The Pursuit of God

by AW Tozer

Chapter Three (read it here)

Removing the Veil

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Among the famous sayings of the Church fathers none is better know than Augustine's `Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.'

The great saint states here in few words the origin and interior history of the human race. God made us for Himself: that is the only explanation that satisfies the heart of a thinking man, whatever his wild reason may say. Should faulty education and perverse reasoning lead a man to conclude otherwise, there is little that any Christian can do for him. For such a man I have no message. My appeal is addressed to those who have been previously taught in secret by the wisdom of God; I speak to thirsty hearts whose longings have been wakened by the touch of God within them,and such as they need no reasoned proof. Their restless hearts furnish all the proof they need.

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Thought on my bolded part - oh, how sad, but to a certain extent so true. Perhaps the verse that speaks of "do not cast your pearls before swine" applies to this. We can only walk our faith out and hope we may be "salty enough" that those who have such foregone conclusions may become thirsty and seek the only One who can quench their thirst.

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`Question: What is the chief End of Man? Answer: Man's chief End is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.'

....God formed us for His pleasure, and so formed us that we as well as He can in divine communion enjoy the sweet and mysterious mingling of kindred personalities. He meant us to see Him and live with Him and draw our life from His smile.

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And by our enjoyment of Him, He enjoys us. The true communion between God & man.

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Yet who can flee from His Presence when the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him?

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Ah, so very true! Reminds me of Francis Thompson’s “Hound of Heaven”. The first part, I share here:

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I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat

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As Tozer continues:

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The whole work of God in redemption is to undo the tragic effects of that foul revolt, and to bring us back again into right and eternal relationship with Himself.This required that our sins be disposed of satisfactorily, that a full reconciliation be effected and the way opened for us to return again into conscious communion with God and to live again in the Presence as before. Then by His prevenient working within us He moves us to return. This first comes to our notice when our restless hearts feel a yearning for the Presence of God and we say within ourselves, `I will arise and go to my Father.' That is the first step, and as the Chinese sage Lao-tze has said, `The journey of a thousand miles begins with a first step.'

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I love the following that Tozer writes.

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The interior journey of the soul from the wilds of sin into the enjoyed Presence of God is beautifully illustrated in the Old Testament tabernacle. The returning sinner first entered the outer court where he offered a blood sacrifice on the brazen altar and washed himself in the laver that stood near it. Then through a veil he passed into the holy place where no natural light could come, but the golden candlestick which spoke of Jesus the Light of the World threw its soft glow over all. There also was the shew bread to tell of Jesus, the Bread of Life, and the altar of incense, a figure of unceasing prayer.

Though the worshipper had enjoyed so much, still he had not yet entered the Presence of God. Another veil separated from the Holy of Holies where above the mercy seat dwelt the very God Himself in awful and glorious manifestation. While the tabernacle stood, only the high priest could enter there, and that but once a year, with blood which he offered for his sins and the sins of the people. It was this last veil which was rent when our Lord gave up the ghost on Calvary, and the sacred writer explains that this rending of the veil opened the way for every worshipper in the world to come by the new and living way straight into the divine Presence.

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The mystic analogy that God Himself created with the "word pictures" He provided in the way to worship Him in the Old Testament is so often for those in Western civilizations. I wish more study were provided for the Body of Christ, particularly in the U.S.

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God wills that we should push on into His Presence and live our whole life there. This is to be known to us in conscious experience. It is more than a doctrine to be held, it is a life to be enjoyed every moment of every day. This Flame of the Presence was the beating heart of the Levitical order. Without it all the appointments of the tabernacle were characters of some unknown language; they had no meaning for Israel or for us. The greatest fact of the tabernacle was that Jehovah was there; a Presence was EzCode Parsing Error: color=red][/i][/font] within the veil.[/b] Similarly the Presence of God is the central fact of Christianity. At the heart of the Christian message is God Himself waiting for His redeemed children to push in to conscious awareness of His Presence. That type of Christianity which happens now to be the vogue knows this Presence only in theory. It fails to stress the Christian's privilege of present realization.

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Oh, how He waits for us! What bliss! What a joy, that the God of the Universe loves us so very much and is waiting on US to come and commune with Him.

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The world is perishing for lack of the knowledge of God and the Church is famishing for want of His Presence. The instant cure of most of our religious ills would be to enter the Presence in spiritual experience, to become suddenly aware that we are in God and that God is in us. This would lift us out of our pitiful narrowness and cause our hearts to be enlarged. This would burn away the impurities from our lives as the bugs and fungi were burned away by the fire that dwelt in the bush.

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May we find Him and allow the Holy Fire to burn away those impurities, to experience His fullness, His greatness. Tozer continues with using fire as a word picture:

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Love and mercy and rightousness are His, and holiness so ineffable that no comparisons or figures will avail to express it. Only fire can give even a remote conception of it. In fire He appeared at the burning bush; in the pillar of fire He dwelt through all the long wilderness journey. The fire that glowed between the wings of the cherubim int he holy place was called the `shekinah,' the Presence, through the years of Israel's glory, and when the Old had given place to the New, He came at Pentecost as a fiery flame and rested upon each disciple.

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And this quote:

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We can exaggerate about many things; but we can never exaggerate our obligation to Jesus, or the compassionate abundance of the love of Jesus to us.

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Oh, how He loves us... and oh how wide the chasm between us before we accept His love... Tozer wrote:

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I have risked the tedium of quotation that I might show by pointed example what I have set out to say, viz., that 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.

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And I have to say the same thing per my quoting... It all boils down to the above bolded emphasis. To me, this is the most awe-inspiring part of who God is. So wonderful. So uterrly & completely delightful.

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....to push in sensitive living experience into the holy Presence, is a privilege open to every child of God.

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Oh for us all to remember this... not to rely on books or speakers, but to actually experience His Presence.

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Let us beware of tinkering with our inner life in hope ourselves to rend the veil. God must do everything for us. Our part is to yield and trust. We must confess, forsake, repudiate the self-life, and then reckon it crucified. But we must be careful to distinguish lazy `acceptance' from the real work of God. We must insist upon the work being done. We dare not rest content with a neat doctrine of self-crucifixion. That is to imitate Saul and spare the best of the sheep and the oxen.

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Oh, to lay every fiber of our being on the altar and allow the Master Surgeon to cut away all that is cancerous.