The Pursuit of God

So I just finished reading The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer last night, so here is kind of a review type thing. 

Perhaps the most deep hitting idea from the entire book came in the first chapter.

"How tragic that we in this dark day have had our seeking done for us by our teachers."

This is so true on so many levels. This was exactly how I lived my life just a year ago and am still guilty of at times now. So many Americans will go to church once a week and depend entirely on that 30 minute sermon for their Jesus for the week. We take everything he/she says as truth without checking the source to see for ourselves. We let them do the seeking for us, and then just sit back and listen. The problem with that is that there is no possible way that you can have a personal relationship through a 30 minute sermon once a week. It just doesn't happen that way. We must seek for ourselves. We must desire to know God deeply, and the only way to do that is to spend time with Him in the Word and in prayer. Because a lot of us no longer do that, our knowledge of God and who He is has greatly diminished. 

"To most people God is an inference, not a reality."

This quote really sums it up because I know that is exactly how it was for me. God is SOMETHING we believe in, rather than being SOMEONE we believe in. God is just a conclusion drawn because we don't see other possibilities, rather than being THE possibility. God is likely to exist, but not known to exist. We don't actively experience Him, nor do we actively seek him out. The saddest part of that is that as a people, we are fine with that. We are fine with saying we believe in God and then putting him on the shelf. We say we believe in Him and assume we only need Him to avoid hell. We have a great lack in our perception of the greatness of God. We lack the knowledge about our true, triune God. Our God is Emmanuel, meaning "God with us." God is very personal and right there with us every step of the way trying to reveal Himself to us, but we are just to apathetic to see it. Our lack of knowledge about who God really is leads us to either not care about knowing Him or just not know that it is possible to know Him just as we can know our best friend, except much more deeply. 

"God's word in the Bible can have power only because it corresponds to God's word in the universe. It is the present Voice that makes the written Word all-powerful."

"[The Bible] is not only a book which was once spoken, but a book which is now speaking."

"[The Bible] is more than a thing, it is a voice, a word, the very Word of the living God."

There is only one way to really get to know God, and that is through the precious gift known as the Bible. Luckily we live (assuming you also live in America) in a country where there are more Bibles than there are people. There is no shortage of access like in other areas where there might be a couple of Bibles for an entire village or even none at all. The Bible is not simply a book though, and the quotes from above really say it best. The authority of the Bible is only there because God is here. God didn't just show up for a short period of time and then leave. He is always around and working. The Bible is what they call a live text. It is as true for us reading it today as it was for those writing it. We just have to learn how to read it and that comes with practice. Preachers can certainly help us learn how to read the Bible and seek for ourselves, but we must overcome the temptation of just letting them do all the seeking for us. 

We MUST take control of our own faith!