Pastor Dave Daye

“O taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him” – Psalm 34:8.

Short post today – you see in a few hours I am getting together with some guys to start the Experiencing God study by Henry Blackaby and Claude King.  That study goes so well with this chapter in The Pursuit of God.

Tozer comments on the fact that there are so many verses telling us (challenging us – maybe even daring us?) to truly know God in our personal experience.  Phrases such as “taste and see” (Psalm 34:8), “My sheep hear my voice” (John 10:27), “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8) demonstrate that God can be, and wants to be, known by us.  He has created us with the faculties necessary to be able to know Him.

So why is it that so many Christ Followers so often do not have an ongoing, daily relationship with God?  Tozer states, “The answer is because of our chronic unbelief.  Faith enables our spiritual sense to function.  Where faith is defective the result will be inward insensibility and numbness toward spiritual things.  This is the condition of vast numbers of Christians today” (52).

Lot’s of people know things about God, but so few press on to actually know God.  We stand at a distance and study Him like a text book.  We add quips and quotes from Scripture into our repertoire of knowledge as if they were magnets to be put on a refrigerator instead of God’s Word that should shatter and rebuild our hearts.  We use truth like a toy for our own pleasure.  Tozer states:

The Christian is too sincere to play with ideas for their own sake.  He takes no pleasure in the mere spinning of gossamer webs for display.  All his beliefs are practical.  They are geared into his life.  By them he lives or dies, stands or falls for this world and for all time to come. (54)

But we get caught up too much in the immediate things that we see.  The things that clamor for our attention and scream for our affections.  And when we are faced with the possible silence where we just might be able to hear God speak, we quickly fill that time with another diversion.

The world of sense intrudes upon our attention day and night for the whole of our lifetime.  It is clamorous, insistent and self0demonstrating.  It does not appeal to our faith; it is here, assaulting our five sense, demanding to be accepted as real and final.  But sin has so clouded the lenses of our hearts 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.  That is the curse inherited by every member of Adam’s tragic race. (56)

Tozer says that we must “seek to be other-worldly” (57).  All true reality is God’s reality.  It is His world, His kingdom, and His truth.  If we want to know God and not just know about God then we must accept that there is so much more than what we see.  Tozer also points out that we can’t just think of this in the future sense – the coming kingdom.  It is true that we will know God perfectly in heaven, but we can and must know Him now.  He has given us everything we need to be able to know Him and to truly live in daily relation to Him, but we have grown weak in our exercise of these abilities and must recover strength in these areas.

Tozer in this chapter with this prayer:

O God, quicken to life every power within me, that I may lay hold on eternal things.  Open my eyes that I may see; give me acute spiritual perception; enable me to taste Thee and know that Thou art good.  Make heaven more real to me than any earthly thing has ever been.  Amen.

photo by Flickr user Peter Nijenhuis

All of Scripture rings with the idea that God wants to be with us.  God created a place, the Garden of Eden, where He could be with us and we could know Him.  Even after humanity walked away from God, God keeps reaching into our sinful world and calling people to be where He is and to live in relationship with Him.  In the Exodus the Presence of God was with His people in the Tabernacle – the King dwelling at the center of His people.  It is no accident that Christ is called “Immanuel” which means, “God with us.”  Even in the church Jesus promises “where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them” (Matthew 18:20).  In Acts, the Holy Spirit – the Presence of God – is poured out on His people who have been saved through Jesus.  Finally, at the end of time and the beginning of sinless eternity, the book of Revelation records, “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away'” (Revelation 21:3-4).

Tozer writes that we were created to be in God’s Presence.  Every longing we ever have is in some fashion a longing for God.  Every sin is an attempt to fill the void that was left when we turned away from Him.  But the Old Testament Tabernacle stands as a reminder that there is a barrier between us and God.  There, in that structure that was a physical representation of  our relationship with God, the veil that separated the Presence of God from His people was a constant reminder of the sin that separates us from Him.  The thing that stands in the way from that for which we are created – to be in God’s presence worshiping Him forever.

How profound that when Christ died on the cross, the veil that hung in the more permanent Tabernacle – the Temple – tore in two from top to bottom (Matthew 27:51).  The thing the veil represented had been defeated on the cross and the way was open for us to come, through Jesus Christ, into the very Presence of God.  But Tozer asks a good question, “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? … What hinders us?” (43).

