The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer

Week 8: Chapter VII — The Gaze of the Soul

Read Chapter VII of The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer. Primary Scripture: Hebrews 12:2; Numbers 21:4-9; John 3:14-15; Psalm 34:5.

Faith, Tozer argues, is not primarily a transaction or an intellectual assent — it is a *gaze*, a continuous looking toward Jesus. This chapter is one of the most practically freeing in the book.

Discussion Questions

8 questions

1.Tozer is dissatisfied with most teaching on faith, which he says reduces it to "believing a promise" or "reckoning the Bible to be true," often illustrated with stories of answered prayer. What is missing from these accounts? What does Tozer think is the essential nature of faith?

2.He turns to the story of the bronze serpent in Numbers 21. The bitten Israelites simply had to *look* at it to live. Jesus interprets this in John 3 as a picture of saving faith. What does the *looking* capture about faith that other descriptions miss?

a.What is required to look? Is it strenuous? Does it demand a certain level of spiritual achievement?

b.What happens to the self when the eyes are directed outward to Christ?

3.Tozer says: "Faith is the gaze of a soul upon a saving God." He then adds that it is "not a once-done act, but a continuous gaze of the heart at the Triune God." How does this definition connect the moment of conversion to a lifetime of Christian living? Does it change what you think conversion is *for*?

4.He describes the gaze as something that, once established by a single act of will, becomes a kind of "spiritual reflex" — like a bird returning to its window after excursions away. Have you experienced anything like this automatic return of attention to God? What has helped establish it, or what has disrupted it?

5.Tozer says, "The man who has struggled to purify himself and has had nothing but repeated failures will experience real relief when he stops tinkering with his soul and looks away to the perfect One. While he looks at Christ the very things he has so long been trying to do will be getting done within him." This is a pastoral claim about sanctification. Do you believe it? What does it feel like to stop tinkering and simply look?

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Closing Prayer

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O Lord, sin has clouded our vision till we see You but dimly. We confess that we have turned our gaze inward, tinkering with ourselves, polishing our performance, managing our image — and found only more failure. Be pleased to cleanse us in Your precious blood and make us inwardly pure, so that with unveiled eyes we may gaze upon You all the days of our earthly pilgrimage, and in gazing, be changed. Amen.

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