“The Pursuit of God” by A.W. TozerIntroduction

In order to gain insight into the spiritual depth and strength of this classic book, “The Pursuit of God”, it is important to look at who this man Tozer was, and how his classic came to be written.

His full name was Aiden Wilson Tozer, but he did not like his name so he went by the initials A.W.

A.W. Tozer is one of the most quoted Christian writers of the 20th century. In his period of highest visibility (1940s – 1963) he was one of the most sought after speakers in evangelical circles.

Tozer was a man driven by a desire to know more of God. As you see on page one of your book that “Tozer’s walk with God was a priority with him and he allowed nothing to interfere. It was the basis of his attraction to the Christian Mystics.”

We have to remember that Tozer wrote the first edition of “The Pursuit of God” in 1948. When he talked about the Mystics, he referred to their desire to love God. Tozer wanted to love God with all his heart, and all his soul, and all his mind. As we see in:

Matthew 22:37-38 “Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' 38 This is the first and great commandment”. (NKJV)

Matthew Henry said: “The love of God is the first and great commandment. Our love of God must be sincere, not in word and tongue only. All our love is too little to bestow upon him,

therefore all the powers of the soul must be engaged for him, and carried out toward him.

So when you read that Tozer was attracted to Mystics, don’t be alarmed. He was not into anything like the New Age Movement or the Emergent Church that you hear of today. He simply had a deep desire to know and love God with all his being.

One of Tozer’s quotes: “What I believe about God is the most important thing about me.”

There is no one person who is perfect. You cannot put all your trust in one person. We must measure all that we read, learn, and do by The Bible. It is our plum line that we should balance our life by.

Another quote of Tozer’s: “The Word of God well understood and religiously obeyed is the shortest route to spiritual perfection. And we must not select a few favorite passages to the exclusion of others. Nothing less than a whole Bible can make a whole Christian.”

You can see how God had shaped his life throughout the many difficult circumstances he experienced.

He was born in a poor home in the hills of western Pennsylvaniawhere formal schooling was limited. Forced by his home situationto forfeit an education, Tozer entered the ministry without either high school or college training. He educated himself by years of diligent study and a constant prayerful seeking of the mind of God. With Tozer, seeking truth and seeking God was one and the same thing.

For example, when he felt he needed an understanding of the great English works of Shakespeare, he read them through on his knees, asking God to help him understand their meaning. This procedure was typical of his method of self-education.

With no teacher but the Holy Spirit and good books, A. W. Tozer became a theologian, a scholar and a master craftsman in the use of the English language.

His grandmother often told him about God, sowing seeds for his later conversion.

When Tozer was ten years old there farm house burned down to the foundation and they had to rebuild. After the fire his older brother left home in pursuit of a career in Akron Ohio. Tozer’s father could not handle the stress of the loss from the fire and his oldest son leaving which was his help on the farm. He ended up having numerous nervous breakdowns, suffered from depressionand was in and out of hospitals. This forced Tozer at age ten into adulthood as he took on the duties of the farm for five years. Tozer’s brother would talk to his mom and dad about moving to Akron because there were plenty of jobs. His father knew he would never be able to work the farm as he once did because of his illness and he did not want to put that burden on his children any longer, so they sold the farm and moved to Akron.

To make ends meet, Tozer, age 15, and his older sister had to work to help supplement their income. But that was not enough so they had to take in boarders. Through this experience, Tozer learned to read people quickly, to know if they were good or bad.

At age seventeen, A.W. Tozer came to know the Lord Jesus Christ as his savior. A Christian neighbor asked Tozer if he was a Christian and if not that he would like to talk to him about it. Tozer replied, no, but thank you for asking I will think about it. Then later Tozer heard a German lay preacher speaking at a corner on the street in Akron, Ohio. That lay preacher said something that caught the ear of young Tozer, it startled him,and he went home went up to the attic to be alone, and he wrestled with those words. “If you don’t know how to be saved, just call on God saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner’ and

God will here you.” It is not known what all took place in that attic but from that day, Tozer’s life changed forever.

