One day A.W. Tozer took an overnight train in the 1940's. While some people were sleeping Tozer started writing. By the end of the train trip he had his first draft of The Pursuit of God finished. Not bad.I just read this book and it is a bit like an olden day version of The Purpose Driven Life, only smaller and better. It is about the reader but it is more about God. This book has 10 short chapters in it and tackles issues of faith, perseverance, exulting God over all things, listening to God, the issue of worship and a few others things a Christian needs to be encouraged to do. The book also makes comments about the church back then, and it really could still be talking about today. Tozer sees the fundamentalist as running back into a burning building of legalism that Jesus saved us from and he has concernces about some evanglical churchs who try to entertain people rather than teaching them about God.
This book is aim at the person who would call themself a Christian and is written in simple layman english (with a bit of "Thees" and "Thys" thrown in) . This book is marked as a classic which I think means that you can easily quote almost every parpagraph for its simplistic words explaining a deep meaning. At the end of every chapter Tozer writes a prayer as a response to the chapter that you just read. That helps in summarising the point of the chapter, and also shows his humility and encouraged you to do the same.
Read it. It won't take that long. In fact you can save the eight bucks and read it all here for free.
I consider Tozer to be one of my favourite authors, and Pursuit of God one of his best! Each time I read it, I am blessed and get greater insight for my own growth. The prayers at the end of each chapter give God room to move into our lives when we pray them. Easy to read and discuss as a group, and better left in his own words and trying to grab what he was conveying, than have someone else re-interpret them in today's language without knowing where Tozer was trying to lead us. "Inspired" is the correct word for his writings. He was ahead of his time, but many have been helped by what He knew of God and passed on for those who would take the time to pursue.
ReplyDeleteHey Val,
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting.
I liked what I read by Tozer so much that on my to read list this year is The Knowledge of the Holy. Its on my shelf right now, I just need to finish what I'm reading and get around to picking that up.
Also I have fixed the link to his book online. It should now work again.