Book Report #1: AW Tozer - "The Pursuit of God"
I’ll be honest: my usual reading tastes run to regency romances: damsels in distress, lords, ladies and fashion. If I could have lived in those times, I’m sure I (and my bosom) would have been a Diamond of the First Water. But alas! No duke for me.
But in 2024, I’m of the mind to feed my mind with a little more substance, and I selected AW Tozer’s “The Pursuit of God” as my current read. It’s a thin little book, written in 1948 by a journeyman preacher on a train ride from the Midwest to Texas. I can imagine him, clacking away on his Royal Arrow portable typewriter in time with the motion of the train, pausing from moment to moment to collect his thoughts.
CHAPTER ONE: Following Hard After God
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.
There are people in my life who I have been praying hard for, that God would place something in their life that would cause them to turn to Him. This is a bad prayer, I think.
…by this very prevenient drawing…God takes from us every vestige of credit for the act of coming.
Oh? So it never was about me? How provoking.
Christ may be “received” without creating any special love for Him in the soul of the receiver.
Guilty. I was baptized in 1997, mostly because I wanted to please my loved ones. I remember coming up out of the water, understanding what I just did intellectually and yet feeling no different, eagerly looking forward to the college newspaper article with my name in it (if you don’t know my by now, know this: my ego has no limits). But God — He honored my actions, even if my heart wasn’t fully in it, and in the ensuing years, ensured his commitment to me was not wasted. He is so good.
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 never satisfy the longing of the heart.
Precisely why I don’t go to church. I’m not bragging about this, believe me. I know the exhortation in Hebrews 10:25 to not neglect meeting together, but I cannot bear to stand at attention during a worship concert that is attempting to elicit emotion from me vs. directing praise to God. Or stopping in the middle of church to give 20 minutes of announcements. Or a paltry, treacly message that is more geared toward new or potential believers vs. feeding the 99. I just can’t do it, and it’s not for lack of trying to find the right home.
So that’s “merely” Chapter 1. More to come, because Chapter 2 gets insane.
