The wisdom of God versus the wisdom of man

When you hear the word wisdom, what comes into your mind? What are the characteristics of wisdom? What does the Bible says about wisdom?

One passage about wisdom is especially helpful in our understanding of the biblical view of wisdom: James 3:13-18.

Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. (NASB)

Let’s examine the words used here to describe what wisdom really is.

Wisdom is made up of parts:

From above – True wisdom comes from God, meaning it is a gift from God, not something that we can simply work hard to obtain. The Bible tells us that we only need to ask God for wisdom who gives it abundantly. It is based on truth and it advocates truth. In the end, it points back to God and His plan for us.

Pure – True wisdom isn’t something that men came up with. It isn’t famous sayings, or platitudes. Wisdom is not the result of some motivation such as popularity or wealth. Wisdom is holy.

Peaceable – True wisdom is demonstrated by those who are at peace, meaning those brought together with God. The word we translate as “peace” is from a Greek word that can carry the meaning “brought together.” In this context, peaceable means those who are together with God, or more simply stated, those who have a good relationship with God.

Gentle – True wisdom is thinking and behavior that is “appropriate” and “mild.” It isn’t furious about opinions or strongly trying to persuade others. It isn’t rude even though it is right.

Reasonable – However, true wisdom is able to persuade just by its truth. Wisdom points out what is right and what is evil from God’s perspective, not from what man thinks is right.

Full of mercy – True wisdom is kind and helps those who need it and corrects what is spiritually wrong. It also forgives offenses when someone else does what is wrong, but points out the error in a loving and gentle way.

Good fruits – True wisdom isn’t just thinking and expressing Godly thoughts. Anyone can learn biblical principles and state them to others. However, wisdom is shown in the life of those who actually do the things God wants us to do.

Unwavering – What was wisdom a thousand years ago is still wisdom today. Since God is eternal and hasn’t ever changed; so too, wisdom, since coming from God, doesn’t change and hasn’t changed since before God spoke creation into existence. Man hasn’t leaned anything more or added anything to God’s creation or God’s plan that makes wisdom different today than it was in the garden.

Without hypocrisy – True wisdom has not disguises, it isn’t crafty or deceitful. It is sincere and open and is plain to the observer. Wisdom brings clarity and understanding, not confusion. Wisdom is sincere and open, it is steady and even. You won’t be confused by wisdom.

What do each of these look like and how do we apply this true wisdom in our lives? Worth contemplating and daily asking God for this wisdom.

Is the church making disciples as Jesus did?

by Dan Grubbs

John Warr, an 18th-century apprentice shoemaker, was determined to be a faithful witness for Christ. Another apprentice was hired, and John repeatedly talked to him about spiritual things. That new worker, however, didn’t want to be bothered. Then one day he was caught exchanging a counterfeit shilling for a good one. In his guilty humiliation he asked John for help and prayer. Through the faithful witness of John Warr, that man put his faith in Christ and developed into a committed disciple.

The young apprentice was William Carey, who later became a remarkably fruitful missionary to India. Carey’s life and ministry had a tremendous influence on the cause of worldwide gospel outreach in modern times.

Jesus said in John 15:8, “By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit.” This could be discouraging to Christians who can’t preach, sing, teach, or go to the mission field. They might see themselves as stuck in a situation that makes fruitful service impossible.

If that’s how you feel, then take courage from the example of John Warr. His impact on a co-worker brought glory to God and untold blessing to multitudes of people around the world.

In a world where bigger is usually assorted with better, it seems that Jesus might be considered a failure by today’s standards. After all, the Lord spent most of His time with only twelve disciples, one of whom betrayed Him. However, Jesus knew that by concentrating on twelve disciples He would leave this world, but leave behind a legacy. Here are eight elements of Christ’s disciple-making strategy:

1. Jesus concentrated on teaching, training and developing twelve disciples into church leaders. By putting quality ahead of quantity, the Lord set a pattern for how godly leaders are to develop. There can be no short cuts to developing leaders for the church. Mark writes, “He appointed twelve, that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons.” (Mark 3:14) The Lord selects those He wants. No person can presume to be a leader of God’s people by their own volition.
2. Jesus concentrated on twelve because He wanted future leaders to give their entire attention to building well-rounded godly character. It is a myth that godliness can be manufactured through large theological factory like settings. Even Paul commended Timothy for learning lessons on godliness when he wrote, “You know all about my teaching, conduct, purpose, patience, love persecutions, sufferings and perseverance.” (2 Tim. 3:10) Real training happens in the context of a total life experience.
3. Jesus employed His thoughts, emotions and efforts to assure that the apostles would replicate His life and thinking into the body of believers. In Acts 2:42-47 it says, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and the apostles did many wonders and miraculous signs. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” The apostles knew no other way but concentrated ministry that sprang from a total commitment to the Lord in all dimensions of life.
4. Jesus focused His objectives on twelve apostles who would teach through their examples. Many people were amazed at the transformation in the lives of twelve ordinary men. Luke wrote, “When people saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.” (Acts 4:13) We become a lot like the people we spend most of our time and mental energies on.
5. Jesus condensed many of His most complicated teaching to simple statements that could be transmitted through the those with little or no education. Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31,32) By concentrating much of His teaching in a few statements, the disciples could easily retain, reinforce and reproduce what they had learned.
6. Jesus used local settings to keep His teaching contextualized. The Lord never went beyond 75 miles from the place of His birth. By using local people, with local illustrations and local situations, the Lord was able to provide a rich context that was easily reproducible.
7. Jesus aimed at particular people who were most apt to respond to His message and have a life changing experience. While the world is looking for better methods, Jesus looked for better people. Pray and ask the Lord for wisdom in selecting a few disciples to train for godliness.
8. Jesus distilled the grains of truth from volumes of knowledge so everyone could read and study His life and teachings. In God’s providential wisdom, the life and ministry of Christ is recorded in the Bible. Yet, the Bible says, “In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” (Col. 2:6) We should follow Christ’s example in keeping our teaching straightforward, principled and consistent with our Master’s example.

Author stresses urgent need for fearless witnessing

by Allie Martin

A Georgia-based evangelist is trying to motivate and equip believers to reach friends and strangers for Jesus. In his book One Thing You Can't Do in Heaven (Genesis Publications, 2004), Mark Cahill says when it comes to witnessing, Christians can overcome fear and have confidence.

Cahill says every follower of Jesus Christ is called to be a witness, and each believer needs to redeem the time and make the most of every chance to share the gospel with the lost.

As the minister is fond of pointing out to fellow Christians, “We can worship God in heaven, we can praise God in heaven, and we can sing songs to God in heaven, but one thing we cannot do is share our faith with a nonbeliever in heaven — because they're not going to be there.”

Passionate about communicating a sense of the urgency of witnessing and helping people come to a saving knowledge of Christ, Cahill suggests that, for unbelievers, time is swiftly running out. Therefore, he says, “if we're going to reach them, we have to reach them here, and we've got to reach them now.”

The author of One Thing You Can't Do In Heaven says Christians have opportunities to share their faith in Christ on a daily basis and must not be afraid to talk about the realities of hell to unbelievers. However, he suspects that many believers who forego these opportunities do so because they are afraid of rejection.

But Cahill says he learned in his own spiritual walk that God's Word addresses his fears about being rejected by unbelievers as he shares the gospel. “When you read the scriptures,” he notes, “it says that they're actually not even rejecting me—they’re rejecting Jesus Christ [Matt. 10:22a]. And if you really think about it, it ought to hurt me a whole lot more that they're rejecting Jesus and not that they're rejecting me.”

