by A. W. Tozer

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review by Mark Kelley

This May I read A.W. Tozer's The Pursuit of God for the third time. I first read it 30 years ago as a brand-new pastor. Then I became reacquainted with the book last spring when Northwest Yearly Meeting asked its pastors to read and discuss the book. If you are thinking of reading The Pursuit of God for the first time, let me warn you: Each time I read it, lightning bolts of insight shock my soul out of its “business-as-usual” mentality.

The book, written by a Chicago Christian & Missionary Alliance pastor, is 121 pages short. I say “short” because it accomplishes so much in so few pages. There is good information and analysis in the book, and each chapter closes with a compelling prayer. But more than anything, the book kindles a fire in the heart—a fire that causes readers to say, “I've got to know God better.”

The passion of the book exposes our spiritual barrenness and promises a relationship with God that satisfies our deepest desires. We talk about that kind of satisfaction in our evangelical circles all the time, but Tozer has actually experienced that satisfaction, and he convinces readers that they have just scratched the surface of that relationship.

Sounding much like Thomas Kelly in A Testament of Devotion, Tozer writes, “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.”

The Pursuit of God wants to push us into our own pursuit, not teach us about someone else's. Tozer rarely talks about his own spiritual journey, and only briefly points to the journeys of other Christian and biblical examples.

This is not to say that there isn't any good teaching in the book, however. Many of the book's chapters discuss the problem of our dualistic view of reality. “What is the relationship of the Christian to God?” quickly gives way to the deeper question, “How does the Christian view the relationship between the physical world and the spirit realm?”

One chapter, entitled “The Sacrament of Living,” sounds like a Friends Church membership class. In it, Tozer warns against the harm that comes from assuming there is a separation between the physical and spiritual realms. When we think that heaven is a reality only for the future, God inevitably becomes irrelevant to the present. “God is no more real [to most Christians] than He is to the non-Christian. They go through life trying to love an ideal and be loyal to a mere principle.”

Tozer paints a useful word picture to show that heaven is “not future, but present. It parallels our familiar physical world, the doors between the two worlds are open.”

Even the analytical sections can convict. In discussing our fixation on the physical realm, Tozer writes “Things have become necessary to us, a development never intended.” I responded to this the way I respond to many of his insights: What a fresh insight—and how sad that something so significant rarely gets said, I thought. Decades after Tozer addressed this issue, most of us are still trapped in the impression that the physical world is more real than the spiritual realm.

Sometimes our modern methodologies are the barrier to finding God. “We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relations to God. We read our chapter, have our short devotions and rush away,” then try to find some mechanical method for making up for our “deep inward bankruptcy.” In an instant world, relationships still take time. Tozer was known for his hours spent in prayer, pursuing nothing more than the pleasure of God's companionship.

There is the ring of authenticity when Tozer promises, “God is 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.”

The book isn't perfect. Those of us who have grown used to gender-inclusive language will be startled by the 1940s language. And at times Tozer almost prides himself in setting up straw men (oops, straw people) to knock down. But those are small blemishes on a book that has encouraged millions of people in its first 39 years.

Tozer wrote The Pursuit of God with a pastoral purpose, and he accomplished his purpose. Tozer did not write to inform us about God, but to drive us to our knees in our own pursuit of God. It worked for me.

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