My Dad has been a long-time fan of A.W. Tozer. Despite his urgings, I’ve only read That Incredible Christian, and that was many years ago.

Earlier this year I visited a second-hand book sale and picked up a couple of Tozer books – The Pursuit of God, and Knowledge of the Holy. The price tag on the back of The Pursuit of God is $2.95. It’s ironic that a book so cheap, can be a source of such great encouragement.

I haven’t published a ‘theological’ book review before, nor do I see these book reviews as part of the ‘main business’ of Communicate Jesus. However, I have been encouraged by this book and desire to spur you on with the encouragement I’ve received. Here’s a couple of cracker quotes from the book:

“The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God”.

“We have almost forgotten that God is a person and, as such, can be cultivated as any person can.”

“In this dark day…everything is made to centre upon the initial act of ‘accepting Christ’…and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God.”

“The sinner prides himself on his independence, completely overlooking the fact that he is the weak slave of the sins that rule his members. The man who surrenders to Christ exchanges a cruel slave driver for a kind and gentle Master whose yoke is easy and burden is light”.

“It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred, it is why he does it. Motive is everything”.

Finally, a longer quote, but my favourite (perhaps because it reveals something of my own struggle with pride):

“The hearts fierce effort to protect itself from every slight, to shield its touchy honour from the bad opinion of friend and enemy, will never let the mind have rest…Such a burden as this is not necessary to bear. Jesus calls us to His rest, and meekness is His method. The meek man cares not at all who is greater than he, for he has long ago decided that the esteem of the world is not worth the effort. He develops toward himself a kindly sense of humour and learns to say, ‘Oh, so you have been overlooked? They have placed someone else before you? They have whispered that you are pretty small stuff after all? And now you feel hurt because the world is saying about you the very things you have been saying about yourself? Only yesterday you were telling God that you were nothing, a mere worm of the dust. Where is your consistency? Come on, humble yourself, and cease to care what men think.”

Not only is this book available for purchase (on Amazon starting at 3 cents!), it is also available for free in various places online (e.g. at the Body of Christ website, and also at Project Gutenberg).

Praise God for these resources being freely available online.

More Tozer Resources

• The Alliance has a daily Tozer devotional.
• A.W. Tozer Classics has made available three essays:

Essay: The waning authority of Christ in the churches

Taster: “Let me state the cause of my burden. It is this: Jesus Christ has today almost no authority at all among the groups that call themselves by His name. By these I mean not the Roman Catholics nor the liberals, nor the various quasi-Christian cults. I do mean Protestant churches generally, and I include those that protest the loudest that they are in spiritual descent from our Lord and His apostles, namely, the evangelicals…”

Essay: The old cross and the new

Taster: “The old cross is a symbol of death. It stands for the abrupt, violent end of a human being. The man in Roman times who took up his cross and started down the road had already said good-by to his friends, He was not coming back. He was going out to have it ended. The cross made no compromise, modified nothing, spared nothing; it slew all of the man, completely and for good. It did not try to keep on good terms with its victim. It struck cruel and hard, and when it had finished its work, the man was no more…”

Essay: That incredible Christian

Taster:  “The Christian believes that in Christ he has died, yet he is more alive than before and he fully expects to live forever. He walks on earth while seated in heaven and though born on earth he finds that after his conversion he is not at home here. Like the nighthawk, which in the air is the essence of grace and beauty but on the ground is awkward and ugly, so the Christian appears at his best in the heavenly places but does not fit well into the ways of the very society into which he was born…”