close the way.
Prepare yourself for all I am preparing for you.
Offer unto Me the sacrifice of thanksgiving and pay your vows to the Most High, and then call upon Me in the day of trouble and I will deliver you.
To praise and thank and steadily fulfill your promises (vows) to Me are then, as it were, the placing of coin in My Bank, upon which, in your time of need, you can draw with confidence and certainty. Remember that.
The world wonders when it sees the man who can so unexpectedly draw large and unsuspected sums from his bank for his own need, that of a friend, or for some charity.
But what the world has not seen are the countless small sums paid into that bank, earned by faithful work in many ways.
And so in My Kingdom. The world sees the man of faith make a sudden demand upon Me, upon My stores, and lo! that demand is met.
The world thinks the man has magic power – No! the world does not see that the man has been paying in, in thanks and praise, promises fulfilled—faithfully, steadily.
So with you, My children. “Offer to God the sacrifice of Thanksgiving and pay your vows to the Most High and call upon Me in the day of trouble and I will deliver you.”
This is a promise for the seemingly dull days of little happenings, and a cheer for you, My children. When you seem not able to do big things you can be storing your little acts and words of faithfulness in My Great Storehouse, ready for the day of your big demand.
By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually,
that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. Hebrews 13:15
Count not these days as lost.
You have, even in this seemingly narrow life, countless opportunities for self-conquest. There is no greater task than that.
I set apart those who greatly desire to reflect Me, because there is danger that in the crowded ways, and among others, self will gain the ascendancy.
For a time, until self is recognized and conquered, you too must withdraw into the wilderness.
You are learning much, and I am your Teacher.
Come with Me into a desert place and rest a while.
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.
This is the only real harbinger of revival which I have been able to detect anywhere on the religious horizon. It may be the cloud the size of a man’s hand for which a few saints here and there have been looking. It can result in a resurrection of life for many souls and a recapture of that radiant wonder which should accompany faith in Christ, that wonder which has all but fled the Church of God in our day.
But this hunger must be recognized by our religious leaders. Current evangelicalism has (to change the figure) 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. But God be thanked that there are a few who care. They are those who, while they love the altar and delight in the sacrifice, are yet unable to reconcile themselves to the continued absence of fire. They desire God above all. They are athirst to taste for themselves the “piercing sweetness” of the love of Christ about Whom all the holy prophets did write and the psalmists did sing.
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.
I trust I speak in charity, but the lack in our pulpits is real. Milton’s terrible sentence applies to our day as accurately as it did to his: “The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed.” It is a solemn thing, and no small scandal in the Kingdom, to see God’s children starving while actually seated at the Father’s table. The truth of Wesley’s words is established before our eyes: “Orthodoxy, or right opinion, is, at best, a very slender part of religion. Though right tempers cannot subsist without right opinions, yet right opinions may subsist without right tempers. There may be a right opinion of God without either love or one right temper toward Him. Satan is a proof of this.”
Thanks to our splendid Bible societies and to other effective agencies for the dissemination of the Word, there are today many millions of people who hold “right opinions,” probably more than ever before in the history of the Church. Yet I wonder if there was ever a time when true spiritual worship was at a lower ebb. 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.
Sound Bible exposition is an imperative _must_ in the Church of the Living God. Without it no church can be a New Testament church in any strict meaning of that term. But exposition may be carried on in such way as to leave the hearers devoid of any true spiritual nourishment whatever. For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience they are not the better for having heard the truth. The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts.
This book is a modest attempt to aid God’s hungry children so to find Him. Nothing here is new except in the sense that it is a discovery which my own heart has made of spiritual realities most delightful and wonderful to me. Others before me have gone much farther into these holy mysteries than I have done, but if my fire is not large it is yet real, and there may be those who can light their candle at its flame.
A. W. Tozer
Chicago, Ill. – June 16, 1948
My soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth me.–Psa. 63:8
Christian theology teaches the doctrine of prevenient grace, which briefly stated means this, that before a man can seek God, God must first have sought the man.
Before a sinful man can think a right thought of God, there must have been a work of enlightenment done within him; imperfect it may be, but a true work nonetheless, and the secret cause of all desiring and seeking and praying which may follow.