Tozer goes on to describe that the veil was not just an external thing.  It is a symbol of the things we all hold on to that separate us from God.  It is the “veil in our hearts…. the veil of our fleshly, fallen nature living on, unjudged within us, uncrucified and unrepudiated” (44).  He goes on to say:

It is woven of the fine threads of the self-life, the hyphenated sins of the human spirit.  They are not something we DO, they are something we ARE, and therein lies both their subtlety and their power.  

To be specific, the self sins are self-righteousness, self-pity, self-confidence, self-sufficiency, self-admiration, self-love and a host of others like them.  They dwell too deep within us and are too much a part of our natures to come to our attention till the light of God is focused upon them.  (45)

Because this “veil” is a part of us – our very nature – it’s removal is not easy nor is it painless:

There must be a work of God in destruction before we are free.  We must invite the cross to do its deadly work within us.  We must bring our self-sins to the cross for judgment. … To tear [the veil] away is to injure us, to hurt us and make us bleed.  To say otherwise is to make the cross no cross and death no death at all.  It is never fun to die.  To rip through the dear and tender stuff for which life is made can never be anything but deeply painful.  Yet that is what the cross did to Jesus and it is what the cross would do to every man to set him free. …God must do everything for us.  Our part is to yield and trust.  We must confess, forsake, repudiate the self-life, and then reckon it crucified. …The cross is rough and it is deadly, but it is effective.  It does not keep its victim hanging there forever.  There comes a moment when its work is finished and the suffering victim dies.  After that is resurrection glory and power, and the pain is forgotten for joy that the veil is taken away and we have entered in actual spiritual experience the presence of the living God (46-47).

I remember reading this as a teenager and being cut to the core.  There were (and still are) so many things that I held on to and, though I wanted to “accept” Jesus as my savior, I did not want to give him everything of me.  There were parts I demanded be left untouched.  Salvation does not work this way.  We are not allowed to put up “keep out” signs when we invite Christ into our lives.  I have also learned since that there are the veils we see and know and cling to, and then there are the hidden veils that lie deeper in our lives and though they are real they are as yet unknown to us.

This is part of the wonderful gift of faith.  By faith we can ask God to show these things to us.  By faith we can, however painful it may be, repent of those things when they are shown and allow God to rip away that veil as well.  By faith we know that though the ripping hurts, God knows exactly what He is doing and we are safest when we are completely laid bare under His skillful hand.

Some of us have richly decorated our veils until they have become acceptable to us and their ripping is that much more difficult, but they must be torn down and we must come to God and ask Him to do it.

Tozer ends this chapter with the following prayer:

Lord, how excellent are Thy ways, and how devious and dark are the ways of man.  Show us how to die, that we may rise again to newness of life.  Rend the veil of our self-life from the top down as Thou didst rend the veil of the Temple.  we would draw near in full assurance of faith.  We would dwell with Thee in daily experience here on this earth so that we may be accustomed to the glory when we enter Thy heaven to dwell with Thee there.  In Jesus’ name, Amen. (47)

Picture from Flickr user failafo0sa

“Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs in the kingdom of heaven” – Matthew 5:3.

Is it wrong to have things?  Is it somehow anti-Christian to own stuff or to enjoy that stuff?  Some answer this question by saying that all stuff is evil and should be discarded.  Some say that all stuff is a blessing from God and you should get as much as possible.  Personally, I think they are both missing the point.

Chapter 2 of A.W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God is called “The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing”.  I remember reading this chapter and being struck by the thought that it is not so much about the stuff that you possess but rather the stuff that possesses you.  Anytime we hold on to something as being essential we are giving that thing a power over us – in seeking to possess that thing for ourselves we are also allowing that thing to possess us.  The problem with this is that we already belong to someone.  We were created for a relationship with God.  We are His and everything we do is to be an act of worship declaring that we are His and everything we have is His.

So how can we possess stuff, but not allow the stuff to possess us?  Tozer calls this “The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing” – I like to think of it as living life with an open hand.  Everything we have ultimately belongs to God and is to be used for His glory.  At any time He has the right in His wisdom to remove anything in our lives if He thinks it is best.  If we are living life with a closed hand and seeking to hold on to everything for ourselves (and therefore being “possessed” by those things), God still can (and will) remove those things if He so chooses – but it will hurt.

When a child takes something he or she should not have and the parent asks for it to be returned, there are two options – the easy way or the hard way.  The easy way is the child recognizing that what they did was wrong and offering the object to the parent freely.  The hard way (and by far more common way!) is for the parent to ask over, and over, and over again until finally the parent must grab the hand of the child and take that thing out of his or her hand.  This can be painful, and not just physically.  When the child holds on to that object and refuses to let go, he or she is asserting their own power, their own authority, their own control.  When the parent reaches in and takes the object away it is a not-so-gentle reminder that the child is not as in control as he or she thought.