There, at the very beginning of his Christian life, Tozer established what was to be a lifelong practice of waiting on God.

His walk with God was a priority with him and he allowed nothing to interfere. His prayer life was quite remarkable. His regular habit was to sprawl on his study floor, facedown, and worship God.

Tozer’s real strength came from his prayer life. He often commented “As a man Prays, so is he”. His entire ministry of preaching and writing flowed out of fervent prayer.

Our Prayer Life is a crucial part of our relationship with God. How often do we converse with God in prayer?When we do pray is it a meaningful time of communion, or do we quickly run through a list of requests?

I would like to play a short clip for you of A.W. Tozer talking about prayer. He was not a flamboyant preacher but it was his love for God that made him one of the most sought after speakers.

In our study, Tozer will be introducing the idea of drawing near to God. James 4:8 says, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” (NKJV)

What does it mean to draw near? Is it the amount of time – the quantity? Or is it the quality of the interaction?

To illustrate: “On a visit to Hong Kong, an American businessman had occasion to ride the subway. The trains were so crowded, he said, that certain employees were on the platforms just to push people into the cars so the doors could close. The American said he was jammed against people on all sides of him – he was “close” to more people than he had ever been before. Yet they were all strangers; he did not know them. He was not really “near” any of them.

This may typify some relationships with God. We are close in proximity to Him but we do not really know Him. Sometimes we go through the motions, perhaps praying from a list of requests we read off to God. Some are in church quite regularly but do not feel “near” to God in the sense of intimately knowing Him.

We glance at God and gaze at our needs. Rather we should be gazing at God and glancing at our needs. If we want to develop a meaningful prayer life, we must focus on God and not on the peripherals.

There are some books that can be enjoyed with one reading, others are enhanced by many readings. The Pursuit of God is one of the latter..

Much of the strong meat in The Pursuit of God came out of the crucible of Tozer's own personal experience. The chapter entitled "The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing" reflected his desperate struggle to turn his only daughter over to God. The battle for him was intense and devastating, but when full surrender came, a new and glorious release became his. He had learned to know God in the school of practical experience.

The writing of this book was for A.W. Tozer a deep spiritual experience. The “burden” God had given Tozer was to motivate people who claimed to be followers of Christ but who had little knowledge of God and little desire to know Him better. This drove Tozer to write this classic book that has changed so many lives.

He had a speaking engagement scheduled in McAllen, Texas, so he boarded an overnight sleeper train. At the time, Tozer was struggling with the “burden” God had laid upon his heart. He wanted to motivate these people.

Upon boarding the train, Tozer asked the porter for a small writing table. And secluded in his sleeper compartment he began to write, oblivious of all else. About nine in the evening the porter announced the last call for dinner. Tozer asked him for some tea and toast and he kept on writing. As he wrote, the words fairly tumbled into his mind. Feverishly he put them down on paper. By morning he had the entire draft of the book that would affect millions of people to this day.

This is a thumbnail sketch of A.W. Tozer and the writing of his classic The Pursuit of God.

Does the “burden” that prompted Tozer to write this book find a response in your heart?Would you like your relationship with Jesus Christ to be closer, more intimate?

Although A.W. Tozer died in 1963, his spiritual legacy continues to satisfy those thirsty for the deep things of God.

Perhaps the continued usefulness of this book can be attributed to Tozer’s great spiritual discovery that to seek God does not narrow one's life, but brings it, rather, to the level of highest possible fulfillment. —Pursuit of God, The

The Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 13:5 that we are to examine ourselves. It is important that we continually take stock of our relationship with the Lord – not because we are worried about losing our salvation, but because a relationship that isn’t growing is a stagnant relationship and a hindrance to the work of God.

I want to show you a video clip that really makes you think about how we spend our time. Some of you may have already seen it on the website. It along with other videos are located under the media center tab. You see the video of the month as well as all the archived ones.

Video Clip: 40 million

Next week we start Chapter One: Following Hard After God.

The paragraph starts off with talking about Prevenient Grace. Prevenient Grace basically means that God puts within us the very desire to pursue Him. John 6:44 says: “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (NKJV)