The Pursuit of Man Quotes

“The cross where Jesus died became also the cross where His apostle died. The loss, the rejection, the shame, belong both to Christ and to all who in very truth are His. the cross that saves them also slays them, and anything short of this is a pseudo-faith and not true faith at all.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Divine Conquest

“...the cross of popular evangelicalism is not the cross of the New Testament. It is, rather, a new bright ornament upon the bosom of a self-assured and carnal Christianity whose hands are indeed the hands of Abel, but whose voice is the voice of Cain. The old cross slew men; the new cross entertains them. The old cross condemned; the new cross amuses. The old cross destroyed confidence in the flesh; the new cross encourages it. The old cross brought tears and blood; the new cross brings laughter. The flesh, smiling and confident, preaches and sings about the cross; before the cross it bows and toward the cross it points with carefully staged histrionics--but upon that cross it will not die, and the reproach of that cross it stubbornly refuses to bear.”
― A.W. tozer, The Divine Conquest

“The experiences of men who walked with God in olden times agree to teach that the Lord cannot fully bless the a man until He has first conquered him. The degree of blessing enjoyed by any man will correspond exactly with the completeness of God's victory over him.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Divine Conquest

“Fundamentalism has stood aloof from the liberal in self-conscious superiority and has on its own part fallen into error, the error of textualism, which is simply orthodoxy without the Holy Ghost. Everywhere among conservatives we find persons who are Bible-taught but not Spirit-taught. They conceive truth to be something which they can grasp with the mind.”
― a.w. tozer, The Divine Conquest

“The Christian stoic who has crushed his feelings is only two-thirds of a man; an important third part has been repudiated. Holy feeling had an important place in the life of our Lord. “For the joy that was set before Him” He endured the cross and despised its shame. He pictured Himself crying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Divine Conquest

“We habitually stand in our now and look back by faith to see the past filled with God. We look forward and see Him inhabiting our future; but our now is uninhabited except for ourselves. Thus we are guilty of a kind of temporary atheism which leaves us alone in the universe while, for the time, God is not. We talk of Him much and loudly, but we secretly think of Him as being absent, and we think of ourselves as inhabiting a parenthetic interval between the God who was and the God who will be. And we are lonely with an ancient and cosmic loneliness. So we try by every method devised by religion to relieve our fears and heal our hidden sadness; but with all our efforts we remain unhappy still, with the settled despair of men alone in a vast and deserted universe. But for all our fears we are not alone.”
― A.W. Tozer, God's Pursuit of Man: Tozer's Profound Prequel to the Pursuit of God

“We should seek to be cleansed from the childish notion that to have lived in Abram’s day, or in Paul’s, would have been better than to live today.”
― A.W. Tozer, God's Pursuit of Man: Tozer's Profound Prequel to The Pursuit of God

“Is it not true that for most of us who call ourselves Christians there is no real experience? We have substituted theological ideas for an arresting encounter; we are full of religious notions, but our great weakness is that for our hearts there is no one there. Whatever else it embraces, true Christian experience must always include a genuine encounter with God.”
― A.W. Tozer, God's Pursuit of Man: Tozer's Profound Prequel to The Pursuit of God

“Thus we are guilty of a kind of temporary atheism which leaves us alone in the universe while, for the time, God is not. We talk of Him much and loudly, but we secretly think of Him as being absent, and we think of ourselves as inhabiting a parenthetic interval between the God who was and the God who will be. And we are lonely with an ancient and cosmic loneliness.”
― A.W. Tozer, God's Pursuit of Man: Tozer's Profound Prequel to The Pursuit of God

“No shortcut exists. God has not bowed to our nervous haste nor embraced the methods of our machine age. It is well that we accept the hard truth now: The man who would know God must give time to Him. He must count no time wasted which is spent in the cultivation of His acquaintance. He must give himself to meditation and prayer hours on end. So did the saints of old, the glorious company of the apostles, the goodly fellowship of the prophets and the believing members of the holy church in all generations.”
― A.W. Tozer, God's Pursuit of Man: Tozer's Profound Prequel to The Pursuit of God

