The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer

Week 9: Chapter VIII — Restoring the Creator-creature Relation

Read Chapter VIII of The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer. Primary Scripture: Psalm 57:5; Exodus 3:14; Luke 15:11-24.

At the root of all human misery, Tozer argues, is a disordered relationship — our usurpation of the throne that belongs to God. This chapter calls for a single, decisive, volitional act: "Be Thou exalted."

Discussion Questions

8 questions

1.Tozer says the Fall was "most certainly a sharp change in man's relation to his Creator" and that salvation is fundamentally "the restoration of a right relation." He uses the parable of the prodigal son to illustrate this. In what sense is conversion not primarily about guilt management but about the restoration of a relationship?

2.He describes God as the fixed center of all existence: "I AM" — the one point that does not move. Everything else is measured from Him. He compares this to a sailor shooting the sun to find his position. What happens to a person's life when they try to navigate from any fixed point other than God?

3.Tozer says: "Much of our difficulty as seeking Christians stems from our unwillingness to take God as He is and adjust our lives accordingly. We insist upon trying to modify Him and to bring Him nearer to our own image." Be specific: in what ways do people — or do you — try to modify God to fit their preferences?

a.What attributes of God are most commonly softened or ignored in popular Christianity?

b.What would it look like to accept God as He truly is and adjust ourselves accordingly?

4.The key phrase of the chapter is "Be Thou exalted." Tozer calls it "a little key to unlock the door to great treasures of grace" and says that once a man sets his life's course by this phrase, "a thousand minor problems will be solved at once." Do you find this plausible? What would it mean for your most pressing problems right now to be resolved by exalting God?

5.He tells the story of Eli and his degenerate sons as a warning: "the law of reciprocal honor" was working secretly all along, and when the time came for judgment, the results were catastrophic. Then he contrasts this with Abraham, Jacob, David, Daniel — men who, with all their flaws, set their hearts to honor God, and in whom "honor followed honor as harvest the seed." What is the "law of reciprocal honor" and do you believe it still operates today?

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Closing Prayer

Full guide

O God, be Thou exalted over all. Over our possessions, our reputations, our ambitions, our relationships, our very lives. We confess that we have placed ourselves at the center and arranged everything around us, and our lives have been disordered ever since. Rise into Your proper place of honor. Let us decrease that You may increase. And in that holy inversion, give us the dignity we have been grasping for all along — the dignity of creatures rightly related to their Creator. Through Jesus Christ, who humbled Himself that we might be exalted with Him. Amen.

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