The Pursuit of God

Introduction

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life, and the one he commended to others, was the quiet, adoring contemplation of God’s magnificent splendor. This was the experience that evoked his reverence and stimulated the transformation of his gazing soul. It remains a great mystery how in such moments God comes to us in clear and self-authenticating ways. The Christian’s adoring gaze prepares a place of meeting, of real encounter. Tozer believed that we were made for this, and that the pursuit of God is therefore our highest purpose, and the secret to our fulfillment. Did this make Tozer a mystic? Well, this depends, of course, on how the term is defined. If a mystic means someone who disdains our God-given reason, or who exalts private subjective experience over the truths revealed in Holy Scripture, Tozer was not one. We know that he loved the Bible. He immersed himself in its pages. Words, phrases, and stories from the Scriptures flooded his mind at every turn. However, if a mystic is understood in the classic Christian sense as someone who seeks, and enjoys above all else, the real presence of God in their lives, then Tozer definitely was a mystic. And as he elsewhere explained, any Christian who claims a personal relationship with Jesus Christ must already be at least a bit of a mystic. 10 The only remaining question is how much we will choose to lean into this incredible privilege and possibility. It is natural and normal for readers to ask: What is such an experience of God actually like? Here, like so many other Christian mystics, Tozer declined to offer much detail. He insisted that such encounters cannot adequately be

10 A. W. Tozer, introduction to The Christian Book of Mystical Verse , ed. A. W. Tozer (Harrisburg, PA: Christian Publications, 1963), vi.