“A superior brain without the saving essence of godliness may turn against the human race and drench the world in blood, or worse, it may loose ideas into the earth which will continue to curse mankind for centuries after it has turned to dust again.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of Man

“For myself, I fear any kind of religious stir among Christians that does not lead to repentance and result in a sharp separation of the believer from the world. I am suspicious of any organized revival effort that is forced to play down the hard terms of the kingdom. No matter how attractive the movement may appear, if it is not founded in righteousness and nurtured in humility it is not of God. If it exploits the flesh it is a religious fraud and should not have the support of any God-fearing Christian. Only that is of God which honors the Spirit and prospers at the expense of the human ego. “That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:31).”
― A.W. Tozer, God's Pursuit of Man: Tozer's Profound Prequel to The Pursuit of God

“The churches (even the gospel churches) are worldly in spirit, morally anemic, on the defensive, imitating instead of initiating and in a wretched state generally because for two full generations they have been told that justification is no more than a “not guilty” verdict pronounced by the heavenly Father upon a sinner who can present the magic coin faith with the wondrous “open-ses-ame” engraved upon it.”
― A.W. Tozer, God's Pursuit of Man: Tozer's Profound Prequel to The Pursuit of God

“Water may change from liquid to vapor and still be fundamentally the same. So powerless religion may put a man through many surface changes and leave him exactly what he was before.”
― A.W. Tozer, God's Pursuit of Man: Tozer's Profound Prequel to The Pursuit of God

“Love for God and for the children of God takes possession of the soul. We feel ourselves near to heaven and it is now the earth and the world that begin to seem un-real. We know them now for what they are, realities indeed, but like stage scenery here for one brief hour and soon to pass away. The world to come takes on a hard outline before our minds and begins to invite our interest and our devotion. Then the whole life changes to suit the new reality and the change is permanent. Slight fluctuations there may be like the rise and dip of the line on a graph, but the established direction is upward and the ground taken is held.”
― A.W. Tozer, God's Pursuit of Man: Tozer's Prequel to the Pursuit of God

“Our problem is not one of understanding, I repeat, but of faith and obedience. The question is not a theological one, What does this teach? It is a moral one, Am I willing to accept this and abide by its consequences? Can I endure the cold stare? Have I the courage to stand up to the slashing attack of the “liberal”? Dare I invite the hate of men who will be affronted by my attitude? Have I independence of mind sufficient to challenge the opinions of popular religion and go along with an apostle? Or briefly, can I bring myself to take up the cross with its blood and its reproach?”
― A.W. Tozer, God's Pursuit of Man: Tozer's Prequel to the Pursuit of God

“How eagerly do we seek the approval of this or that man of worldly reputation. How shamefully do we exploit the converted celebrity. Anyone will do to take away the reproach of obscurity from our publicity-hungry leaders: famous athletes, congressmen, world travelers, rich industrialists; before such we bow with obsequious smiles and honor them in our public meetings and in the religious press. Thus we glorify men to enhance the standing of the Church of God, and the glory of the Prince of Life is made to hang upon the transient fame of a man who shall die.”
― A.W. Tozer, God's Pursuit of Man: Tozer's Prequel to the Pursuit of God

“For sin’s human captives God never intends anything less than full deliverance. The Christian message rightly understood means this: The God who by the word of the gospel proclaims men free, by the power of the gospel actually makes them free. To accept less than this is to know the gospel in word only, without its power.”
― A.W. Tozer, God's Pursuit of Man: Tozer's Prequel to the Pursuit of God

“In asserting that faith in the gospel effects a change of life-motive from self to God I am but stating the sober facts. Every man with moral intelligence must be aware of the curse that afflicts him inwardly; he must be conscious of the thing we call ego, by the Bible called flesh or self, but by whatever name called, a cruel master and a deadly foe.”
― A.W. Tozer, God's Pursuit of Man: Tozer's Prequel to the Pursuit of God

“God can give all of Himself to each of His children. He does not distribute Himself that each may have a part, but to each one He gives all of Himself as fully as if there were no others.”
― A.W. Tozer, God's Pursuit of Man: Tozer's Prequel to the Pursuit of God

