Ch. 2 Questions
1. How can we think of God without making him an idol?
2. Tozer says “faith is the organ of knowledge and love is the organ of experience.” How by faith can we know God and how by love can we experience God?
Mike's Thougths
This is a challenging chapter. Probably the most challenging in the book. I re-read it over and over again trying to understand it’s meaning as I’m re-reading this book for the 3rd time. So don’t get discouraged if this book is challenging. Summer’s are a great time to be challenged and go deeper. I think the Lord will reward you with knowing him more with the depth of the riches of Christ as your reward (Romans 11:33; Philippians 3:7-11).
The fact is, is that God is incomprehensible. To find out what God is like can’t really be answered. The writers of scripture were never able with our finite words to perfectly describe what God is like. They were only able to describe it with human words, and as in Ezekiel 1 or Isaiah 6, or the book of Revelation, we see the writers trying to describe something as best they can, but can only describe in reference to something that is less than what it is, because words are finite and God is infinite.
By faith, we believe the word of God, what it says about God. By faith we believe and trust in the fact that the Holy Spirit is the only one will give us power and the ability to know Him better. A love for God produced by our trust and dependence on the power of the Spirit working in us, will help us take what little we know of this incomprehensible God and experience the truth of who he is in our hearts and lives. The rest of the book will be defining the attributes of God according to what he has revealed to us in the Bible, to help us know him by better by faith in His Word, and experience what He has revealed to be true about himself in his word, not what our imagination says, as we love him more and more.
It seems to me that Tozer is saying, believe God’s word to be true. Believe the things about God that are shown to us in God’s word. No more, no less. But the only way that we’re going to find that out is if we study what God’s word says about himself and love him because He is the God of the universe who we will be married to in heaven (Revelation 21:1-5). When you fall in love with someone, your love grows deeper as you get to know that person. God’s giving us a chance this summer to know him and fall in love with him through his word and through the commentary of Tozer. Let’s know him by faith and fall in love with Him as we experience him more and more.
4 comments:
APOLOGY.
A lengthy post. Sorry.
INTRO.
First, Toser in his introduction is completely on-the-money. The church, whose mission it is to "go make of all disciples," needs to be sure in that mission. The verb "make" implies some sort of action (Gr. matheteuo, Fr. faire, Sp. hacer) -- and we need to make sure that we're not out to simply call more people disciples without fulfilling the command to μαθητεύσατε - doing what Strongs calls "enroll as scholars" in the Kingdom as well.
COMMENTS ON CHAPTERS I AND II.
"The masses of her adherents come to believe that God is different from what He actually is…"
- Toser, 4
"O LORD God of hosts, who is like unto Thee? Thy truth, O most mighty LORD, is on every side!"
- Psalm 89
I think our big problem is with a "contradiction."
On one hand, since God is so important, we need to be looking for as much knowledge as possible. But we're educating ourselves wrongly, hence our problems -- and Toser's book. As the quotes from the beginning put it, God's truth "is on every side," and yet, "the masses come to believe that God is different from what He actually is." Weird!
So our big question is this. How has Our Lord been approached by people throughout history, and which way to approach Him is the most worthwhile? How can we sing with the Psalmist that the Lord's truth is truly on every side -- to our left, to our right, behind us, and before us -- and believe it, too?
AN ANECDOTE.
Once upon a time, there was a car full of college-aged coming back from a friend's wedding very late at night. One of those persons, a young man, wore contact lenses. And that evening, as the car was driving around, he fell asleep and his contacts gummed up. When the car pulled into his friends' apartment, he awoke to find that he could barely open his eyes. As it was overly late, and the young man was overly brash, he decided that he would remove his contacts and simply drive home by himself. He said good night to his friends, walked to his car, and started to go home.
Now, this young man was remarkably nearsighted. He could barely see in front of the car, but thought that waiting even longer to get home would perturb his parents. So he kept driving, although he could barely see a few feet before him. The route was vaguely familiar. He knew where the stop sign was that went out the apartments, he knew where the lights were, and he knew which way to turn when he got to the lights. But the direction's weren't his problem. The road was.
