The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer

This resonated with me this morning.

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. [See 1 Kings 18 for the allusions.-ccp] 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.'

The entire book is available to read online. Here is one link to it. The Pursuit of God

"During a train trip from Chicago in the late 1940s, A.W. Tozer began to work on The Pursuit of God. He wrote all night long, the words coming to him as fast as he could put them down. By the next morning, when the train pulled into McAllen, Texas, the rough draft was done" (wikipedia)

The language may be old fashioned but the meaning is so very much what I have felt. Isn't this why we keep studying, why we keep singing, and why we continue to search for a place where we can not only gather with other believers but where we can FIND GOD!

The problems aren't unique to our time or to a particular place. This man wrote words 68 years ago that reach into me today and make me want to stand up and shout AMEN!

We want fellowship, study, teaching, prayer, all of the things that we do to try to reach the one goal that sometimes we lose sight of in the middle of all the attempts to get there. More than that - it isn't just a goal - it is the very thing we were made for! God created us for Him. We are knit together in ways that make us from birth to grave - long for closeness with our Father and all of life is nothing but one (usually very crooked) line of pursuit of that one end.

We are made with a hunger that we try to fill with everything the world has to offer but in the end, we find that it all rots, it all leaves us, and if we are lucky - we find ourselves on our knees, reaching out for the one thing that will make us whole - we just need God!

I wish Mr. Tozer was still around. I would like to have sat in the pew in his church. I pray that all of you find God somewhere today, and feel that irresistible pull that draws us near and has us crying out Abba - Daddy! Amen!