I have been trying to clean my house a little at a time, as well as throwing or giving things away that I have not used over the years. That also means cleaning out my bookshelves.
Most of the books I want to keep are on my Kindle now. I just pull them up wherever I am and can read them as often as I want. As I was cleaning, however, I found a precious book that I bought in 1982. The pages are brown and getting more brown by the year. Some are torn and taped together. It has highlights and underlines. It looks almost as bad as some of my Bibles!
The book is A. W. Tozer’s “The Pursuit of God.” I read it first in Bible College and I’ve read it again and again and again since. It is a small book, only 127 tiny paperback pages. It was first written in 1948 but it speaks volumes to us today. If you have never read it, all I can say is, you should.
Next to the Bible, this book changed my life more than anything else I have ever read. The introduction states that, “Perhaps the continued usefulness of this book can be attributed to the writer’s greatest spiritual discovery that to seek God does not narrow one’s life, but brings it, rather, to the level of highest possible fulfillment.”
Tozer makes a stunning pronouncement in his preface to the book. He wrote, “For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience they are not the better for having heard the truth.”
Scripture is very clear. We are to seek God, and we will be rewarded when we do. If we want our life to be the fullest God has intended for us, it has to be more than words, it has to be personal experience in the pursuit of God.
Matt 6:33: But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness.
Luke 12:31: But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.
Acts 17:27: God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.
Heb 11:6: He rewards those who earnestly seek him.
Ps 27:4: One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.