However, it can be easy to forget this, Cahill says, “because of our prideful ways as people” and to think, as he has, “Oh, they rejected Mark Cahill.” But today the Great Commission-minded minister says, “Forget Mark Cahill. They're rejecting the Son of Almighty God.”

And that, the evangelist says, is what should bother believers far more than any personal rejection. “That should bother us to pray for these people,” he says. “That should bother us to share our faith to make sure they don't go anywhere near hell.”

Cahill resides in Stone Mountain, Georgia, and often leads witnessing efforts at music concerts, art festivals, sporting events, and homosexual gatherings in the metro Atlanta area. He also travels around the U.S., addressing more than 25,000 people annually at churches, retreats, conferences, and camps, in an effort to equip and challenge more of the saved to go out and reach the lost.

This article appears with permission of AgapePress.com © 2004

False doctrine leads to deception

by Donna J. Kazenski

Most Christians today have no problem discerning that Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Masons, etc. are teaching false doctrine and leading many astray. However, there are many who are not able to discern truth from error. As a result, they have placed themselves in the hands of the enemy and are being led down a path of deception and destruction.

Paul warned that false teachers would attempt to infiltrate the church from both the outside and from within. Peter wrote, “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction,” 2 Peter 2:1 (KJV). The word translated as “privily” not only describes the method by which false doctrine is smuggled into the church, but also describes its deceptive purpose.

The original Greek word pareisago, is a three-fold word that begins with the preposition para. Para means “alongside” and describes the smuggling operation. False teaching runs alongside true doctrine. This creates a deception difficult to detect because it is close to sound doctrine.

Those who work with money must be trained to know the difference between a counterfeit and a genuine dollar bill. Spiritually speaking, we can apply these same truths when it comes to exposing false teachings that are propagated in the body of Christ today. We must allow the Lord to minister to us and train us according to His holy word and by the power of His Spirit. We must be careful that we do not allow another Jesus or another gospel to lead us into error.

The next part of pareisago is the Greek word eis which means “into”. Usually men or women from within the ranks of Christianity will run these false teachings alongside (para) true doctrine for the purpose of getting their deception into (eis) the church. The final part of this word is the Greek word ago. This word means “to lead”. The end result of false doctrine is for individuals to be led astray.

The Greek word pareisago reveals that false doctrine runs right alongside true doctrine, to get it into the body of Christ and to lead individuals astray.

The sad fact of the matter is that many times the deception is brought into the body of Christ by respected leaders and laymen. Therefore, we must learn to eat the meat and spit out the bones or we will find ourselves choking on what we should never have consumed.

Hebrews 13:9 tells us not to be not carried away with divers and strange doctrines. The church must not be quick to embrace every teaching that comes from the pulpit. We must learn to sift the teachings given to us through the filter of the scriptures. The word of God will expose which is error and which is truth. We must pay attention to what God’s word is saying. If what we are hearing is not lining up with the word of God, we would save ourselves from deception and heartache if we would just learn how to spit out the bones.

In Matthew 22:29, Jesus told the Sadducees that they didn’t know the scriptures very well. I believe this is one of the major problems of the body of Christ today. We do not know the scriptures or the power of God. We have settled for less than God’s manifest presence in our midst. We have neglected spending time at the Master’s feet in prayer and adoration of who He really is. We have accepted the teachings of man instead of the word of God. We have negated the power of God because we do not know Him in the way that we should know Him. We have embraced everything that has been dished out to us, but we have not yet learned how to embrace the Cross and the Christ who died upon it.

The early church tapped into this power as they gathered together in one accord and began to seek the Lord of glory. They didn’t seek after new techniques or the latest Christian fad; they sought after the power of the Holy Spirit and they received the power needed to evangelize the whole known world. They possessed what many of us do not possess today.

They spent time with Jesus and as a result of their relationship with Him; they experienced His power to seek and save that which was lost. They manifested His power to those who needed His supernatural touch.

If we want to see the power of God manifested in our midst, we must focus our eyes upon Jesus and allow ourselves to be saturated with His word so that we will be able to discern between that which is truth and that which is error. May the Lord turn us from that which is counterfeit to that which is genuine.

Tozer Made Easy - Part 10 of 10

by Dan Grubbs

The Pursuit of God - Chapter 10: "The sacrament of living"

Editor's note: If you’ve been following along, you know that the editor has taken each chapter of the book The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer and published here a short study in the form of articles. Chapter 10 is the final installment of this series. We hope you have found the series helpful to you in your walk with Christ.

Basing his last chapter on the doctrine found in 1 Cor. 10:31, Tozer ends his book on a triumphal note. “Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” His main point for us to understand is that we cannot have internal peace if we divide our lives into the sacred and the secular.

This false division of life causes inner turmoil and tends “to break up so that we live a divided instead of unified life.”

Merging two worlds

We live in two worlds simultaneously, the fleshly or natural and the spiritual. When we keep them separate, we “are uneasy most of the time ... with a feeling of deep frustration.” This is not the light yoke that Christ promises the repentant believer. But, we subject ourselves to this by trying “to walk a tight rope between two kingdoms and [we] find no peace in either.”

Tozer’s claim is that this dualistic life is not only unhealthy physically and spiritually, it is “wholly unnecessary.” He teaches that a divided life between the sacred and the secular is not founded in the New Testament. Christ Himself is the example, saying He does all things to please the Father.

This example was echoed by Paul who teaches us that we are to do all things to the glory of God. This isn’t just platitudes, this is the genuine way of the Christian walk. Tozer explains it this way, “It opens before us the possibility of making every act of our lives contribute to the glory of God.”

All things can glorify God

It begs the question, can eating and drinking and the banal things of life be an act of reference? Tozer, as well as the Apostle Paul, teaches that this is the case. “It may be said that every act of life is or can be as truly sacred as prayer or baptism or the Lord’s Supper.

Many may still disagree with this notion. However our author wrote that if we are saved and give ourselves wholly to God, all acts are holy. “By one act of consecration of our total selves to God we can make every subsequent act express that consecration.”

As Christians, we must not make a mental or actual division between the sacred and the secular or we will live divided lives. Once we get past this dilemma, the reality of living in a unified manner for Christ, it will “condition the complexion of our thoughts.”

Our morning meditations must include this training. We must recall to our mind frequently that our daily acts can be acts of worship and can give glory to God. “The knowledge that we are all God’s, that He has received all and rejected nothing, will unify our inner lives and make everything sacred to us.”

Disciplined sacramental living

Tozer explains that the old way of thinking will want to creep back into our lives because Satan doesn’t want the whole of our lives to be about God. He writes, “It will take intelligent thought and a great deal of reverent prayer to escape completely from the sacred-secular psychology.”

Offer every thing we do to God. He will accept them. Remind God in our time of private communion that our intention is to make all our activities for His glory. Or in Tozer’s wonderful style, “Let us practice the fine art of making every work a priestly ministration.”

A contributing factor to our erroneous belief that we keep things separate is the fact that many Christians believe in sacred places or things.

“It is little short of astonishing that we can read the New Testament and still believe in the inherent sacredness of places as distinguished from other places.” Tozer laments that this false doctrine has been allowed to be perpetuated for centuries.

