Week 3: Chapter II — The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing

1.Tozer describes a "tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess," and says the pronouns "my" and "mine" are "verbal symptoms of our deep disease." Do you find this diagnosis to be accurate? What are the "things" most deeply rooted in your own heart?

2.He says that in the Garden, God was in the deep heart of man, and gifts were on the outside — but that sin reversed this, putting "things" at the center and pushing God to the margins. How does this reversal show up in the practical texture of daily life? What does it feel like when a "thing" occupies God's place?

3.Walk through the Abraham and Isaac story as Tozer tells it. He says that Isaac "represented everything sacred to his father's heart: the promises of God, the covenants, the hopes of the years." What made Abraham's attachment to Isaac particularly understandable — and particularly dangerous?