As important as recognizing God working in us is, I would still warn against a too-great preoccupation with that thought. It is a sure road to sterile passivity.
God will not hold us responsible for understanding the mysteries of election, predestination and the divine sovereignty. The best and safest way to deal with these truths is to raise our eyes to God and say with deepest reverence, "O Lord, You know."
Those things belong to the deep and mysterious Profound of God's omniscience. Prying into them may create theologians, but it will never create saints.
✦ O Lord, You Know
Tozer opens with a warning — and it is aimed at the very thing he has been teaching. Yes, God works in us. Yes, prevenient grace is real. Yes, the chain of Romans 8 — foreknown, predestined, called, justified, glorified — is unbreakable. But do not pry. Do not turn the mystery into a puzzle to be solved. Do not make election a hobby or predestination a debate topic. That road leads to sterile passivity — the paralysis of the soul that knows so much about God's sovereignty that it forgets to love Him.
Tozer's prescription is three words: O Lord, You know. The deepest reverence. The most honest theology. The response of the soul that has looked into the mystery and recognized that it is too deep to fathom — and too holy to dissect. You know. I do not. And I do not need to. The mysteries belong to God. The obedience belongs to me.
Prying may create theologians, but it will never create saints. The distinction is sharp. The theologian knows about God. The saint knows God. The theologian can explain election. The saint has experienced it. The theologian debates predestination. The saint simply follows — with deepest reverence, with the trusting heart, with the three words that settle every unanswerable question: O Lord, You know. 🙏
"Prying into the mysteries may create theologians, but it will never create saints."
A.W. Tozer · The Pursuit of God · O Lord, You knowWhat God in His sovereignty may yet do on a world-scale I do not claim to know; but what He will do for the plain man or woman who seeks His face I believe I do know and can tell others.
Let any man turn to God in earnest, let him begin to exercise himself unto godliness, let him seek to develop his powers of spiritual receptivity through trust, obedience, and humility, and the results will exceed anything he may have hoped for in his leaner and weaker days.
✦ Trust, Obedience, and Humility
Tozer leaves the mysteries to God — and turns to what he knows. Not the world-scale plans of divine sovereignty. The personal experience of the plain man or woman who seeks His face. That is what Tozer knows. That is what he can tell others. Because he has lived it.
And the prescription is not complex. Not a formula. Not a theological system. Three things: trust, obedience, and humility. Trust — the conviction that Hannah Whitall Smith described, built on the written Word, permanent. Obedience — the will given readily that Aquinas named, the following hard after God that Tozer himself has been teaching. Humility — the knowledge of self that à Kempis called the doorway, the not unto us that Bernard prayed, the confession that the sufficiency is from God and not from ourselves.
And the results will exceed anything hoped for. Tozer does not promise that the results will match expectations. He promises they will exceed them. The leaner and weaker days — the days of small faith, of faint hope, of dry mornings — those days set the baseline. And the God who is always previous will surpass it. Not by a little. By exceeding abundantly beyond all that can be asked or thought. Ephesians 3:20. The plain man or woman who seeks His face — with trust, obedience, and humility — will find more than she hoped for. 🙏
Let us say it again: The Universal Presence is a fact. God is here. The whole universe is alive with His life.
And He is no strange or foreign God, but the familiar Father of our Lord Jesus Christ whose love has for these thousands of years enfolded the sinful race of men.
✦ God Is Here
Tozer says it — and then says it again. Let us say it again. Because the truth needs repeating. Because the soul keeps forgetting. Because the world keeps insisting that God is distant, absent, theoretical, an inference from evidence. And Tozer says: He is here.
The Universal Presence is a fact. Not a hope. Not a wish. Not a theological opinion. A fact. As factual as the ground beneath the feet. As real as the air in the lungs. The whole universe is alive with His life — every atom, every molecule, every heartbeat sustained by the God who holds all things together. Colossians 1:17 — in Him all things consist.
And He is not a stranger. He is the familiar Father. The Father whose name Christ revealed. The Father whose love has enfolded the sinful race for thousands of years — not waiting for the race to clean itself up, not withholding until the conditions are right, but enfolding. Wrapping. Surrounding. The way Guyon said: He is more truly in us than we are in ourselves. The way Hannah Whitall Smith said: He is close at hand. He abides with us. God is here. And He has always been here. 🙏
And always He is trying to get our attention, to reveal Himself to us, to communicate with us. We have within us the ability to know Him if we will but respond to His overtures.
(And this we call pursuing God!)
We will know Him in increasing degree as our receptivity becomes more perfect by faith and love and practice.
✦ Respond to His Overtures
Always He is trying. Not occasionally. Not when the conditions are favorable. Not when the soul is worthy. Always. Trying to get attention. Trying to reveal Himself. Trying to communicate. The God who is always previous is also always present — and always active. He is not passive. He is not waiting for the soul to initiate. He is making overtures.
And Tozer adds the parenthetical that reveals the paradox: (And this we call pursuing God!) The pursuing of God — the following hard after Him, the rising before dawn, the morning devotion, the eighty entries of this journal — is the response to His overtures. The soul thinks she is pursuing Him. In reality, she is responding to Him. The pursuit is the response. The seeking is the answer to His seeking. The morning before dawn is the positive reciprocation of His prevenient drawing.
We will know Him in increasing degree. Not all at once. Not in a single blinding flash. In increasing degree. The knowledge grows. The receptivity deepens. And the means of the growth — faith and love and practice. Three things. The same three Tozer has been teaching throughout the book. Faith — believing the thing that is written. Love — the fire that must glow in the deep spirit. And practice — the daily, morning-by-morning, entry-by-entry discipline of showing up and receiving what He gives. The receptivity becomes more perfect. And the knowledge of God increases. 🙏
"The Universal Presence is a fact. God is here. The whole universe is alive with His life."
A.W. Tozer · The Pursuit of God · The familiar Father — always here, always tryingO Lord, You Know
The best response to the deep mysteries: raise the eyes and say with reverence, O Lord, You know. Prying creates theologians. Trust creates saints. The mysteries belong to God. The obedience belongs to us.
The Plain Man Who Seeks
Trust. Obedience. Humility. Let any plain man or woman seek His face through these three — and the results will exceed anything hoped for in the leaner and weaker days.
God Is Here
The Universal Presence is a fact. Not a hope. Not a theory. A fact. The whole universe alive with His life. The familiar Father — enfolding the sinful race for thousands of years. Here. Now. Always.
In Increasing Degree
We know Him more as receptivity grows — through faith, love, and practice. The pursuit is the response. The seeking is the answer to His seeking. And the knowledge increases — morning by morning.