An omnipresent spirit of worship

When Christ was crucified, many things took place. Not the least of which was the total access of the true believer to God. No longer was God limited to the High Priest on the Day of Atonement. The veil before the Holy of Holies was torn in two. Remember Christ’s own words, “Neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.” Worshipping God is a spiritual matter, not a matter of place or time or things.

Many denominations have let the sacredness of things creep back into the liberty we enjoy through Christ’s work. And it was from this “bondage reformers and puritans and mystics have labored to free us.”

Tozer also cautions us to understand that the concept of sacramental living doesn’t mean that all things are equal or of equal importance in this world or the next. “One act of a good man’s life may differ widely from another in importance.” He uses the example of Paul’s work as a tentmaker as an example. “Paul’s sewing of tents was not equal to his writing of an epistle to the Romans, but both were accepted of God.”

Why we act is most important

Driving home his point with his best shot, Tozer continues to explain, “It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it,” (emphasis added). Lay people should never consider what they do as inferior to that of the act of a preached sermon. It is the motive of the act that is the key to it being a sacred act done for God’s glory or not.

A spiritual condition is required. Tozer tells us that we must, “Sanctify the Lord God in [our] heart.” Upon doing so, except for our sins, nothing we will ever do will be secular. One who lives this way is pleasing to God. “All he does is good and acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For such a man, living itself will be sacramental and the whole world a sanctuary.”

The Pursuit of God along with The Knowledge of the Holy are two of Tozer’s most popular and impactful writings. I strongly encourage everyone to read and re-read these important, yet short, books.

Tozer Made Easy - Part 9 of 10

by Dan Grubbs

The Pursuit of God - Chapter 9: "Meekness and Rest"

A popular British comedy shown here in America is titled, “Keeping Up Appearances.” Each episode centers around a middle-aged woman who is desperate to ensure everyone in her sphere of influence considers her to be posh and high society.

The fact is, however, she and her whole family are just everyday people. The humor ensues when she goes to great lengths to protect the complex façade she has created for the outside world to admire. She is breathless at every turn and drags her compliant husband through one fiasco after another. This woman is so busy creating a false life that she fails to notice she’s not living at all.

Funny thing is that we’re all like this in some way or another. We have much to hide from the world that we’re afraid to reveal. And it takes a lot of work to hide our faults. In fact, we are never done with the business of considering how we are viewed by others around us. It’s part of our sin pathology. Our core sin, pride, keeps our pathological engines running, sometimes racing, to ensure we do not lapse into revealing our true selves to the world.

Christ addressed this very thing which is the topic of Tozer’s ninth chapter, “Meekness and Rest.”

Tozer helps us understand that the Beatitudes are the “exact opposite of the virtues” that characterize the way humans live their lives. This, to our unrelenting detriment.

The portrait of human society

The opposite of the Beatitudes is what we see today and is the primary reason we experience many trials and tribulations in our lives. “Pride, arrogance, resentfulness, evil imaginings, malice, greed: these are the sources of more human pain than all the diseases that ever afflicted mortal flesh.”

Tozer shows us that it is in this condition that Christ came and spoke godly words when He uttered “blessed are the meek; for they shall inherit the earth.”

In this chapter, the author points out that the word meek is too often misunderstood. He shows us that Christ explained it later when He invited men to take up His yoke and bear a light burden.

Christ’s burden is different from man’s burden. Man’s burden is borne by every human — “it is altogether an interior one.” Our burden is self-love and pride which is at the heart of our sin. We are oppressed by this burden for, “the heart’s fierce effort to protect itself from every slight, to shield its touchy honor from the bad opinion of friend and enemy, will never let the mind have rest.”

But, Christ’s burden is different. It is light! And when we are released from the burden of man, we find we are at rest. “The meek man cares not at all who is greater than he, for he has long ago decided that the esteem of the world is not worth the effort.”

This is real rest for which many seek. A rest that only following and believing Christ can bring. A rest that comes from seeing oneself from God’s perspective. Tozer encourages us, “come on, humble yourself, and cease to care what men think.”

Meek does not equal weak

Don’t equate a meek godly man with someone who is weak in faculties. “The meek man is not a human mouse afflicted with a sense of his own inferiority. Rather he may be in his moral life as bold as a lion and as strong as Samson; but he has stopped being fooled about himself.”

So what about this inherit the earth promise? That’s a good question and should be answered by what we value compared to what God values. The meek Christian understands that the world will not understand godly values and he has stopped worrying about it. The meek Christian is at rest in knowing that the things God values are eternal and he will one day inherit the earth. “He will be patient to wait for the day when everything will get its own price tag and real worth will come into its own. Then the righteous shall shine forth in the Kingdom of their Father.”

When we put ego and pride aside and take up Christ’s burden, we find we “will have attained a place of soul rest.” We have God as our public defender and are at peace.

Like Lucifer, pride is our sin

Our desire to shine and stand apart from others for our own ego is not any different than that of the great angel Lucifer. Did not he want to shine brighter for others to see? Did not he want to be something he really was not? For his sin of pride, Lucifer lost his position with God and will spend eternity in turmoil. What did Lucifer gain for his pride?

What do we gain in our pride? We gain a tumultuous life filled with constantly defending ourselves against the world. We gain heartache and pain. We gain cruelty and corruption. We gain quarrelling and mistreatment. We gain the consequences of our sin, which are the opposite of the Beatitudes Christ so eloquently articulated on the Mount of Olives.

Our pride is a heavy burden. It is breaking us under its pressure, according to Tozer. He writes, “There is no release from our burden apart from the meekness of Christ.”

Rest at the foot of the throne

In a prayer at the end of this chapter, Tozer asks God to help him take God’s “easy yoke of self-forgetfulness.” This is the condition when Christ is on the throne and the other elements of our life are aligned with Jesus. When we place ourselves on the throne of our life, we bear a burden that is impossible in order to keep ourselves on that throne.

Christ calls us, “Come unto Me, and I will give you rest.” Are we experiencing a life of rest or a life of tumult? Are we defeated by trials or do we allow God to defend us?

Or better put by our author:

The rest He offers is the rest of meekness, the blessed relief which comes when
we accept ourselves for what we are and cease to pretend. It will take some
courage at first, but the needed grace will come as we learn that we are
sharing the new and easy yoke with the strong Son of God Himself. He calls
it “my yoke” and He walks at one end while we walk at the other.”

Tozer Made Easy - Part 8 of 10

by Dan Grubbs

The Pursuit of God - Chapter 8: "Restoring the Creator-creature relationship"

This chapter takes a simple look at our relationship with God because our relationship is a simple one. If we feel it’s complicated, then it is we who have clouded it and mixed it up. It’s this mix up that Tozer addresses in Chapter 8 — the dealing with a properly ordered relationship between man and God.

The author indicates that justification is the “restoration of a right relation between man and his Creator, a bringing back to normal of the Creator-creature relation.” This is, of course, a reference to being born again and all that means regarding our sin, Christ’s atoning sacrifice, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

God is the reference point

But, to better understand the relationship, Tozer backs us up to defining a fixed point, which is the I AM, from which we have established our relationship as a human. God is the center, so to speak, but our “difficulty as seeking Christians stems from our unwillingness to take God as He is and adjust our lives accordingly. We insist upon trying to modify Him.”

In a succinct paragraph, Tozer sums it up:

As the self-existent One, He gave being to all things, and all things exist
out of Him and for Him. Every soul belongs to God and exists by His
pleasure. God being Who and What He is, and we being who and what we are,
the only thinkable relation between us is one of full lordship on His part and
complete submission on ours. We owe Him every honor that it is in our power to
give Him. Our everlasting grief lies in giving Him anything less.