Nearly nobody else that can drive is as blind as this young man was without his contact lenses. He could barely see in front of him, and every traffic light is just a red or green-colored blur. The only way he could possibly keep from running into the cars is by staring at the white lines just in front of him. One eye was on the lines, and the other was on the lights. That was it. Slowly, ploddingly, and never out of sight of the markers which told him that he was going in the right direction. Once or twice he thought he saw something in his path, and he slowed, moved his wheel a little bit, and stayed going in the right direction.
The boy lived in the country. His road eventually took him out of the city, and there was nearly nobody else on the road. He had the feeling that going a little faster would be a good idea. Thirty, thirty-five, forty. He would get home sooner. Everyone would be happier.
There's only one problem. Deer are in the roads. Other people are driving home in various stages of inebriation. There are cops. And there's always human error to add to the number of things that could do him in. Going fast might not be the most workable solution. He slows down to keep his eyes upon the blurry road and the little white lines that mark the middle, one-by-one-by-one…
AN EXPLANATION.
The hymn of my grandparents' generation is that "we walk by faith, and not by sight." We drive that way, too. Because if we're looking for speedy paths or ignoring the directions, we're not on the path. If we see the directions but move the car elsewhere, we're not on the path.
But what wondrous love that God would redeem others from those car wrecks past and present! For this is a slightly-modernized saying, "and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into this world" to save bad drivers, "of which I am chief." But what wondrous love that there is already made straight in the desert a highway for our God!
"God himself has condescended to teach the way: for this very end he came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price give me the Book of God!"
- John Wesley, preface to Standard Sermons
If we want to stay on the path which is set before us, then uncertainty demands faith. Why do we believe what we believe? Is it because of faith, or because we've successfully rationalized it to ourselves, or distorted it into something slightly more believable? If we're not certain where we're going, then we need to look more closely at the road and the marks that are on it! ("Way" in Latin is "via," which is the same word as "road.")
God's "truth, O most mighty LORD, is on every side" in His word -- the Word transmitted in the Bible, and the Word incarnate in Jesus. Seemingly, that's the surest and most complete way. If we spent time reading the former and emulating the life of the latter, then we would live differently in our daily lives with a greater knowledge of the holy.
In other words, we're driving slowly down the road; faith with works, we constantly strive to connect ourselves to God's presence in everything that we do. That keeps us from barreling down the highway, overly fast, uncontrolled, unaware, and blind or asleep at the wheel. That keeps us in sight of the holy.
Take, for example, another problem of another imaginary fellow. He is persistently single. I do not add "frustratingly" to the description, though he very well might. Because if he were striving for knowledge of the holy, then he would turn more zealously to both versions of the Word to see where he is in life relative to where God would have him..
When he does not do this, he does not "lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls." (Jas 1) He thus remains unhappily, "frustratingly" single -- and struggling to see the holy in circumstances when God's truth is indeed "on every side."
We therefore struggle to conform each bit of our daily lives to stay upon the way which "God himself has condescended to teach." We consider God's Word; the lines which mark our path, and we consider the direction our cars are moving in reality to see whether we are actually driving within the lane which as been set for us.
"These are the General Rules of our societies; all of which we are taught of God to observe, [by] his written Word, which is the only rule, and the sufficient rule, of faith and practice."
- Wesley, "Rules for our United Societies"
"…not as though I had already attained."
thought it was really interesting when Tozer talked about how when we imagine God, we can be creating an idol. It was very convicting to me, because I often times do that. I think that in our culture we can often fall back on the "God stereotypes" that may be protrayed in movies or the media (at least I do that). It really made me think about being more real when I think about God. I need to know what is true and what is "imagined." Because it made sense that if I create this picture of God or can even understand who he is I am making him less than something he is. I don't know if that has anything to do with an idol, but I'm sure it's not honoring to God at all. And to get a better view of God I think I need to go to the Bible more and study what it says he his like Wesley is saying.
i'm excited to learn about how to know God with out imagining him. Knowing God through his attributes be it 7 or 7,000. so i'm ready for things like that rather than try to wrap my mind around a God that is "Incomprehensible." in short i'm ready for Tozer to get to the Knowledge part of the Holy.
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