The Christian Broadcasting Network


A. W. Tozer
Spiritual Life

More Church History on Spiritual Life

More Bible Study & Theology on Spiritual Life

More Spiritual Life

 
A. W. Tozer Books

Order these books from ShopCBN:

The Knowledge of the Holy

The Pursuit of God

The Purpose of Man

Reclaiming Christianity

 
Prayer Support

Let us pray with you -- send in your e-mail prayer request.

Or Chat Live with a CBN Prayer Counselor

Or you can call 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week at 1-800-759-0700.

If you need ongoing support, we encourage you to contact the pastor of your local church. If you don't belong to a local church, please check out our church finder.

Prayer Resources on Spiritual Life

 
More from Breakpoint

Check out the Great Books Audio CD Series, Dr. Ken Boa.

More from Breakpoint with Charles Colson

 
CHURCH HISTORY

A. W. Tozer: The Ways of God

By Charles Colson
Prison Fellowship

CBN.com Dr. Ken Boa speaks of A.W. Tozer as a man who “understood the ways of God.” That understanding is amply demonstrated in Tozer’s classic book The Knowledge of the Holy.

“This is really a meditative and a devotional approach to the attributes of God,” Boa says. Those include more attributes than we’re used to thinking about all at once. For instance, Tozer discusses God’s omniscience and omnipotence as well as His love and mercy.

But Tozer doesn’t just show us the reality of those attributes; he also shows how they work together to form a harmonious whole. They are not contradictory, but complementary.

But our view of God, Tozer argues, is often “distorted” or “diminished” because we have embraced the prevailing mindset of our culture and imposed that mindset upon Scripture. So we find ourselves unable even to begin to comprehend concepts like His holiness, power, and majesty. (Keep in mind, by the way, that Tozer wrote this nearly 50 years ago. The man wasn’t called a prophet for nothing.)

Tozer’s desire was to expand our vision and thus our capacity to worship God rightly. If we fail to do this, Boa says, that’s when our understanding of God becomes distorted, and we move away from Him. “Imperfect and ignoble thoughts about God,” Tozer believed, are responsible for all our errors in doctrine and in faith. Thus, he defines idolatry as “assuming that God is other than He is.”

When you look at it that way, you can see just how widespread idolatry has become in our day and how much havoc it has created within the Church. Boa connects this kind of thinking to the modern prosperity gospel, which tends to turn our prayers into “strategy sessions” rather than true communication with God.

Paradoxically, Tozer acknowledges the “incomprehensibility” of God, even as he is helping us to better understand His attributes.

When we draw closer to God, you see, we begin to understand just how much greater He is than anything we can grasp. Our instinct is to make God into something “manageable” and “controllable.” That was the sin of the Garden—to be like God. But if you could do that, you wouldn’t need Him.

So instead of trying to manage or control God, we must surrender ourselves and place our trust in Him even though we can’t fully understand Him.

And when we do this, we are not groping in the dark, for as Tozer tells us, “[God] in condescending love has by revelation declared certain things to be true of Himself. These we call His attributes.” He has provided enough knowledge of these, Tozer says, “to satisfy our intellects and ravish our hearts.”

I believe it’s an important step toward unlearning some of the most common errors about God, and learning how to begin to comprehend the incomprehensible.

More Church History on Spiritual Life

More Bible Study & Theology on Spiritual Life

More Spiritual Life


Charles ColsonFrom BreakPoint, © Prison Fellowship Ministries. BreakPoint with Chuck Colson is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission of Prison Fellowship, P.O. Box 17500, Washington, DC, 20041-0500." Heard on more than 1000 radio stations nationwide.

  • Translate
  • Print Page


CBN IS HERE FOR YOU!
Are you seeking answers in life? Are you hurting?
Are you facing a difficult situation?

A caring friend will be there to pray with you in your time of need.