The Pursuit of God, by A.W. Tozer

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GOING HARD AFTER THE HOLY GOD
(Philippians 3:2-16)

Our theme for the week of prayer has been, "Going Hard after the Holy God." Last week we focused on the Holy God. Today we focus on "going hard." The phrase is adapted from A.W. Tozer, whose little book, The Pursuit of God, has a chapter entitled, "Following hard after God." Tozer wrote this book in 1948 but if anything it is more relevant today. After showing how Moses and David and Paul and all the great hymn writers were even thirsting after more of God he writes

How tragic that we in this dark day have had our seeking done for us by our teachers. Everything is made to center upon the initial act of 'accepting' Christ … and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls. We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found him we need no more seek him. This is set before us as the last word in orthodoxy, and it is taken for granted that no Bible-taught Christian ever believed otherwise. Thus the whole testimony of the worshipping, seeking, singing Church on that subject is crisply set aside. The experimental heart-theology of a grand army of fragrant saints is rejected in favor of a smug interpretation of Scripture which would certainly have sounded strange to an Augustine, a Rutherford or a Brainerd (pp. 16-17).

So Tozer rejected the false logic which says: if you have found God in Christ you need no more seek him. I reject that, too. And I join Tozer in replacing it with these words, "To have found God and still to pursue him is the soul's paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart" (p. 15). Or as St. Bernard sang it:

We taste Thee, O Thou Living Bread,

And long to feast upon Thee still:

We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead

And thirst our souls from Thee to fill.

Matthew Henry is right: "Wherever there is true grace there is a desire for more grace. When Paul said, "Don't be drunk with wine but be filled with the Holy Spirit" (Eph. 5:18), his aim was to make God-aholics out of all believers. The Spirit is not deadening, He is addicting. The evidence that you have him is that you want more of him.

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