“We habitually stand in our now and look back by faith to see the past filled with God. We look forward and see Him inhabiting our future; but our now is uninhabited except for ourselves.”
― A.W. Tozer, God's Pursuit of Man: Tozer's Prequel to the Pursuit of God

“Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost” (Luke 15:6). On the night of His agony He “sang a hymn” before going out to the Mount of Olives. After His resurrection He sang among His brethren in the great congregation (see Psalm 22:22).”
― A.W. Tozer, God's Pursuit of Man: Tozer's Prequel to the Pursuit of God

“The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing. (Zephaniah 3:17)”
― A.W. Tozer, God's Pursuit of Man: Tozer's Prequel to the Pursuit of God

“in their pride men”
― A.W. Tozer, God's Pursuit of Man: Tozer's Prequel to the Pursuit of God

“God has indeed lent to every man the power to lock his heart and stalk away darkly into his self-chosen night, as He has lent to every man the ability to respond to His overtures of grace, but while the “no” choice may be ours, the “yes” choice is always God’s. He is the Author of our faith as He must be its Finisher. Only by grace can we continue to believe; we can persist in willing God’s will only as we are seized upon by a benign power that will overcome our natural bent to unbelief.”
― A.W. Tozer, God's Pursuit of Man: Tozer's Prequel to the Pursuit of God

“The function of a good book is to stand like a signpost directing the reader toward the Truth and the Life.”
― A.W. Tozer, God's Pursuit of Man: Tozer's Prequel to the Pursuit of God

“It is no more than a religious platitude to say that the trouble with us today is that we have tried to bridge the gulf between two opposites, the world and the church, and have performed an illicit marriage for which there is no biblical authority. Actually no real union between the world and the church is possible. When the church joins up with the world it is the true church no longer but only a pitiful hybrid thing, an object of smiling contempt to the world and an abomination to the Lord.”
― A.W. Tozer, God's Pursuit of Man: Tozer's Profound Prequel to The Pursuit of God

“Here is the whole final message of the New Testament: Through the atonement in Jesus’ blood sinful men may now become one with God. Deity indwelling men! That is Christianity in its fullest effectuation, and even those greater glories of the world to come will be in essence but a greater and more perfect experience of the soul’s union with God.”
― A.W. Tozer, God's Pursuit of Man: Tozer's Profound Prequel to The Pursuit of God

“The experiences of men who walked with God in olden times agree to teach that the Lord cannot fully bless a man until He has first conquered him. The degree of blessing enjoyed by any man will correspond exactly with the completeness of God’s victory over him. This is a badly neglected tenet of the Christian’s creed, not understood by many in this self-assured age, but it is nevertheless of living importance to us all. This spiritual principle is well illustrated in the book of Genesis. Jacob was the wily old heel-catcher whose very strength was to him a near-fatal weakness. For two-thirds of his total life he had carried in his nature something hard and unconquered. Not his glorious vision in the wilderness nor his long bitter discipline in Haran had broken his harmful strength. He stood at the ford of Jabbok at the time of the going down of the sun, a shrewd, intelligent old master of applied psychology learned the hard way. The picture he presented was not a pretty one. He was a vessel marred in the making. His hope lay in his own defeat. This he did not know at the setting of the day, but had learned before the rising of the sun. All night he resisted God until in kindness God touched the hollow of his thigh and won the victory over him. It was only after he had gone down to humiliating defeat that he began to feel the joy of release from his own evil strength, the delight of God’s conquest over him. Then he cried aloud for the blessing and refused to let go till it came. It had been a long fight, but for God (and for reasons known only to Him) Jacob had been worth the effort. Now he became another man, the stubborn and self-willed rebel was turned into a meek and dignified friend of God. He had prevailed indeed, but through weakness, not through strength.”
― A.W. Tozer, God's Pursuit of Man: Tozer's Profound Prequel to The Pursuit of God

“bunkum”
― A.W. Tozer, God's Pursuit of Man: Tozer's Profound Prequel to The Pursuit of God