In recent days I have been gripped by the awareness that I need more than an academic grasp of the knowledge of God. In my spiritual pilgrimage, I have immersed myself into the spiritual logic of A. W. Tozer in His experimental work, The Pursuit of God. While biblical scholarship is vitally important in our age of deception, I sense a huge personal need to balance objective reason with subjective reality.
This morning, while wading through the content of Apprehending God, a chapter in Tozer’s The Pursuit of God, I found it very difficult to decipher all of his logic. But interestingly, while I battled my inherit ignorance, I had a sense of divine otherness to press on.
While I am still striving to wrap my mind around the reasoning of this man of God, I feel that the few drops of spiritual thought that this dry soul is receiving is giving me much encouragement in comprehending, and apprehending, the great God of Wonders in both reason and reality. Furthermore, I am understanding that I will never attempt the impossible until I see the Invisible.
A. W. Tozer waters my thirsty soul when he says,
“… for millions of Christians, …, God is no more real than He is to the non-Christian. They go through life trying to love an ideal and be loyal to a mere principle.
Over against all this cloudy vagueness stands the clear scriptural doctrine that God can be known in personal experience. A loving Personality dominates the Bible, walking among the trees of the garden and breathing fragrance over every scene. Always a living Person is present, speaking, pleading, loving, working and manifesting Himself whenever and wherever His people have the receptivity necessary to receive the manifestation.
As we begin to focus upon God, the things of the Spirit will take shape before our inner eyes. Obedience to the Word of Christ will bring an inner revelation of the Godhead (John 14:21-23). It will give acute perception enabling us to see God even as is promised to the pure in heart. A new God – consciousness will seize upon us and we shall begin to taste and hear and inwardly feel God, who is our life and our all. There will be seen the constant shining of “the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (John 1:9). More and more, as our faculties grow sharper and more sure. God will become to us the great All, and His presence the glory and wonder of our lives.