We pursue God because, and only because, He has first put an urge within us that spurs us to the pursuit. “No man can come to me,” said our Lord, “except the Father which hath sent me draw him,” and it is by this very prevenient _drawing_ that God takes from us every vestige of credit for the act of coming. The impulse to pursue God originates with God, but the outworking of that impulse is our following hard after Him; and all the time we are pursuing Him we are already in His hand: “Thy right hand upholdeth me.”
In this divine “upholding” and human “following” there is no contradiction. All is of God, for as von Hügel teaches, _God is always previous_. In practice, however, (that is, where God’s previous working meets man’s present response) man must pursue God. On our part there must be positive reciprocation if this secret drawing of God is to eventuate in identifiable experience of the Divine. In the warm language of personal feeling this is stated in the Forty-second Psalm: “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?” This is deep calling unto deep, and the longing heart will understand it.
The doctrine of justification by faith–a Biblical truth, and a blessed relief from sterile legalism and unavailing self-effort–has in our time fallen into evil company and been interpreted by many in such manner as actually to bar men from the knowledge of God. The whole transaction of religious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless. Faith may now be exercised without a jar to the moral life and without embarrassment to the Adamic ego. Christ may be “received” without creating any special love for Him in the soul of the receiver. The man is “saved,” but he is not hungry nor thirsty after God. In fact he is specifically taught to be satisfied and encouraged to be content with little.
The modern scientist has lost God amid the wonders of His world; we Christians are in real danger of losing God amid the wonders of His Word. We have almost forgotten that God is a Person and, as such, can be cultivated as any person can. It is inherent in personality to be able to know other personalities, but full knowledge of one personality by another cannot be achieved in one encounter. It is only after long and loving mental intercourse that the full possibilities of both can be explored.
All social intercourse between human beings is a response of personality to personality, grading upward from the most casual brush between man and man to the fullest, most intimate communion of which the human soul is capable. Religion, so far as it is genuine, is in essence the response of created personalities to the Creating Personality, God. “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”
God is a Person, and in the deep of His mighty nature He thinks, wills, enjoys, feels, loves, desires and suffers as any other person may. In making Himself known to us He stays by the familiar pattern of personality. He communicates with us through the avenues of our minds, 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.
This intercourse between God and the soul is known to us in conscious personal awareness. It is personal: that is, it does not come through the body of believers, as such, but is known to the individual, and to the body through the individuals which compose it. And it is conscious: that is, it does not stay below the threshold of consciousness and work there unknown to the soul (as, for instance, infant baptism is thought by some to do), but comes within the field of awareness where the man can “know” it as he knows any other fact of experience.
You and I are in little (our sins excepted) what God is in large. Being made in His image we have within us the capacity to know Him. In our sins we lack only the power. The moment the Spirit has quickened us to life in regeneration our whole being senses its kinship to God and leaps up in joyous recognition. That is the heavenly birth without which we cannot see the Kingdom of God. It is, however, not an end but an inception, for now begins the glorious pursuit, the heart’s happy exploration of the infinite riches of the Godhead. That is where we begin, I say, but where we stop no man has yet discovered, for there is in the awful and mysterious depths of the Triune God neither limit nor end.
Shoreless Ocean, who can sound Thee?
Thine own eternity is round Thee,
Majesty divine!
To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart. St. Bernard stated this holy paradox in a musical quatrain that will be instantly understood by every worshipping soul:
We taste Thee, O Thou Living Bread,
And long to feast upon Thee still:
We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead
And thirst our souls from Thee to fill.
Come near to the holy men and women of the past and you will soon feel the heat of their desire after God. They mourned for Him, they prayed and wrestled and sought for Him day and night, in season and out, and when they had found Him the finding was all the sweeter for the long seeking. Moses used the fact that he knew God as an argument for knowing Him better. “Now, therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, show me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight”; and from there he rose to make the daring request, “I beseech thee, show me thy glory.” God was frankly pleased by this display of ardor, and the next day called Moses into the mount, and there in solemn procession made all His glory pass before him.
David’s life was a torrent of spiritual desire, and his psalms ring with the cry of the seeker and the glad shout of the finder. Paul confessed the mainspring of his life to be his burning desire after Christ. “That I may know Him,” was the goal of his heart, and to this he sacrificed everything. “Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but refuse, that I may win Christ.”
