To know God in the scriptural meaning of the term is to enter into experience of Him.
It never means to know about. It is not a knowledge mediated by the intellect, but an unmediated awareness experienced by the soul on a plane too high for the mind to reach.
Where then is the place of the intellect in Christian experience?
And why waste time thinking when we know beforehand that thought cannot bring us to the knowledge that is most of all to be desired, the knowledge of God?
The answer is that the whole biblical revelation is addressed to the intellect and through the intellect reaches the will, the seat of the moral life; if the will responds in repentance and obedience, the Holy Spirit illuminates the penitent heart and reveals Christ, the image of God, to it.
What began as an appeal to reason (Isaiah 1:18) ends in a spiritual experience wholly above reason.
verse
But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mind and making it known
— John 16:13-14
thought
The Holy Spirit makes known to us what is Christ's. He is the Divine Illuminator enlightening the mind and heart of the believer. May that light shine brightly in each of us!
prayer
How I need heart illumination, Lord, to know You and Your Word. Thank You for sending the Spirit, the Divine Illuminator!
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
Elsewhere I have said that we cannot know God by thinking, but that we must do a lot of thinking if we would know Him well.
This sounds self-contradictory, but I am sure that the two statements are in full accord with each other.
The inability of the human mind to know God in a true and final sense is taken for granted throughout the Bible and even taught in plain words in such passages as these: No man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. The world by wisdom knew not God. The things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. God's nature is of another kind from anything with which the mind is acquainted; hence when the mind attempts to find out God it is confronted by obscurity. It is surrounded with mystery and blinded by the light no man can approach unto.
A consideration of this truth led some thinkers of the past to conclude that since it is impossible for man to discover God by means of any faculties he possesses, God must therefore remain not only unknown but unknowable.
What these men overlooked was that when God desires He can and does reveal Himself to men.
The Spirit of God is able to make the spirit of man know and experience the awful mystery of God's essential being.
It should be noted that the Spirit reveals God to the spirit of man, not to his intellect merely.
The intellect can know God's attributes because these constitute that body of truth that can be known about God.
The knowledge of God is for the spirit alone.
Such knowledge comes not by intellection but by intuition .
verse
No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known.
— John 1:18
thought
The Greek term translated "made him known" is related to the word from which we get "exegesis." Christ has "exegeted," clearly made known to us the Father. Christ reflects the Father.
prayer
The more I gaze upon You, Lord, the more I know the Father. You are the Revealer of the Father.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
God is love, and is for that reason the source of all the love there is.
He has set as the first of all commandments that we love Him with all our hearts, but He knows that the desired love can never originate with us.
We love him, because he first loved us, is the scriptural and psychological pattern.
We can love Him as we ought only as He inflames our minds with holy desire.
Yet there is also a love of willing as well as of feeling.
Though we may not be conscious of any great degree of inward sensation, we may set our wills to love God and the feeling will come of itself. Let us bring ourselves under obedience to His revealed Word and our love for Him will grow.
Obedience will strengthen faith and faith will increase knowledge.
And it is a well-known law of the spiritual life that our love for God will spring up and flourish just as our knowledge of Him increases.
To know Him is to love Him, and to know Him better is to love Him more.
verse
We love because he first loved us.
— 1 John 4:19
thought
God is love. The more we know Him the more we will love Him. To know Him is to love Him.
prayer
O Father, may I know You better and love You more. In Jesus' name.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
God desires that all men should become Christlike, for in so doing they present larger and more perfect objects for the reception of His outpoured love.
Conformity to the nature of Christ on the part of a redeemed man restores the image of God in the soul and thus makes it possible for God to lavish on the soul without restraint all the boundless love of which He is the original fountain.
It is hard for a sinful man to believe that God loves Him.
His own accusing conscience tells him it could not be so.
He knows that he is an enemy of God and alienated in his mind through wicked works, and he sees in himself a thousand moral discrepancies that unfit him for the just enjoyment of so pure a love.
Yet the whole Bible proclaims the love of God for sinful men.
We must believe in His love because He declares it and avail ourselves of the sanctifying grace of Christ in order to receive and enjoy that love to the full.
verse
How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And this is what we are! . . .
— 1 John 3:1
thought
God loves us! We stare in the mirror and cry out in amazement, "how can it be that He loves me?" Let's not question it but rather fully open ourselves to that love that we might be changed by the Lover.
prayer
I want to soak in Your love, Father, as much as it is possible. In no way am I worthy. Yet You love me, You love ME! Hallelujah!
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
God being who and what He is must love Himself with pure and perfect love.
The Persons of the Godhead love each other with a love so fiery, so tender, that it is all a burning flame of intense desire ineffable.
God is Himself the only being whom He can love directly; all else that He loves is for His own sake and because He finds some reflection of Himself there .
God loves His mute creation because He sees in it an imperfect representation of His own wisdom and power.
He loves the angels and seraphim because He sees in them some likeness of His holiness.
He loves men because He beholds in them a fallen relic of His own image.
Potentially God loves all men alike, but His active love lights upon some men more than upon others, the degree depending upon how much of Himself He is able to impart to them.
The truly Christlike soul enjoys more of God's love because God sees in it a truer image of Himself than in a soul less purified. God loves His Son with infinite perfection because He is the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person.
verse
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
— 1 John 4:10
thought
God's love is so far beyond any love we have known that it staggers the mind even to contemplate it. Yet we are objects of that love. May we also be conveyors of it.
prayer
Lord, I am an object of Your perfect, holy love. Insofar as is possible for an imperfect human, may I be a conveyor of Your love.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
A strange thing under the sun is crossless Christianity.
The cross of Christendom is a no-cross, an ecclesiastical symbol.
