The Pursuit of God

A.W. Tozer's most popular book is The Pursuit of God. It speaks of his desire for and enjoyment of God. In the preface he quotes Wesley--"Orthodoxy ... is, at best, a very slender part of religion. Though right tempers [i.e. posture of soul] cannot subsist without right opinions [i.e. doctrine], yet right opinions may subsist without right tempers. There may be a right opinion of God without either love or one right temper toward Him. Satan is a proof of this."And so Tozer urges his readers to realize that the Bible is not an end in itself, but "a means to bring people to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into God, that they may delight in God's presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very [Triune] God in the core and center of their hearts." This is life eternal ("that they might know You the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" - John 17:3).Intimacy demands a pursuit. God first pursues us. And in turn, blessed by such a grace, we pursue God. It is a great mystery of love that God waits to be wanted. God longs to be desired.This is why desire plays such an crucial role in spiritual formation. Desire always pursues what is beautiful (in the eyes of the beholder!). Our definition and description of the beautiful may be distorted (and indeed the desires of our False Self, our 'flesh' is distorted). But we cannot pursue God without desiring God and we cannot desire God without seeing God as beautiful.At the end of the day we will not pursue God without somehow coming to see the beauty of God. Christian spiritual formation seeks to cultivate our souls in such a way so that we see the ultimate Beauty of life found in the Triune God.