As humans, in our search for the true post-justification relationship with God, we will gladly accept the challenges and failures of “bringing our total personality into conformity to His.” Yet, Tozer doesn’t let us rest with the intellectual reality of this, he pushes us to understand that being rightly aligned with God means a “voluntary exalting of God to His proper station over us and a willing surrender of our whole being to the place of worshipful submission which the Creator-creature circumstance makes proper.”

According to Tozer, this will change us as children of God. We will see things differently and the way we think will be transformed. The transformation, Tozer writes, “will begin to surprise us by its upsurgings and its outgoings.”

We gain in our submission

When we acknowledge God’s actual position, we become willing worshippers without shame or worry. Our sense of purpose becomes evident to us. “Let no one imagine that he will lose anything of human dignity by this voluntary sell-out of his all to God. In exalting God over all, he finds his own highest honor upheld.”

Among many other biblical accounts of God’s people, Tozer points to Christ as our ultimate example. He indicates that Christ did not seek His own honor, but the honor of God, the Father who sent Him. This is worth considering as Christ is fully God Himself. Tozer references Christ who explains that self-honor is nothing, but only honor from the Father is desirable and eternal.

The self can get in the way

Does Tozer believe this is an easy position to take, this total sell out to God? No. He explains that a “God-above-all” position is challenging — especially when self will gets in the way. “The mind may approve it while not having the consent of the will to put it into effect.” As written in earlier chapters, man must tear the self out and replace the vacancy with God and ascribe to Him all that He is deserving to receive.

What is the result? Simply this, if a man will glorify and consider God above all things in life, including the self, then God will unveil Himself more to the believer and place all His resources at their use. For God knows that “His honor is safe in such consecrated hands.”

Tozer Made Easy - Part 5 of 10

by Dan Grubbs

The Pursuit of God: Chapter 5 - The Universal Presence

Tozer, in this fifth chapter, does not let the sleepy Christian rest on a simplistic understanding of the omnipresence of God or, to use his words, the divine immanence. His observation is that Christians really don’t think deeply about this or they would see much more than the simple idea that God is everywhere. Instead, Tozer points out that if God’s immanence or omnipresence were deeply rooted in our thinking, we would live a different life.

He spends needed space explaining, often in very poetic terms, that God simply is “here” and there can be no place that He is not. If this weren’t true, according to Tozer, God couldn’t be the Cause of all that is and worthy of the lives we give Him.

But, there seems to be an intellectual hurdle that most Christians don’t clear when it comes to this all-important fact about God. Tozer writes, “These are truths believed by every instructed Christian. It remains for us to think on them and pray over them until they begin to glow within us.” It’s clear that the author felt we are not glowing with this knowledge.

“If God is present at every point in space, if we cannot go where He is not, cannot even conceive of a place where He is not, why then has not that Presence become the one universally celebrated fact of the world?”

So, we’re prompted to ask why do we not “universally” glow with this knowledge. The answer can be found in the words of Jacob who cried out in wonder, “Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.” Tozer writes that Jacob, and all mankind, have never been without the ever-present immanence of the Creator. But, somehow, through our unwillingness, our hardheartedness or imperception, we miss God in our presence. According to the writer, “Men do not know that God is here. What a difference it would make if they knew.”

Key to unlock our closed hearts

In the chapter, Tozer explains that there is a difference between the reality of the Presence and the manifestation of the Presence. In other words, God is always there. But, when we take note of Him, He is manifest to us. If we want to continually have the manifestation of our God, keep ourselves fully aware of God’s presence, then we must “surrender to the Spirit of God, for His work is to show us the Father and the Son.” Tozer writes that if we cooperate with the Holy Spirit in this way, God will “manifest Himself to us” and that is the difference between a luke-warm life and a life on fire for God filled with the joy of glorifying Him.

If we are truly in pursuit of God, we will meet Him because God seeks to reveal Himself to us. It’s not that God isn’t present and we need to find Him. We first must deeply contemplate that God is ever-present and wants to make Himself manifest to us in our daily endeavors. Tozer puts it more eloquently:

Our pursuit of God is successful just because He is forever seeking to manifest Himself to us. The revelation of God to any man is not God coming from a distance…to pay a brief and momentous visit to the man's soul. The approach of God to the soul or of the soul to God is not to be thought of in spatial terms at all. There is no idea of physical distance involved in the concept. It is not a matter of miles but of experience.

Differences of experience

If God is ever-present, for all Christians, why is it that some people seem to have a closer experience than others? God’s desire is to manifest Himself to all without prejudice or favoritism. So what’s the difference? “All He has ever done for any of His children He will do for all of His children. The difference lies not with God but with us.”

The difference, according to Tozer, is our “spiritual receptivity”. Some cultivate and feed and foster their spiritual awareness so they experience God, or better said, God makes Himself manifest to them. King David put it aptly, “When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto Thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek.”

Tozer calls it receptivity. Simply, it’s the sensitivity to always know and feel that God is with us, in our presence. Our pursuit of God is dependent on this receptivity, which he writes can vary in intensity based upon our own true desire to see God’s face — not a desire of the mind, but one that is lived out in action. This receptivity can “be increased by exercise or destroyed by neglect.”

Result of a lack of receptivity

Failure to seek and perceive God’s presence, according to the author, causes a breakdown in our churches. A deliberate and disciplined link with God requires a commitment of our lives, not just our time. It is often slow. Too slow for many Christians who, according to Tozer, are impatient to work for something they desire. He writes, “We read our chapter, have our short devotions and rush away, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy.”

As lamentable as this sounds, there is hope if we return to the ways of the Bible. Tozer points to times in the past when great movements led people back to the Bible. But, it’s not the momentous events Tozer speaks of in his book, The Pursuit of God. It’s about the individual seeking the face of God. What this chapter and the book is trying to help us understand is simply this:

Let any man turn to God in earnest, let him begin to exercise himself unto godliness, let him seek to develop his powers of spiritual receptivity by trust and obedience and humility, and the results will exceed anything he may have hoped in his leaner and weaker days. Any man who by repentance and a sincere return to God will break himself out of the mold in which he has been held, and will go to the Bible itself for his spiritual standards, will be delighted with what he finds there.

In summary, the unprecedented fact of God’s universal presence is unquestionable. And He is there and willing to reveal Himself to us. We are created to be receptive to Him if we will only genuinely seek Him. This is what Tozer refers to as the pursuit of God. The perception and realization of God will only increase with our practice of the pursuit.

Tozer Made Easy - Part 4 of 10

by Dan Grubbs

The Pursuit of God: Chapter Four - Apprehending God

It’s clear from this chapter why some who read Tozer’s works call him a mystic — in the true and Christian sense of the word. For he has delved into and helped us understand the mystical elements of our relationship with God. It is apparent that he has experienced a close and profound connection with God and explains how that is available for every human in this fourth chapter.

As he has already demonstrated in the first three chapters, Tozer helps us understand a close personal relationship with the Creator of the universe is possible, and in fact, the Creator desires this. But, man fails to detect God and sense Him in a profound and spiritual way. Many acknowledge God’s existence, but “He remains personally unknown to the individual.” While man mostly admits God is somewhere, many do not believe in Him as knowable as we come to know our friends and loved ones or even our possessions.

Tozer does not leave this with the secular. He points out that many who claim Christ as Savior “go through life trying to love an ideal and be loyal to a mere principle.”

