Tozer

So if you know me, you know that over the past year, I have become an avid A.W. Tozer fan. He's basically my favorite. Over the summer, my Bible study was on Romans 9-11. To start out, we studied that attributes of God. What was only supposed to take a week took me three...and let me tell you...it was incredible. God rocked my world with who He is and who I am in Him. As I studied each attribute of God I read the corresponding chapter in Tozer's Knowledge of the Holy. Here are some of the most amazing things I learned:

"When we try to imagine what God is like we must of necessity use that which is not God as the raw material for our minds to work on, hence whatever we visualize God to be, He is not, for we have constructed our image out of that which He has made and what He has made is not God. If we insist upon trying to imagine Him, we end with an idol, made not with hands but with thoughts; and an idol of the mind is as offensive to God as an idol of the hand" (p. 8)

"Sin has many manifestations but its essence is one. A moral being, created to worship before the throne of God, sits on the throne of his own selfhood and from that elevated position declares, 'I AM.' The essence of sin is to will one thing, for to set our will against the will of God is to dethrone God and make ourselves supreme in the little kingdom of Mansoul. This is sin at it's evil root...Man's best religious works God rejects as He rejected the offering of Cain. Only when he has restored his stolen throne to God are his works acceptable." (p. 30)

"God has charged Himself with full responsibility for our eternal happiness and stands ready to take over the management of our lives the moment we turn in faith to Him." (p. 63)

"When men no longer fear God, they transgress His laws without hesistation. The fear of consequences is no deterrant when the fear of God is gone. In olden days men of faith were said to "walk in the fear of God" and to "serve the Lord with fear." However intimate their communion with God, however bold their prayers, at the base of their religious life was the conception of God as awesome and terrible." (p. 71)

Those among many others, rocked my vision of God. We do God injustice when we think of Him as begging, fawning over his creation. Our opinion of God is so often based in our own self-worth. We "do God more honor by believing what He has said about Himself and having the courage to come boldly to the throne of grace than by hiding in self-conscious humility among the trees of the garden." (p 100) And because I see God in a way I never did before, now that I realize how often I think less of Him because I think that I should be able to understand Him...when really...I will be learning about God for ETERNITY...and even then, I will still never know God the way He knows Himself. There will be attributes of God in which I will never know anything!

How often I rob myself because of my image of God...and how much more effective could I be if I saw God truly.