Hymnody is sweet with the longing after God, the God whom, while the singer seeks, he knows he has already found. “His track I see and I’ll pursue,” sang our fathers only a short generation ago, but that song is heard no more in the great congregation. 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. This is set before us as the last word in orthodoxy, and it is taken for granted that no Bible-taught Christian ever believed otherwise. Thus the whole testimony of the worshipping, seeking, singing Church on that subject is crisply set aside. The experiential heart-theology of a grand army of fragrant saints is rejected in favor of a smug interpretation of Scripture which would certainly have sounded strange to an Augustine, a Rutherford or a Brainerd.
In the midst of this great chill there are some, I rejoice to acknowledge, who will not be content with shallow logic. They will admit the force of the argument, and then turn away with tears to hunt some lonely place and pray, “O God, show me thy glory.” They want to taste, to touch with their hearts, to see with their inner eyes the wonder that is God.
I want deliberately to encourage this mighty longing after God. The lack of it has brought us to our present low estate. The stiff and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire. 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. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long, in vain.
Every age has its own characteristics. Right now we are in an age of religious complexity. The simplicity which is in Christ is rarely found among us. In its stead are programs, methods, organizations and a world of nervous activities which occupy time and attention but can never satisfy the longing of the heart. The shallowness of our inner experience, the hollowness of our worship, and that servile imitation of the world which marks our promotional methods all testify that we, in this day, know God only imperfectly, and the peace of God scarcely at all.
If we would find God amid all the religious externals we must first determine to find Him, and then proceed in the way of simplicity. Now as always God discovers Himself to “babes” and hides Himself in thick darkness from the wise and the prudent. We must simplify our approach to Him. We must strip down to essentials (and they will be found to be blessedly few). We must put away all effort to impress, and come with the guileless candor of childhood. If we do this, without doubt God will quickly respond.
When religion has said its last word, there is little that we need other than God Himself. The evil habit of seeking _God-and_ effectively prevents us from finding God in full revelation. In the “and” lies our great woe. If we omit the “and” we shall soon find God, and in Him we shall find that for which we have all our lives been secretly longing.
We need not fear that in seeking God only we may narrow our lives or restrict the motions of our expanding hearts. The opposite is true. We can well afford to make God our All, to concentrate, to sacrifice the many for the One.
The author of the quaint old English classic, _The Cloud of Unknowing_, teaches us how to do this. “Lift up thine heart unto God with a meek stirring of love; and mean Himself, and none of His goods. And thereto, look thee loath to think on aught but God Himself. So that nought work in thy wit, nor in thy will, but only God Himself. This is the work of the soul that most pleaseth God.”
Again, he recommends that in prayer we practice a further stripping down of everything, even of our theology. “For it sufficeth enough, a naked intent direct unto God without any other cause than Himself.” Yet underneath all his thinking lay the broad foundation of New Testament truth, for he explains that by “Himself” he means “God that made thee, and bought thee, and that graciously called thee to thy degree.” And he is all for simplicity: If we would have religion “lapped and folden in one word, for that thou shouldst have better hold thereupon, take thee but a little word of one syllable: for so it is better than of two, for even the shorter it is the better it accordeth with the work of the Spirit. And such a word is this word GOD or this word LOVE.”
When the Lord divided Canaan among the tribes of Israel Levi received no share of the land. God said to him simply, “I am thy part and thine inheritance,” and by those words made him richer than all his brethren, richer than all the kings and rajas who have ever lived in the world. And there is a spiritual principle here, a principle still valid for every priest of the Most High God.
The man who has God for his treasure has all things in One. Many ordinary treasures may be denied him, or if he is allowed to have them, the enjoyment of them will be so tempered that they will never be necessary to his happiness. Or if he must see them go, one after one, he will scarcely feel a sense of loss, for having the Source of all things he has in One all satisfaction, all pleasure, all delight. Whatever he may lose he has actually lost nothing, for he now has it all in One, and he has it purely, legitimately and forever.
_O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, that so I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.” Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long. In Jesus’ Name, Amen._
You can download the entire book from this site as a PDF file here: The Pursuit of God.