The scriptural doctrine, however, points out that God is waiting to be known by man in a real and a personal experience. Tozer writes about God, “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 manifestations.”

Tozer teaches that the words of the Bible assume a “self-evident fact that men can know God” with the same veracity and tangibility as any person or object that our senses detect.

How do we apprehend God?

The first thing to understand, according to Tozer, is that we are just as equipped to sense God as we are to sense the physical world. He writes, “We apprehend the physical world by exercising the faculties given us for the purpose, and we possess spiritual faculties by means of which we can know God and the spiritual world if we will obey the Spirit’s urge and begin to use them.”

We’re born with these faculties, but sin clouds them and tarnishes them over to make us spiritually deaf, mute and blind. These faculties can be resuscitated by regeneration and by repentance. According to the author, this is one of the most precious gifts to come to us through Christ’s death and resurrection.

Tozer’s lament and hope for the church

In the author’s mind, he finds it difficult to understand why a believer would not want to stay in close contact with God in the spiritual realm through scriptures and in quiet communion. He acknowledges that it is the case, however. He explains that faith is what enables our spiritual senses. Therefore, Tozer writes, when faith is weak “the result will be inward insensibility and numbness” toward our spiritual walk with God.

The key, then, is for believers to humble themselves before God, acknowledge who He is and cease our self-reliant tendencies. Upon this repentance lay on a deep study of the word of God and our ability to commune with God in the spiritual realm will come alive again.

How do I know the realm is there?

Consider this. Tozer eloquently makes his point of chapter four this way. “A spiritual kingdom lies all about us, enclosing us, embracing us, altogether within reach of our inner selves, waiting for us to recognize it. God Himself is here waiting our response to His Presence. This eternal world will come alive to us the moment we begin to reckon upon its reality.”

What is real?

This is a question that has been pondered for centuries by uncommon minds. However, the true believer understands the answer to this question and is assured of the answer more so than some of the most famous philosophers in history. To use Tozer’s words, “God is real. All other reality is contingent upon His.” This chapter teaches us that God has objective existence independent of any thought we may have of Him. Our teacher writes, “The worshipping heart does not create its Object. It finds Him here when it wakes from its moral slumber in the morning of its regeneration.”

The author teaches in this chapter that we can reckon on the spiritual realm with as much assurance as we do the physical. “Spiritual things are there (or rather we should say here) inviting our attention.” But it is sin, Tozer indicates, that has made detecting spiritual things so difficult for us. To repeat Tozer’s metaphor, “Sin has so clouded the lenses of our hearts that we cannot see that other reality, the City of God, shining around us.”

No distinction between spiritual and real

Tozer helps us understand that another part of our difficulties is that we often separate what we know as real from what is spiritual. He writes that there is no such distinction The spiritual realm is reality. It should be considered with as much confidence as the chair, the wind, a spouse or the color red.

What the author does distinguish between is the real and the imaginary. God is real, but unseen. There are unseen created beings in spiritual reality. The Holy Spirit communes with us in an unseen reality. Imagination builds images and assigns reality to them out of the mind. Faith, however, “simply reckons upon that which is already there.”

The corrective course of action is to shift our focus to the unseen reality. Hebrews 11:6 tells us that “...for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.” Since God is the ultimate reality and all other realities are a result of God, then the spiritual realm is the object of “our holiest longing."

The spiritual realm is now

Tozer points out that Christians often think of the spiritual realm as something in their future. He writes, “It is not future, but present. It parallels our familiar physical world.” He quotes a text from Hebrews that Tozer points out is clearly in the present tense.

“But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel.”

This passage is making positive contrasts between Mount Sinai and Mount Zion. Tozer uses it to point to the fact that the reality of Zion is around us and can “be grasped by the soul.” He adds, that our souls have eyes and ears, regardless of how out of use they may have become, that can see and hear this spiritual realm where God is the ultimate reality.

Life application

The author in this chapter has awakened the sleeping believer who trusts in the blood of Christ to redeem sins. Awakened to renew their focus upon God. The result of which will be an awareness of the things of the spirit. He paraphrases a text in the Gospel of John by writing, “Obedience to the word of Christ will bring an inward revelation of the Godhead.”

The scriptures promise that those who seek Him will find God in His unseen reality. Tozer’s lesson says if we focus anew upon God, we will gain a more acute perception of God. “A new God-consciousness will seize upon us and we shall begin to taste and hear and inwardly feel the God who is our life and our all.”

If believers only delve deeply into the scriptures, spend daily intimate time with the Lord, our ability to detect His presence, and understand His will for our lives, will be enhanced to a degree that is beyond description.

It sounds metaphysical. And it is. Our prejudice to deny things we cannot directly experience is a hindrance to our relationship with God. But those who repent of their sins, and seek God in the spiritual realm will find “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.”

Tozer Made Easy - Part 3 of 10

by Dan Grubbs

The Pursuit of God, Chapter Three: Removing the Veil

Tozer begins his third chapter with one of the most famous quotes in the history of man. He does this to ensure that there is no ambiguity about what he believes is the purpose of created man. Tozer quotes Augustine, “Thou has formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.”

He explains this as the origin of our kind because it’s critical to our understanding of our relationship with God. He echoes it in his own words, “God made us for Himself: that is the only explanation that satisfies the heart of a thinking man, whatever his wild reason may say.”

All this is preamble to the point that we are created to be in a right relationship with God, but are guilty of sin. Our “foul revolt” broke this communion and man now lives alone outside of the “manifest Presence” of our heavenly Father. Or more metaphorically, a veil has been erected between us and our Lord because of our sin.

Tozer explains that the redemptive work of God is to “undo the tragic effects of that foul revolt and bring us back again into right and eternal relationship with Himself.”

Why is the veil there?

The veil was what separated the inner chamber of the tabernacle from the holy of holies where the very Presence of God above the mercy seat atop the arc of the covenant. The children of Israel did not have direct access to the holy of holies. They annually sent in the high priest to seek the atonement of his own sins and those of Israel from God. According to Tozer, this was the “beating heart of the Levitical order.” He helps us understand our condition by using the holy of holies and the separating veil and the Flame of the Presence of God as an identical description for us.

He writes, “At the heart of the Christian message is God Himself waiting for His redeemed children to push in to conscious awareness of His Presence.”

Tozer encourages us to remove the veil so that we can know of His Presence not only intellectually, but, more importantly in our hearts, leading to a personal relationship with the Creator.

What will we find when we push through the veil? Tozer answers that God will uncover Himself in “ravishing fullness to the humble of soul and the pure in heart.”

It’s because we don’t push through as believers, that Tozer says we are at a serious loss in the world. “The world is perishing for a lack of the knowledge of God, and the church is famishing for want of His Presence.”

Yes, God is omnipresent. People can understand that intellectually. But, it’s the manifast Presence that we have fled like Adam or Peter after their great sins. However, it is the manifast Presence for which we should seek. This is a spiritual communion — man can know Him really in a “deep spirit” where his “fire must glow or his love is not the true love of God.”

The reason for pushing through

There is something expected when we remove the veil between ourselves and God. It is that communion with a God “so vastly wonderful, so utterly and completely delightful that He can, without anything other than Himself, meet and overflow the deepest demands of our total nature, mysterious and deep as that nature is.”

This is the love of God to which Tozer refers. Our relationship with God is an ever overflowing satisfaction of our nature to the point of our hearts being fit to break with love for our God. He writes that it is believers with such breaking hearts who have looked with open eye and lived within the Presence.