It is the same way with us and God.  We like to think we are in control.  We like to think that if we just clench our fist a little tighter then we will never lose what is in our hand…but it is a lie.  We are not nearly as strong as we think we are.

Living life with open hands means that we may have something in our hand (in our life) but we are not seeking to hold on to it.  We know that it all belongs to God and that He has the right to give and to remove things at His will and according to His wisdom.  We understand that when we hold these things with an open hand, it is difficult if they are taken away, but God does not have to pry them out of our hands to do so – they are freely given.

Tozer cites Abraham as a great example of this idea in Scripture.  He had a great deal.  He had a son who was a miraculous gift from God.  But when God asked him to sacrifice that son, he didn’t seek to hold on tighter.  He understood that Isaac belonged to God, not him.  Abraham showed this by being willing to offer Isaac as a sacrifice and God stepped in and stopped him from following through.  Now Abraham was holding Isaac with an open hand.  A constant, living sacrifice to God rather than a possession of Abraham’s.  Tozer writes:

I have said that Abraham possessed nothing.  Yet was not this poor man rich?  Everything he had owned before was his still to enjoy: sheep, camels, herds, and goods of every sort.  He had also his wife and his friends, and best of all he had his son Isaac safe by his side.  He had everything, but he possessed nothing.  There is the spiritual secret.  There is the sweet theology of heart which can be learned only in the school of renunciation.  (27)

Well-meaning followers of Jesus Christ will often talk about needing to “give something to God.”  I would respectfully suggest that we should instead realize and admit that it is already God’s.  Living life with an open hand is a constant admission that all we have and all we are belong to God.  It is His to give and take as He pleases for His glory which is also always what is best for us.

I’ll leave you with Tozer’s prayer at the end of this chapter:

Father, I want to know Thee, but my cowardly heart fears to give up its toys.  I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide from Thee the terror of the parting.  I come trembling, but I do come.  Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that Thou mayest enter and dwell there without a rival.  Then shalt Thou make the place of Thy feet glorious.  Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for Thyself wilt be the light of it, and there shall be no night there.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.  (31)

One of the books that has had the greatest impact on my life (other than the Bible!) is The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer.  When I was a Junior in High School I received a large envelope in the mail from someone I had never met.  It was a man in my church that said he had been talking to the Youth Pastor and my name had come up as someone who was really growing in their faith.  He sent me the letter and a gift to encourage me to keep on growing and following Christ.  The gift was a copy of A.W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God. It was not a book I would normally have read as a High School student, but a statement in the preface really caught my attention.  It said that Tozer would read all sorts of things “on his knees, asking God to help him understand their meaning.”  This really challenged me and I decided to do this with The Pursuit of God.  This book was a tool used by God at just the right time in my life to help me down the path of following Him.  In fact, this book was an important part of my decision to become a pastor.  It continues to be a challenge and a reminder to me today of not being complacent in my following of God.

Over the next few weeks I will periodically share with you some of the quotes and ideas that have really stayed with me from this book.  It is not Scripture, to be sure, but I have found that the best books, speakers, music, churches, etc, have driven me to Scripture rather than served as a substitute.  Hopefully I can do the same for anyone reading this blog.

The first chapter of The Pursuit of God is called, “Following Hard after God” and explains what it means to pursue God.  Here are some challenging quotes:

Before a sinful man can think a right thought of God, there must have been a work of enlightenment done within him. … We pursue God because, and only because, He has first put an urge within us that spurs us to the pursuit (11).

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. … God is always previous.  In practice, however, (that is, where God’s previous working meets man’s present response) man must pursue God (12).

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 (15).

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 (15).

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 to deliberately 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 (17).

We must simplify our approach to Him.  We must strip down to the essentials (18).

And lastly, at the end of each chapter Tozer writes a prayer:

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. (20)

I highly recommend this book as a catalyst to faith and spending time with God.  You can buy it here or download a copy from Project Gutenberg here (various formats).

Bibliography on my copy:  Tozer, A.W., The Pursuit of God. Christian Publications, Inc.: Camp Hill, PA, 1982.

 Image by Ernst Vikne on Flickr under Creative Commons License.  Found on http://www.thedailyspurgeon.com/.