He Pursued God - A. W. Tozer

AIDEN WILSON TOZER was born in Newburg, Pennsylvania, on April 21, 1897. In 1915, at the age of seventeen, he accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. Immediately, he entered into a life of devotional fervor. Soon after he was called to pastor a Christian Missionary Alliance church in Nutter Fort, WV. He entered this post without any prior attendance at a Bible college or seminary. He subsequently pastored several C&MA churches, wrote more than forty books, and served as the editor of Alliance Life, a monthly denominational publication.

Of this fine preacher, Warren Wiersbe wrote,

"A. W. Tozer had the gift of taking a spiritual truth and holding it up to the light so that, like a diamond, every facet was seen and admired. He was not lost in homiletical swamps; the wind of the Spirit blew and dead bones came to life. His essays are like fine cameos whose value is not determined by their size. His preaching was characterized by an intensity--spiritual intensity--that penetrated one's heart and helped him to see God. Happy is the Christian who has a Tozer book handy when his soul is parched and he feels God is far away."

["Introduction" to The Best of A. W. Tozer. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1994), p. 9]

This morning I pulled down a copy of Tozer's The Knowledge of the Holy and turned to the chapter dealing with "The Love of God." I figured that this would be a fine enough place to read on a Mother's day morning. Here are a couple of brief excerpts from this chapter.

The words "God is love" mean that love is an essential attribute of God. Love is something true of God but it is not God. It expresses the way God is in His unitary being, as do the words holiness, justice, faithfulness and truth. Because God is immutable He always acts like Himself, and because He is a unity He never suspends one of His attributes in order to exercise another.

From God's other known attributes we may learn much about His love. We can know, for instance, that because God is self-existent, His love had no beginning; because He is eternal, His love can have no end; because He is infinite, it has no limit; because He is holy, it is the quintessence of all spotless purity; because He is immense, His love is an incomprehensibly vast, bottomless, shoreless sea before which we kneel in joyful silence and from which the loftiest eloquence retreats confused and abashed.

Yet if we would know God and for other's sake tell what we know, we must try to speak of His love. All Christians have tried, but none has ever done it very well. I can no more do justice to that awesome and wonder-filled theme than a child can grasp a star. Still, by reaching toward the star the child may call attention to it and even indicate the direction one must look to see it. So, as I stretch my heart toward the high, shining love of God, someone who has not before known about it may be encouraged to look up and have hope. ...

Fear is the painful emotion that arises at the thought that we may be harmed or made to suffer. This fear persists while we are subject to the will of someone who does not desire our well-being. The moment we come under the protection of one of good will, fear is cast out. A child lost in a crowded store is full of fear because it sees the strangers around it as enemies. In its mother's arms a moment later all the terror subsides. The known good will of the mother casts out fear. (pp. 105-106)

A. W. Tozer died on Monday, May 12, 1963. His grave marker simply, yet profoundly, reads: A. W. Tozer--A Man of God. Leonard Ravenhill once said of Tozer, "I fear we shall never see another Tozer. Men like him are not college bred but Spirit taught."

Click here to view more books written by A. W. Tozer (Christian Book Distributors).

Update -
Online Sermon links collected by Paul Schafer at Reforming My Mind - MP3's.

He Pursued God - A. W. Tozer