A. W. TOZER

In Pursuit of God

by

Dr. Bruce L. Shelley

It is an awesome thing to be alone, really alone; but it is more awesome still to be alone with God. Moses knew this. Isaiah knew it. Jesus certainly knew it and A. W. Tozer knew it. His encounters with God changed his life. “Worship,” he once said, “is to feel in your heart a delightful sense of admiring awe and overpowering love of that most ancient Mystery we call Our Father in Heaven.”

Aiden Wilson Tozer came from a tiny farming community in the hills of western Pennsylvania. His mother named him, but he grew to dislike his given name. He preferred the initials. Millions of people who recognize the name today – A. W. Tozer – saw it first on the cover of his book, The Pursuit of God. Tozer was a pastor and the peak of ministry came at the Southside Alliance Church in Chicago where he preached, prayed, and wrote for 30 years.

While there he once received an invitation to preach in McAllen, Texas, down toward the Mexiacan border. He saw the long trip on the train as an opportunity to think and write. As he boarded the Pullman at the old LaSalle Street Station, Tozer asked the porter for a small table for his roomette. With only his Bible before him, he began to write. About 9 P.M. the porter knocked on the door. “Last call for dinner,” he announced. “Would you want me to bring you something to eat?” “Yes,” Tozer responded. “Please bring me some toast and tea.” With only that toast and tea to fortify him, Tozer continued to write. Words were flowing so freely, the manuscript almost seemed to be writing itself. He wrote all night. Early next morning when the train pulled into McAllen, Tozer had in hand a completed draft of The Pursuit of God.

When he was only a teenager, Aiden’s parents auctioned off their farm and moved the family to Akron, Ohio. There in Akron a meighbor first witnessed to Aiden. Then, late one day in 1915 as he walked home from work, Aiden noticed a small crowd of people across the street clustered around an old man who seemed to be talking to them. To satisfy his curiosity Aiden crossed the street. Speaking with a strong German accent the man at first made no sense to Aiden. Then, it dawned on him. The man was preaching! Right out on the street corner!

Doesn’t he have a church to preach in? Aiden thought. And it isn’t even Sunday! Why is he so excited?

But as he listened, the words of the elderly preacher began to find their mark in his heart. Then the preacher stared at Aiden. “If you don’t know how to be saved, just call on God, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner,’ and God will hear you.” The words burned in Aiden’s heart. He couldn’t get the voice of the preacher out of his mind. As he walked home, he thought about what the man had said and his words seemed to stimulate a gnawing hunger for God.

Once home, Aiden went straight to the attic, where he could be alone to think and wrestle with God. He came down from the attic a new creature in Christ Jesus, now in pursuit of God. He soon discovered that he had to preach, just like the old man on Akron’s streets,but he also found that he had to pray in order to preach.

Once as a young preacher, he and a preacher friend went for a walk in the woods to read the Bible and pray. His friend stopped at a log and, as Tozer explained, “if I know him, probably fell asleep. I went on a little farther, as Jesus did, and knelt down and began to read my Bible. I was reading about the camp of Israel in the wilderness and how God laid it out in a beautiful diamond pattern. All at once I saw God as I never saw Him before. In that wooded sanctuary I fell on my face and worshiped. “Since that experience, I have lost all interest in cheap religious thrills. The vacuous religious choruses we sing hold no attreaction for me. I came face-to-face with the sovereign God, and since that time only God has mattered in my life.”

That experience became the pattern of his life. Once he recognized that the Lord of Hosts intended him to preach, this realization drove him to his study and to his knees. It is an awesome thing to be alone with God.

Copyrighted, 2001, Power for Living, a SP Publications