The point here is that this level of access and relationship with God is available to us. Every believer has the same access to the Presence as the high priests did and the prophet who reports what he sees.

Sadly, Tozer writes that the church is at a loss for want of those who have removed the veil and entered into the company of the Creator. He tells us that “the church waits for the tender voice of the saint who has penetrated the veil and has gazed with an inward eye upon the Wonder that is God. And yet, thus to penetrate, to push in sensitive living experience in the holy Presence, is a privilege open to every child of God.”

Do we have access today?

As Tozer has already expressed, the joyous report is that every believer has access to God in the holy of holies. It was through the work of Christ on Calvary. Now there is nothing to keep us from His Presence. Nothing except our pride and sinful nature. Tozer asks, “Why do we tarry without? Why do we consent to abide all of our days just outside the holy of holies and never enter at all to look upon God?”

Scripture records for us that at the time of Christ’s crucifixion, the actual veil in the temple in Jerusalem was torn completely in two, forever revealing the holy of holies to all men. Why did God do this? Was it just to send a message to the Sanhedrin or the Pharisees? No, it is a clear message to all men, forever, that Christ has opened the way to the Father because of His shed blood, the atonement secured forever.

But why do we not all take this free gift from God? Tozer explains that it’s more than a cold heart, it is a veil over our own hearts. It’s a veil we must all tear from ourselves so that we do not hide the face of God from our own hearts. Tozer explains this as the veil of the self-life that hides our hearts from the joyous life that could be ours should we remove the veil once and for all. “Self is the opaque veil that hides the face of God from us. It can be removed only in spiritual experience, never by mere instruction.”

To remove this veil will be painful as it is part of our fleshly life. It will tear living spiritual tissue to rend it from our hearts. But, as Tozer writes, “Our part is to yield and trust. We must confess, forsake, repudiate the selflife, and then reckon it crucified.”

When this is done, like labor pains, it will be a faint memory. “After that is resurrection glory and power, and the pain is forgotten for joy that the veil is taken away and we have entered, in actual spiritual experience, the Presence of the living God.”

Tozer Made Easy - Part 2 of 10

by Dan Grubbs

The Pursuit of God: Chapter 2 - The blessedness of possessing nothing

In our pursuit of God, it’s obvious that we can be interrupted. In the second chapter of his book, Tozer illustrates the most common obstacles to a closer union with God are things — even those things God gives us. Things were “always meant to be external to the man, and subservient to him.” However, man has allowed things to replace God on the internal throne of man.

The throne metaphor is accurate because we were created by God to have a place within our inner self to be an eternal shrine for God. When we let other priorities push God out of that place, we end up with what’s known as a God-shaped vacuum. When it’s empty, “men have now by nature no peace within their hearts, for God is crowned there no longer.”

Is “mine” part of the old-sin nature?

Our sinful nature now has an unnatural desire to possess, according to Tozer. It covets things. Don’t fool yourself to believe things are just material possessions. Things also include our children, our jobs, our homes. We use possessive pronouns, such as my and our, simply enough, but they should be stricken from the vocabulary of every true believer because nothing is ours. These words demonstrate “the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do.”

We have let things become necessary, but this was not God’s intent for His creation. Tozer teaches that God’s gifts now take the place of God. Similar to the Beatitudes, Christ tried to help us understand this by describing what we have to do to follow Him.

"…let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wishes
to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake shall
find it." (Matt. 16:24-25)

Our pursuit of God, according to Tozer, must have at its beginning a “soul poverty and abnegation of all things.” We’re taught in this chapter that because of our covetous nature, we experience a tyranny of things. The poor — the internally poor — are “no longer slaves to the tyranny of things.” Though they are not bound by the sense of possessing, Christ teaches they have all things because they have the kingdom of heaven.

What may God do with the things?

What if the “things” this chapter is talking about is a child or a job? Tozer helps us understand what the scriptures illustrate through the story of Abraham and young Isaac. According to Tozer, the story is a “dramatic picture of the surrendered life as well as an excellent commentary on the first Beatitude.”

It’s clear that Isaac became the idol of Abraham’s heart. Any true parent or grandparent can understand this. Tozer describes that as the boy grew to a young adult it would be fair to characterize that the “relationship bordered on perilous,” spiritually speaking. It’s at this point that God intervenes to point the fact out to Abraham.

We may think it a difficult thing to wrest free the things in our life that interrupt our relationship with God. But, what must have that night before he was supposed to slay Isaac been like for Abraham? What agony was he going through? But, Abraham did not fail this trial even though it must have torn a significant piece of him, tendrils and all, from his heart.

Abraham was the living example of Christ’s words, “...whoever will lose...for my sake will find.” Finally, God stayed Abraham’s hand and allowed him to free his son; saying, in effect, “I only wanted to remove him from the temple of your heart that I might reign unchallenged there.”

Examine the whole of Abraham’s life. Can we say that he had nothing? Quite the contrary. He was a wealthy man with flocks and herds. He had his family and his clan. He even had his son preserved by his side. Didn’t he have everything? In fact, Tozer helps us to understand that Abraham actually had everything, but possessed none of these things. “There is the spiritual secret. There is the sweet theology of the heart which can be learned only in the school of renunciation,” Tozer writes. In short, when we learn the true lesson in our hearts, we learn peacefulness of life and the joy of a union with the Creator.

Tozer poses the question that prompts us to ask if “my” and “our” ever held the same meaning for Abraham again. Can we use Abraham’s pain for our own gain and ensure that we not let things usurp the throne of our lives that is rightfully God’s?

Like Abraham, can we free our inner selves from the desire to posses? Maybe the world around Abraham said, “he is rich.” But, Tozer believes that Abraham was tolerant of these because, “he could not explain it to them, but he knew that he owned nothing.”

What would you dispossess?

Gifts, talents, material things, jobs, loved ones; all are things that can interrupt our relationship with God. Yet, these things are only from God and not from our own doing. “The Christian who is alive enough to know himself even slightly will recognize the symptoms of this possession malady.” If we truly want to pursue God, then what should we do?

Tozer wrote that we must be completely honest with ourselves, because God knows our hearts anyway. The truly pursuing Christian should “trample under foot every slippery trick of his deceitful heart” and only allow an honest and true relationship with the heavenly Father. Tozer continues in pointing out that this is holy business and no lie can be present.

The Christian heart may need to discuss with God the specific things in one’s life that transplant themselves in the heart — naming them by name singularly. “If he will become drastic enough he can shorten the time of his travail ... and enter the good land long before his slower brethren.”

There is a warning here in Tozer’s writing, too. The possessive heart will not go easily or quietly. We must be prepared for the constant knocking at the door of our hearts of this self-pity.

If we are to truly pursue God, we must be ready and make this renunciation because it’s likely that God, sooner or later, may bring us to this test.

Will we be equipped for this fire?

Tozer Made Easy - Part 1 of 10

by Dan Grubbs

Editor's note: This is the first installment of a chapter-by-chapter study of A.W. Tozer's The Pursuit of God.

Many well-meaning brothers and sisters in Christ have found Tozer’s language too elevated for their tastes, then set the work aside. This is a tragedy because Christ’s church today needs to read Pastor Tozer’s words more than ever. Therefore, I will endeavor to bring readers a discussion of, The Pursuit of God, which Tozer penned in the middle of the last century.

