The Pursuit of God

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The Pursuit of God

In some ways, the concluding sections of The Pursuit of God are among the most powerful. There we learn that faith is the continuous gaze of the soul upon a saving God. Such inward beholding looks out instead of in , and by this means Christians are able to escape their chronic self centeredness. Among other things, such a reorientation dramatically alters Christians’ motivation. Tozer depicts this newer posture in life as meekness —that is, as one characterized by a restful soul no longer driven by personal ambition or a need to impress others. When we get this right, we will care less about “what people think of us as long as God is pleased.” A criticism often registered against those who intently pursue God is that they become so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good. This should not, and need not, be so. Tozer reminds us that the ordinary moments and mundane tasks of our lives are never to be treated as wastes of time. The pursuit of God does not permit us to dismiss such duties as unimportant, for there is a sacred quality to the everyday aspects of life. We were created as earthlings; this world is precisely where our spiritual service is to be rendered. This is where we have been called to commune with God and to be pleasing to him. The Significance of theWork A defining feature of a spiritual classic is that it will have a long shelf-life of usefulness. The Pursuit of God certainly qualifies. Since its publication in 1948, it has been enormously influential, especially within conservative evangelical and Fundamentalist circles. 13 One good reason

13 Well over a million copies have been published through the years. In 2000, it made Christianity Today magazine’s list of the top one hundred books of the