It occurred to me this morning as I finished reading my four chapters of Scripture for January 20 in D.A. Carson’s For the Love of God, Vol. 1 and began reading chapter one of A.W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God for the second time that it was this book that began for me a journey in August of 2007 that changed the way I live. I had just transferred to UNC Wilmington to finish a bachelor’s degree, in Film Studies, with hopes of moving to northern California and working for Pixar or getting some experience on set and making feature films in Hollywood. Either way, I considered myself a Christian, and a good one, too.
However, something had been changing for me recently. I had only months before discovered the lively, gruff, and direct, but very clear and gracious preaching of Mark Driscoll, and his presentation of the gospel was not like anything else I had heard before. As I continued listening to sermon after sermon, I became very convicted that I was one of the ‘religious people’ he kept yelling about, insisting that being religious and keeping all the rules doesn’t make you Christian.
That’s the backdrop of my Christian life prior to picking up The Pursuit of God off of my parents’ bookshelf before leaving home to go to Wilmington for the Fall semester. I remember reading chapter one and realizing in the quiet of my dorm room the reality that though I was a believer for sure, there was such a lack of affection for God in my heart. I read my Bible daily, but there was no vigor in it. I was rarely driven to deep, heartfelt prayer, yearning for the presence of the Holy Spirit. About the only time I really prayed hard like that was when I found myself in the midst of besetting patterns of sin with which I struggled, longing to walk in freedom and to be as clean on the inside as I appeared to be on the inside.
Tozer’s point in the chapter I was reading is that American Christianity has become so nicely packaged that we act as if there is no real work required to have a relationship with Jesus. We have so programmed our churches and our Christians that it’s commonplace for Christians to think that if they attend church, sing in the choir, show up for church workday and help mow the grass, do all the good things and avoid doing all the bad things and share their faith every so often, that they will have a healthy, vibrant relationship with God. Tozer commiserates the way that the pure and simple gospel and beloved, life-giving, refreshing doctrines of the faith have been replaced with pithy sayings (like ‘once saved, always saved’), and Christian versions of quasi-optimistic self-help books, saying:
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…Christ may be “recieved” 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…[and later on he says] We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him, we need no more seek Him.
One cannot read that sort of thing, if he is serious about being a committed believer in and follower of Christ, and not be affected to the core of his being. Every pronoun Tozer wrote in those paragraphs, I was replacing with ‘you’ in my mind, feeling convicted that my own heart continuously fails to seek God with a great deal of fervor. Then I remember getting to the end of the chapter, having agreed with everything Tozer was saying about the lack of seriousness with which Christians approach God, and he included this prayer, which so expressed my heart at that moment, and did so again this morning upon reading it for the second time:
O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, that so I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.” Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
So my encouragement to you is to read this book. My hope in sharing my story with you is to create in you a holy discontentment, a desire to desire more of God. That is what God is doing in me through this book and through his Word (and you need both).
Cameron Lockey 