One of the greatest preachers of the twentieth century, Tozer wrote heart-felt, yet candid books and sermons that have helped many believers to have a better relationship with the Almighty God. Yet, there are those who feel that Tozer was too harsh in his assessment of the modern church.

Chapter One: “Following Hard After God”

As Tozer describes in his own preface, teaching the Bible in a fundamental approach is imperative in Christ’s church. However, explanation of the scriptures is empty without true worship to “nourish the soul” which is only found in a personal experience with God. He writes that God’s word “is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God.”

To understand what Tozer, in this chapter, writes about pursuing God, we must start with an understanding of what theologians call “prevenient grace.” Tozer writes, “We pursue God because, and only because, He has first put an urge within humans that spurs the pursuit.” More simply stated, God created man with something that draws man to Him. An important scripture to support this principle is John 6:44a, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.”

Why did God do this? According to Tozer, this is a key theological principle because it helps people understand the nature of man’s relationship with God. Prevenient grace, or a drawing by God, is a stool with three legs. The three legs are these ideas:

1. This drawing by God removes all chance for man to take credit for coming to God, thus diminishing God’s glory.


2. Prevenient graces does not wipe out free will. God’s drawing is not irresistible and still requires man to make a choice whether to follow the urge or not.


3. In the pursuit of God, man must respond to the drawing in order for man to recognize the experience with God.

Building on the foundation of the idea that God put a desire in humans to pursue Him, it is time to move on to the second principle in the chapter. This is the fact that God is a Personality. As a Personality, believers must actively cultivate a relationship with Him.

According to Tozer, this is not emphasized in today’s church enough because believers put so much focus on someone receiving Christ and neglect helping the new believer to pursue God. Christians often only tell the new believer to study the book of John and find a good church. Tozer asks, where is our teaching of the “loving mental intercourse” with the God who loves us?

As a Personality, God can be known similarly to growing to know other persons. Tozer warns people that knowing God is not achieved by simply and genuinely praying a sinner’s prayer. It is through a personal communion, private and intimate, that believers begin to enter into the Devine experience. This experience with a personality is something that humans are consciously aware of, just as humans are aware of light. Tozer is not teaching that believers must continually seek God for salvation, but for a deep understanding and relationship with Him.

This pursuit of the Creator by the created is not highlighted, according to Tozer, by salvation. He teaches that is only the beginning. In his words, “now begins that glorious pursuit.” This becomes a continual exploration that has no end. Thus, the Divine experience is joyously limitless. Not only limitless, but this pursuit increases in joy the more God reveals Himself to the seeking believer. Tozer teaches that the truly pursuing soul longs after the Creator and is in conflict when not in pursuit. He wrote that the saved human wrestles after God.

The more passionate the pursuit, the deeper the experience with God. There is a cycle that Tozer illustrates with Moses. It is a cycle of pursuit and revelation. Moses wrote that God had revealed Himself to Moses because God found grace in Moses. Moses then asked God to reveal Himself to Moses so that God may find grace in him. Notice the cycle?

In today’s church, believers must guard against letting teachers and pastors do the pursuit for them. Tozer wants the church to never be content with salvation because he teaches that God created in us a craving for further revelation.

So how are believers to engage in this pursuit? Tozer addresses this much as Christ did. In His Earthly ministry, Jesus taught that piety is not what God desires, but humility. God desires His followers to come as children in pursuit of Him. This is important to understand because a child-like pursuit has a singular focus.

Something similar can be observed by watching a small child at play. They have no other thought than what is at hand at the moment. Similarly, God wants His followers undistracted in pursuit of Him. Tozer teaches that God longs for His children to be fully immersed in Him. If believers pursue in this way, the revelation is all fulfilling.

Religion teaches there are things believers should be doing and many get caught up in those things. Tozer, however, teaches that the modern church has created a habit of seeking God and ... The “and …” is all the trappings of religion the church is satisfied with simply because they are church-related. Tozer writes that if believers omit the “and …” they expand their spiritual lives and expand their hearts with an infinite God.

In the all-fulfilling result of our pursuit, God is enough. Tozer points to the example of the tribe of Levi when Israel took possession of the promised land. The Levis were given nothing because God was their part of the possession and their inheritance. If believers today are the priesthood of believers, they have the same sufficient inheritance – God. Believers need no other object of spiritual pursuit.

Tozer writes that the joy experienced in the revelation of God makes the joy in other things seem much less important. However, the joy of others things becomes magnified because of the glorious life of living in God’s presence. Is this what Job felt? Is this how he survived all the human atrocities that happened to him? Was it the fact that when the believer has God, he has all things and “has it all in One and he has it purely, legitimately and forever.”

In the next posting, I will continue with this study of Dr. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God with chapter two, “The blessedness of possessing nothing.”

Where you stand on evangelism may be where you stand with Christ

by Dan Grubbs

Here’s a provocative question: Is there any danger for us if we are not actively working for the Kingdom of God? Let me ask it another way: Can someone who has truly been justified live a life with no evidence of being in Christ Jesus?

What prompts this inquiry is my effort to understand Christ’s response to the Pharisees who accused Him of casting out demons by the authority of Satan. Recorded in two accounts – one in Matthew 12 and again in Luke 11 – is where the text for this discussion is found. The two verses are identical in the New American Standard Bible.

“He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who does not gather with Me scatters.” Matt. 12:30

Meditating on this, I find that I do not have much trouble understanding the principle intellectually. It is when I chew on this and think of application of how this is played out in daily living, I begin to weaken and wonder just how black and white this principle is. I have decided that I am certain this is a black-and-white issue or Christ would not have stated it so.

Matthew Henry’s commentary on the passage also paints a black and white picture of the idea that there is no leeway of degree. He describes it with a metaphor of war: “It is here intimated, that this holy war, which Christ was carrying on with vigour against the devil and his kingdom, was such as would not admit of a neutrality.”

What about in the area of evangelism? Did Christ mean that those who do not answer the Great Commission are “against” Him? How universally do we apply this principle?

My reading of Darby leads me to believe he applied the for-me-against-me principle narrowly, confining it to demonic activity. I might suggest that this was due to the context of the account with the Pharisees.

Yet, Henry eloquently explains, “but in the great quarrel between Christ and the devil, no peace is to be sought, nor any such favourable construction to be made of any indifference in the matter; he that is not hearty for Christ, will be reckoned with as really against him: he that is cold in the cause, is looked upon as an enemy.”

Using Henry’s language, how then do we define “the cause” for Christ? Personally, I gain my answer in the words Christ actually used. To me, the key words to review are “with,” “against,” “gather,” and “scatter.”

Beginning with those who are “with” Christ; the word is translated from the primary preposition “meta”. This carries the idea of accompaniment or to be amid a local presence. In its literary use, “meta” is usually meant to mean to participate with.

For those whom Christ describes as “against” Him, this is translated from the word “kata” which takes on the prepositional understanding of one thing against another, as in physical position. In my mind, I see this as someone being an obstacle. Literary use for this form retains the meaning of “opposition.”

Here is where I begin to see the clarity of Christ’s unequivocal statement. If we are not participating in Christ’s ministry and being obedient to what He’s called us to do, then it seems Christ considers us in opposition to His cause.

Continuing with the short passage, we read the words “gather” and “scatter.” This is where I find a more pragmatic understanding of what Christ was communicating. In metaphorical language, when Christ employed the idea of gathering, He largely was referring to disciple making, which must include Gospel proclamation. I believe that is made clear in the Matthew and Acts versions of the Great Commission.

