How’s your soul today?

Delighting in God

In a sermon in Chicago, A. W. Tozer asked the congregation to pray for him. He asked that they would pray that God would help him live long enough to write a book on the attributes of God devotionally. The Knowledge of the Holy was the answer to that prayer. The Knowledge of the Holy was the last book that Tozer wrote, but he intended to follow the book with Delighting in God. James Snyder, a recognized authority on the life and ministry of Tozer, compiled and edited Delighting in God from Tozer’s sermons, most preached after the publication of The Knowledge of the Holy.

The purpose of this book: to be faithful to point out that the evangelical church today has some serious spiritual problems, the primary one being a loss of the perception of God that has been its hallmark since its inception. (p. 58)
This book is a call to the church, especially to the American church, to return to its first love. Tozer asserts that today’s church has slipped into a Christianity that is mediocre and lacks the passion of the “saints of old.”
In the evangelical church, we seem to have a great deal of passion for everything but God. We look around for activities that consume the resources of our lives. Instead of looking around at the world, we need to look up to the source of our redemption. We are so caught up with all the modern gadgets and methods that we have lost our passion for God. (p. 20)
Tozer is concerned with the church’s worship. Today’s worship, implied by Tozer, is similar to entertainment and a means to “whip up” an emotional experience. He loves the old hymns that celebrate the deep truths of the Christian walk. Each chapter ends with a hymn that depicts the subject.
This book is a call to action to Christians to examine their walk with God based upon their perception of God, asking if their God is too small.
Becoming a Christian is not just nodding to a few truths and then saying, “I accept Jesus.”  It is infusing into your life the divine power, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead. This is the tremendous work of the Holy Spirit to bring you into the divine world of redemption. (p. 18)
The Pursuit of God and The Knowledge of the Holy are special books to me. The Pursuit of God, came to me at a very low time in my life. Fibromyalgia had wrecked my body and destroyed my hope. The Holy Spirit used Tozer’s call to pursue God at all cost to redirect my eyes from fibromyalgia to the magesty of God, so that I wanted nothing else, not even healing. Just God … deeper … more intimate. God was sufficient.
When my cry became “I want more of You, God,” the Lord healed me of fibromyalgia.
God can heal the church today.
Delighting in God is another plea from Tozer to understand that God is bigger than we perceive.  Like the saints of old delighted in God, we can delight in God who is bigger than we can imagine or understand. The Holy Spirit can kindle our  desire for God to cause us to want Him more than anything else in life.
What if we focused upon the spiritual rather than our worldly activities?
What if we asked our Christian brothers and sisters “How’s your soul this Sunday morning?” rather than “Who won the game last night?”
 Might our hearts pant after God “as the deer pants after the water brooks?” (p. 198)
How’s your soul today?
I received Delighting in God from Baker Publishing Group for my honest review.

My prayer

Father, thank you for this call to examine my walk with You. Redirect our focus to pursue You at all costs. Deepen our walk with You, and lead us by the right hand as we walk in Your power and Your authority. You are all we want, and in You is all we need. We love you, Lord. Amen.

 

Do you know the Holy?

The Knowledge of the Holy - By: A.W. Tozer

Have you tried to grasp the wonder of the nature of God?

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways
And My thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8-9

And yet, the Word of God is given to us to learn of God, and the Holy Spirit dwells within God’s people to guide us and teach us.

In The Knowledge of the Holy, A.W. Tozer prayerfully approaches the nature of God and reveals His majesty and glimpses of God’s height, width, and depth of nature.

Although Tozer examines 21 attributes of God, he writes

“In studying any attribute, the essential oneness of all the attribues soon becomes apparent. We see, for instance, that if God is self-existent He must be also self-sufficient; and if He has power He, being infinite, must have all power. If He possesses knowledge, His infinitude assures us that He possesses all knowledge. Similarly, His immutability presupposes His faithfulness. If He is unchanging, it follows that He could not be unfaithful, since that would require Him to change … Thus the attributes explain each other and prove that they are but glimpses the mind enjoys of the absolutely perfect Godhead.” pp. 78-79

From the eternity of God to His omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence, to God’s faithfulness, goodness, justice, mercy, grace, and love, Tozer wraps God’s attributes in the absolute holiness of our sovereign God.

This book was the last book Tozer wrote. It is evident that this book was the culmination of a lifetime of intimately walking with God. Although the book is only 117 pages long, I took my time and often reread paragraphs.

A.W. Tozer has a special place in my heart, and this is a book that I will read periodically.  I purchased it to read before I read the follow-up to The Knowledge of the Holy, Delighting in God.

My prayer:

Father, thank You for revealing Your majesty to Your children. Help us to grow in understanding and awe as we walk with You. Reveal Your holiness to us, and lead us by the right hand as we grow more intimate with You. I am awestruck by You, and I want to know Your ways, Your thoughts, Your nature more deeply. Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might, be to our God forever and ever. Amen!

This week, take a few minutes every day to think about God’s holiness. Share what the Holy Spirit reveals to you in the comments below. I can’t wait to read what He will teach you.