more thoughts from A.W. Tozer

So I’m reading some of A.W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God this week and it is rockin’ my world.  Today the chapter was on “The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing” and it used the story of Abraham and Isaac as an illustration which was really powerful.  Very challenging and thought-provoking …. and hopefully life-change provoking.  He writes about the danger of things … and of our human inclination towards possessing them.  It really refocused my perspective – especially appropriate during this time of year.  Here are some of Tozer’s quotes from the chapter that spoke to me:

“There is within the human heart a tough, fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess.”

“Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended.” 

- regarding Abraham’s relationship with his son, Isaac
“As he watched him grow from babyhodd to young manhood, the heart of the old man was knit closer and closer with the life of his son, till at last the relationship bordered upon the perilous.  It was then that God stepped in to save both father and son from the consequences of an uncleansed love.”

- after Abraham’s obedience and God sparing Isaac 
“Now he [Abraham] was a man wholly surrendered, a man utterly obedient, a man who possessed nothing … I have said that Abraham possessed nothing.  Yet was not this poor man rich? Everything he had owned before was his still to enjoy: sheep, camels, herds, and good of every sort.  He had also his wife and his friends, and best of all he had his son Isaac safe by his side.  He had everything, but he possessed nothing.  There is the spiritual secret.  There is the sweet theology of the heart which can be learned only in the school of renunciation.  The books on systematic theology overlook this, but the wise will understand.”

“There can be no doubt that this possessive clinging to things is one of the most harmful habits in the life.  Because it is natural, it is rarely recognized for the evil that it is.  But its outworkings are tragic.”

 

thoughts from A.W. Tozer

This quote is about conversion and how truly finding God means that we will want to seek Him more.

from The Pursuit of God - 

“The whole transaction of religious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless.  Faith may now be exercised without a jar to the moral life and without embarrassment to the Adamic ego.  Christ may be “received” without creating any special love for Him in the soul of the receiver.  The man is “saved”, but he is not hungry nor thirsty after God.  In fact, he is specifically taught to be satisfied and is encouraged to be content with little….Everything is made to center upon the initial act of “accepting” Christ (a term, incidentally, which is not found in the Bible) and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls.  We have been snared into 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 worshiping, seeking, singing church on that subject is crisply set aside.  The experiential 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.”

 

Weekly Lyrics

I’m not a huge fan of singing hymns most of the time, but I was listening to this hymn (a new version) this morning and was captured by so many of the words in it.  I’ve italicized the words that caught my attention and made me really think.  There’s some powerful stuff in the truths that are expressed in this song.

Come Thou Fount (Gateway Worship version)

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing Thy grace
Streams of mercy, never ceasing call for songs of loudest praise
Teach me some melodious sonnet sung by flaming tongues above
Praise the mount, I’m fixed upon it
Mount of Thy redeeming love

I was lost in utter darkness ’til You came and rescued me
I was bound by all my sin when Your love came and set me free
Now my soul can sing a new song, now my heart has found a home
Now Your grace is always with me
And I’ll never be alone

Come, Thou Fount, come, Thou King; Come, Thou precious Prince of Peace
Hear Your bride, to You we sing, come, Thou Fount of our blessing
Come, Thou Fount, come, Thou King; Come, Thou precious Prince of Peace
Hear Your bride, to You we sing, come, Thou Fount of our blessing

O, to grace, how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love
Here’s my heart, Lord, take and seal it
Seal it for Thy courts above