“Gather” is translated from “sunago” meaning to lead together or to convene or even to assemble. Whether fishing for men or harvesting a ripe field, to me it is clear that Christ is referring to evangelism by using the word gathering.

And, by His either-or approach, Christ teaches that if we’re not gathering by proclamation of the Gospel and making disciples of all men, then we are scattering, “skorpizo”. This wonderful picture word means figuratively to “put to flight” as if running through a plaza full of feeding pigeons causing them all to take off into the air. If we take Christ at His word, unless we are leading others to Him, He sees us as causing other people to flee from Christ.

To call on Henry again, he explains thusly:

Christ expects and requires from those who are with him, that they gather with him; that they not only gather to him themselves, but do all they can in their places to gather others to him, and so to strengthen his interest. Those who will not appear, and act, as furtherers of Christ's kingdom, will be looked upon, and dealt with, as hinderers of it; if we gather not with Christ, we scatter; it is not enough, not to do hurt, but we must do good.

Is this idea unprecedented biblically? I am not saying this is an identical case, but we find in Exodus 32 how God felt about those who were not for Him. Verses 25-28 read:

Now when Moses saw that the people were out of control – for Aaron had let them get out of control to be a derision among their enemies – then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, “Whoever is for the LORD, come to me!” And all the sons of Levi gathered together to him. He said to them, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘Every man of you put his sword upon his thigh, and go back and forth from gate to gate in the camp, and kill every man his brother, and every man his friend, and every man his neighbor.’” So the sons of Levi did as Moses instructed, and about three thousand men of the people fell that day.

Certainly, I am not saying we should kill those who are not for God. But, from this passage we may at least glean some understanding of how God considers the opposition of man toward Himself.

There is more to our sanctification than evangelism. Even the strongest advocate of personal evangelism would agree. But, in our application of the Christ-taught principle of for and against, I suggest that personal evangelism is where we might begin. I, for one, do not want Christ to consider me as one who scatters simply because I do not personally gather.

Worship of the Eternal God - Part 2 of 3

by Dan Grubbs

In an essay by Lee Campbell, PhD, he wrote, “substantial arguments could be raised against” the use of the word worship among Christians today. I believe he makes this assertion because our dictionary definition of worship differs from that of the Greek or Hebrew terms; while the generally understood meaning of worship differs substantially from biblical teaching on the topic.

In this second part of the three-part examination of worship, we’ll look at a few definitions before we explore three principles of worship to helps us all gain insight into this element of our relationship with God.

The word worship in English originated from the Old English word “weorthscipe” which we can understand as being worthy or to merit something. This grows problematic because the Hebrew word “aboda” and the Greek work “latreuo” are often translated as worship. According to Campbell, these might be better understood as service or to minister. Additionally, other terms are translated as worship. Often, the Greek “proskyneo” and the Hebrew “shachac” refer to a reverent posture to reflect submission to a higher entity. But, as Campbell asks, do the terms that are usually translated as worship tell us how we are show these attitudes?

But, what do today’s Christians believe worship is? It might be said that many feel it is the liturgical or congregational forms which involve various rituals and corporate and individual praise giving. But is that all?

The Bible teaches that worship is much more inclusive — involving our entire lives and all facets therein. Worship may be thought of as the true believer’s reaction to the Creator of all physical and spiritual existence. Campbell enumerates it this way, “the response of a grateful and humble people to the living God where submission, sacrificial service, praise, profession, testimony and gratitude are freely expressed in innumerable ways.” As Christians, we must ask ourselves if this is what we see in our own local assembly or in our individual lives. If not, what should our response to God look like?

Reality one: worshiping in spirit

Let’s start by going back to John 4 when Christ was talking to the Samaritan woman at the well. She wanted to debate rituals and practices and even the location of worship as prescribed under the old covenant. Christ wanted to point her (and us) in a new direction. He told her that it wasn’t on a mountain or in a city or even in a specific building that the Father sought true worship from His faithful. “Woman, believe me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall you worship the Father.”

Didn’t that beg the question? Wouldn’t, if you were her, ask Christ “okay, so where are we supposed to worship?” Two verses later He answers her un-posed question.

"But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."

This is such a challenging message from Christ that many believers just let it go without trying to understand it. However, as we always should, let the Bible interpret the Bible. What may help in understanding of what Christ was teaching is something that Paul wrote to the Roman church. Romans 12:1-2 can go a long way to give us guidance on what Christ meant by worshiping in spirit and in truth. Paul’s inspired words were:

"I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect."

In these two verses, we have an entire guidebook of how to live our lives in a godly manner; which, according to these scriptures, is worship. In this guidance from Paul, we see he sacrificial service, submission, testimony and profession that today’s church should ensure is part of individual and corporate worship. In verse two, we even see the accountability and discernment that is so desperately needed in our congregations. To put it even more succinctly, if we love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, then we are living Paul’s words.

But, the point not to miss here is that worship is a way of daily living. Worship is not a program or a sequence of events or “a service” to attend. Can true worship happen at our typical weekend gatherings? Let’s pray it is the normative experience in our congregations. But, it could sadly be said that worship is not happening at all our assemblies.

Reality two: worshiping in truth

The typical praise and worship segment of the programmed “worship service” is coming under more frequent attack. Many generalizations are made about this element of the program as becoming entertainment and not worship. This is true for many local churches today. We see experienced praise soloists and ensembles, bands, choirs and even orchestras all produced and packaged together much like what we might see on television. Is this bad in itself? Only if the purpose and intent drifts from glorifying the triune God. This question must be answered by each individual and as a congregation because worshiping in truth means that it must be genuine, it must be sincere.

God wants a right attitude. Therefore, worship is significantly a matter of the heart. We see scores of occurrences in the Old Testament where God was displeased with the worship the Israelites were offering. This was largely because the worship was mechanical, without the sincere attitude of reverence and gratitude behind the offerings. They had the days and practices right, but they had their hearts in the wrong place.

Do we find ourselves going through the motions at our worship gatherings? Do we even know why we do what we do in a “worship service”? Was the heart right at first, but now we feel our worship is flat and cold?

Reality three: a worship and sin conflict

When Israel’s heart was not genuine, a prophet usually came along and pointed out that they were coming to God with sin still in their lives. It can be reasoned that we loose true worship because our hearts are not right with God because we have unconfessed sin.

We see in many cases with the Hebrews that their prayers and praises were not reflective of the truth of their daily lives. At one point, Christ quoted Isaiah saying their worship was in vain. In short, they were worshiping in deceit. Christ said we are to worship the Father in truth, not in deceit. This means we must eliminate the hypocrisy from our lives and our local churches in order to be worshiping in truth.

God knows our hearts and our sins. Therefore, do we still believe that we are worshiping Him in truth if we show up on Sunday morning to sing praises after a week of behavior that we wouldn’t want our pastor to see? True confession and subsequent repentance is vital to a worship relationship with God. We must come to him with a clean heart in order to worship in truth.

As we examine Christ’s church today, let’s be sure that when we discuss worship, that we understand it to be an inclusive term describing the way we are to live our lives as a “response of a grateful and humble people to the living God.” And, that this worship is a response of a sincere heart with a right attitude coming from a confessed and repentant soul. Does this describe the actual activities of worship? Not really. But it does help us understand that any act of worship, whether it be singing, tithing, studying, prayer, testimony, profession, sacrifice or any multitude of things, must be done in spirit and in truth.

Be sure to read our final installment of this series on worship in the next posting.