From: The Pursuit of God. AW Tozer
“My soul follows hard after You. Your right hand upholds me.” (Psalms 63:8)
Christian theology teaches the doctrine of preceding grace, which, briefly stated, means that before a man can seek God, God must first have sought the man. Before a sinful man think right about God, there must have been a work of illumination done within him. This is the hidden cause of all desiring and seeking and praying that may follow.
We pursue God because, and only because, He first put an urge within us that spurs us to the pursuit. “No man can come to me,” said our Lord, “except when the Father draws him.” It is by this preceding drawing that God takes from us any self-credit for the act of coming. The impulse to pursuit God originates with God, but the outworking of that impulse is our following hard after Him. All the time we are pursuing Him we are already in His hand: “Your right hand upholds me.”
God is always previous. In practise, however, man must pursue God. On our part there must be positive responding if this secret drawing of God is to result in an identifiable experience of the Divine. In the warm language of personal feeling, Psalm 42:1-2 states: “As the deer pants for the water brooks, So pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?” This is deep calling unto deep, and the longing heart will understand it.
The doctrine of justification by faith has fallen in disrepute and been interpreted in such a way as to prevent people from knowing God. The whole transaction of religious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless. Faith may now be exercised without an impact on the moral life. 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 very little.
The modern scientist has lost God in the amid of the wonders of His world. We Christians are in danger of losing God in amid the wonders of His Word. We have almost forgotten that God is a person and, as such, can be approached as any person can. It is very natural to want to know another’s personality, but full knowledge of a person cannot be achieved in one encounter. It is only after long and loving mental intercourse that the full possibilities of friendship can be explored.
All social intercourse between human beings is a response of personality to personality. It ranges from just a casual brush to the most intimate communion of which the human soul is capable. Religion, is in essence the response of created humans to the Creator-God. “And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” (John 17:3)
God is a Person, and in the deep of His mighty nature He thinks, wills, enjoys, feels, loves, desires, and suffers as any other person may. In making Himself known to us He stays with the familiar pattern of personality. He communicates with us through the avenues of our minds, our wills and our emotions. The continuous and unembarrassed interchange of love and thought between God and the soul of redeemed man is the throbbing heart of New Testament religion.
This intercourse between God and the soul can be known in conscious personal awareness. It is personal; it does not come through the body of believers, but is known to the individual. It is conscious; it does not stay below the threshold of consciousness and work there unknowingly to the soul, but comes within the field of awareness where the person can know it as he knows any other fact of experience. To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love. It is often scorned by the religionist.
Come near to the holy men and women of the past and you will soon feel the heat of their desire after God. They mourned for Him, they prayed and wrestled and sought for Him day and night, in season and out, and when they had found Him, the finding was all the sweeter because of the long seeking. Moses already knew God but wanted to see His glory. David’s life was a torrent of spiritual desire, and his psalms ring with the cry of the seeker and the glad shout of the finder. Paul confessed the mainspring of his life to be his burning desire after Christ, “That I may know Him,” was the goal of his heart, and to this he sacrificed everything: “Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ.” (Philippians 3:8)
Hymnody, the writing and singing of hymns, is sweet with the longing after God. Today our seeking is done by teachers and prophets. Everything is readymade for us. We are not expected to seek any further revelation of God to our souls. But there are some that are not satisfied with shallow logic. They want to taste, to touch with their hearts, to see with their inner eyes the wonder that is God.
I want to deliberately encourage this mighty longing after God. The lack of desiring God has brought us to our current low estate. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Actual desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted.
The author of the quaint old English classing, The Cloud of Unknowing, teaches us how to do this. “Lift up your heart to God with a meek stirring of love. Seek God Himself, not his goods. Don’t think of anything but God Himself. Nothing in your work, your mind, or will, but only God Himself. This is the work of the soul that most pleases God.”
Prayer: O God, I have tasted your 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 You; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty. Show me Your glory, so that I may really know You. Begin a new work of love in me. Say to my soul, “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.” Then give me grace to rise and follow You upward from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.