The cross of Christ is a place of death.
Let each one be careful which cross he carries. And follow me.
Now the glory begins to break in upon the soul that has just returned from Calvary. Follow me is an invitation, and a challenge, and a promise.
The cross has been the end of a life and the beginning of a life.
The life that ended there was a life of sin and slavery; the life that began there is a life of holiness and spiritual freedom.
And follow me, He says, and faith runs on tiptoe to keep pace with the advancing light.
Until we know the program of our risen Lord for all the years to come we can never know everything He meant when He invited us to follow Him.
Each heart can have its own dream of fair worlds and new revelations, of the odyssey of the ransomed soul in the ages to come, but whoever follows Jesus will find at last that He has made the reality to outrun the dream.
verse
And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
— Luke 14:27
thought
We're to follow Christ while carrying our cross. Our way of saying "no" to the old nature and "yes" to Him. In staying close to Him, we enter an increasingly new life His.
prayer
Lord, I find myself trying to disguise that death-instrument cross in gold and redefining disciple to be less than a follower. Forgive me. I want to live a life of "no" to me and "yes" to You.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
What are the terms of discipleship?
Only one with a perfect knowledge of mankind could have dared to make them.
Only the Lord of men could have risked the effect of such rigorous demands: Let him deny himself.
We hear these words and shake our heads in astonishment.
Can we have heard aright?
Can the Lord lay down such severe rules at the door of the Kingdom?
He can and He does. If He is to save the man, He must save him from himself. It is the himself which has enslaved and corrupted the man. Deliverance comes only by denial of that self. No man in his own strength can shed the chains with which self has bound him, but in the next breath the Lord reveals the source of the power which is to set the soul free: Let him take up his cross.
The cross has gathered in the course of the years much of beauty and symbolism, but the cross of which Jesus spoke had nothing of beauty in it.
It was an instrument of death.
Slaying men was its only function. Men did not wear that cross; but that cross wore men.
It stood naked until a man was pinned on it, a living man fastened like some grotesque stickpin on its breast to writhe and groan till death stilled and silenced him.
That is the cross. Nothing less. And when it is robbed of its tears and blood and pain it is the cross no longer.
Let him take . . . his cross, said Jesus, and in death he will know deliverance from himself.
verse
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God.
— Galatians 2:20
thought
The cross we are to carry is not a church steeple or a decorative emblem to be worn around the neck. The cross is an instrument of "me" death so that Christ may live in us.
prayer
Lord, we have made the cross so beautiful and decorative but it remains an instrument of death ? "me" death so that I may live in You and You may live in me. I need that cross today.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
If any man will . . . let him follow me, He says, and some will rise and go after Him, but others give no heed to His voice.
So the gulf opens between man and man, between those who will and those who will not.
Silently, terribly the work goes on, as each one decides whether he will hear or ignore the voice of invitation.
Unknown to the world, perhaps unknown even to the individual, the work of separation takes place.
Each hearer of the Voice must decide for himself, and he must decide on the basis of the evidence the message affords. There will be no thunder sound, no heavenly sign or light from heaven.
The Man is His own proof. The marks in His hands and feet are the insignia of His rank and office. He will not put Himself again on trial; He will not argue, but the morning of the judgment will confirm what men in the twilight have decided. And those who would follow Him must accept His conditions.
Let him, He says, and there is no appeal from His words.
He will use no coercion, but neither will He compromise.
Men cannot make the terms; they merely agree to them.
Thousands turn from Him because they will not meet His conditions.
He watches them as they go, for He loves them, but He will make no concessions. Admit one soul into the Kingdom by compromise and that Kingdom is no longer secure. Christ will be Lord, or He will be Judge.
Every man must decide whether he will take Him as Lord now or face Him as Judge then.
verse
Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'If ayone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.'
— Matthew 16:24
thought
Christ makes clear the way to follow Him. There are no exceptions or modifications. We follow Him or we don't follow Him. What a monumental decision affecting today and the forever tomorrows!
prayer
O Christ, I would follow You on Your terms, in Your way. It is YOU I follow.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
It is like the Lord to fasten a world upon nothing, and make it stay in place.
Here He takes that wonderful, mysterious microcosm we call the human soul and makes its future weal or woe to rest upon a single word if
. If any man, He says, and teaches at once the universal inclusiveness of His invitation, and the freedom of the human will.
Everyone may come; no one need come, and whoever does come, comes because he chooses to. Every man holds his future in his hand. Not the dominant world leader only, but the inarticulate man lost in anonymity is a man of destiny. He decides which way his soul shall go. He chooses, and destiny waits on the nod of his head.
He decides, and hell enlarges herself, or heaven prepares another mansion.
So much of Himself has God given to men.
There is a strange beauty in the ways of God with men. He sends salvation to the world in the person of a Man and sends that Man to walk the busy ways saying, If any man will come after me. No drama, no fanfare, no tramp of marching feet or tumult of shouting.
A kindly Stranger walks through the earth, and so quiet is His voice that it is sometimes lost in the hurly-burly; but it is the last voice of God, and until we become quiet to hear it we have no authentic message.
He bears good tidings from afar but He compels no man to listen.
If any man will, He says, and passes on.
Friendly, courteous, unobtrusive, He yet bears the signet of the King. His word is divine authority, His eyes a tribunal, His face a last judgment.
verse
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
— Matthew 11:28
thought
In Gerhard Tersteegen's words: "God calling yet! And shall He knock and I my heart the closer lock? He still is waiting to receive, and shall I dare His Spirit grieve?" God is calling us and those around us.
prayer
Thank You, Lord, for patiently calling me. I have come to You. May I be a means for others to hear Your call.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/