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A Thought Provoking Devotional

Author: A.W. Tozer

As part of the C.S. Lewis Institute’s Fellowship program, the month of August was dedicated to pursing God and truly understanding discipleship: what it means, what we have to do, and what God does. One of our assignments was to read a chapter a day from A.W. Tozer’s short devotional, The Pursuit of God. While this tome isn’t as clearly structured as the first Tozer book I read, The Knowledge of the Holy, it still evinces the same zeal, the same mystical emotive call, half focused on theology and half focused on the pure love of God.

The Pursuit of God is 96 pages, comprising 10 chapters, each of which overlaps with the other chapters, building on variations of a theme. Tozer starts by talking about the need to follow God, the internal desire built in all of us to know and worship Him. Here, Tozer talks about the push/pull relationship of discipling, about how only God’s call enables us to respond, about how God lays the base, and we respond, building our lives around the frame that he has set. This was a continual theme throughout all the readings of discipleship for the C.S. Lewis program in August. Although Tozer’s version is short, a momentary spark of devotion, it captures the mystery well. We cannot clearly delineate, as C.S. Lewis himself says, what God does and what we do, yet we know that it is this interrelationship of call and response that begins our journey with God. But our journey, our walk as disciples, does not end there.

Tozer’s other nine chapters talk about an aspect of our pursuit of God. He talks about what possessing nothing really means (hint, it’s not about selling all your stuff, so much as a mindset of the heart.) Remove your idols, Tozer explains, whether they be physical positions, inordinate love or devotion to a person, or something else. Only through giving up everything do we gain everything. The love and reverence, mixed with common good sense, that Tozer uses makes this, at least to me, the most powerful and edifying chapter of the book. It’s a true call to thought and, ultimately, action.

Image by Barbara Jackson from Pixabay

Tozer talks about how our own priorities, the idols we set ourselves in day-to-day life, which create a veil between us and God – a God who is ultimately juts as knowable as a person. A relationship with Him is just as real, deep, and possible, as with a loved one. But it does require focus. Tozer further goes on to discuss how we can know God and ways to develop this relationship, how we should react to the living Word, how we should really understand meekness, how true rest (not just the pursuit of “fun”) is necessary, and how everyday living can be done to praise and worship God. The modus operandi of our daily life, from making our morning coffees to our 8 hours at work, can be looked at not as secular, but as holy. We should live every moment to grow closer to God – not just that hour or so in church on a Sunday.

The entire work is edifying, and despite its shortness, it is hardly simple. This is the kind of devotional you need to read again and again, each new reading awakening a deeper understanding, a new thought, a new call to action, a reminder, a promise, and a prayer in one. Highly recommended.

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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