Vital Pursuit: Top Ten Books #2

Vital Pursuit: Top Ten Books #2 May 27, 2016

Screen Shot 2015-01-07 at 3.35.58 PMVital Pursuit, by John Frye

Surreptitiously guided by God to Moody Bible Institute by the magnet of becoming a missionary aviation pilot, I encountered doubts and confusion about that “call” [last week’s post]. Wisely counseled by a professor, I switched to the Bible major, focusing on pastoral ministry and New Testament Greek. My passion for taking the Gospel to the world needed a new direction, a quest, a pursuit. The second book that shaped my life in my formative years (1960s) as a Christ-follower is A. W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God.

I cannot say enough about this book. Even as I re-read it, I note that it still speaks to issues broiling within evangelicalism. Long before Dallas Willard coined the pragmatic “barcode gospel” or One-T Scot (McKnight) named the reduced “soterian gospel,” Tozer in the late 1940s was prophetic about the powerlessness of a “gospel” reduced to a few Bible verses and human logic. “The doctrine of justification by faith—a biblical truth, and a blessed relief from sterile legalism and unavailing self-effort—has in our time fallen into evil company and been interpreted by many in such a manner as actually to bar men from the knowledge of God. The whole transaction of religious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless. … Christ may be ‘received’ without creating any special love for Him in the soul of the receiver” (18-19).

The chapter titled “The Speaking Voice” is worth the (small) price of the book. Tozer refused to lock the “voice of God” into the ink and paper of a book, even if it is the Holy Bible. It is the living Voice of God that empowers the written Word of God. Being theologically educated in the early 1970s when inerrancy and the “battle for the Bible” were more noise than light, Tozer had taught me to listen for the still speaking God. “The whole Bible supports this idea. God is speaking. Not God spoke, but God is speaking. He is by His nature, continuously articulate. He fills the world with His speaking voice” (79).

Tozer was a self-taught scholar and pastor. He usually read books while kneeling in prayer. He did not want knowledge only, he wanted passion, hunger, an intense chasing after God. He read the “mystics” (!), that is, the early Church Fathers and Mothers—e.g., Bernard of Clairvaux, Teresa of Avila, Nicolas of Cusa. Tozer lamented that the life of the church was hijacked by the modern ways of the theater. Worship became a “program.” Bible teachers had to make the faith “fun.” The sense of deep, repentant awe before a holy God was replaced with a mutant self-centered faith. “Promoting self under the guise of promoting Christ is currently so common as to excite little notice” (51) This was written, mind you, in 1948.

Back to my journey. I wanted to serve God (in the parlance of the day) in “full time Christian service.” What do I do as I “pursue God” in those Moody Bible Institute years? Tozer wrote about “the blessedness of possessing nothing,” offering spiritual direction around the first Beatitude (Matthew 5:3) and the the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22). Tozer was contrasting the self-life against a Christ-pursuing life (Matthew 16:24-25). Those who yearn to go deeper with God must be the “poor in spirit.” Tozer, presciently understanding One-T’s take on the first Beatitude, wrote, “They have reached an inward state paralleling the outward circumstances of the common beggar in the streets of Jerusalem. That is what the word poor as Christ used it actually means. These blessed poor are no long the slave to the tyranny of things” 31). Even something as precious as the promised son of the covenant (Isaac) was released to God by Abraham. Even loved ones must not hinder our pursuit of God. Here’s the line that has stuck with me: “Everything is safe which we commit to Him, and nothing is really safe which is not so committed” (34).

Tozer was no stuffed-shirt. He had a wry sense of humor. In describing the deep things of the Bible like predestination, election, divine sovereignty, omniscience, he suggested we leave some things alone. “Prying into them may make theologians, but it will never make saints” (74).


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