I just finished reading A W Tozer’s classic work, The Knowledge of the Holy. This was the second time I’ve read through this book, but this time, I took it a lot slower and was all the more blessed in doing so. In the book, Tozer is pleading with the reader to know God and have a high view of God. In the preface, Tozer states, “The low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians is the cause of a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us. A whole new philosophy of the Christian life has resulted from this one basic error in our religious thinking. With our loss of the sense of majesty has come the further loss of religious awe and consciousness of the divine Presence.” I am always blown away at how relevant Tozer is for the contemporary church even though he was writing 50 years ago. Tozer proceeds to take the reader through roughly 20 different attributes of God. I was amazed at this man’s knowledge of God and his love for God. If you are looking for something that challenges your thinking about God and at the same time exults the majesty of God, this might be a good book for you to purchase. Here are some of the most memorable quotes from the first and last chapters of the book:

Chapter 1: Why We Must Think Rightly About God

“the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like.”
“The man who comes to a right belief about God is relieved of ten thousand temporal problems, for he sees at once that these have to do with matters which at the most cannot concern him for very long; but even if the multiple burdens of time may be lifted from him, the one mighty single burden of eternity begins to press down upon him with a weight more crushing than all the woes of the world piled one upon another. That mighty burden is his obligation to God. It includes an instant and lifelong duty to love God with every power of mind and soul, to obey Him perfectly, and to worship Him acceptably.”
“Among the sins to which the human heart is prone, hardly any other is more hateful to God than idolatry, for idolatry is at bottom a libel on His character. The idolatrous heart assumes that God is other than He is – in itself a monstrous sin – and substitutes for the true God one made after its own likeness.”
“The first step down for any church is taken when it surrenders its high opinion of God.”
“We do the greatest service to the next generation of Christians by passing on to them undimmed and undiminished that noble concept of God which we received from our Hebrew and Christian fathers of generations past.”

Chapter 23: The Open Secret

“When viewed from the perspective of eternity, the most critical need of this hour may well be that the Church should be brought back from her long Babylonian captivity and the name of God be glorified in her again as of old.”
“The secret is an open one which the wayfaring man may read. It is simply the old and ever-new counsel: Acquaint thyself with God. To regain her lost power the Church must see heaven opened and have a transforming vision of God.”
“The God we must learn to know is the Majesty in the heavens, God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, the only wise God our Savior.”

“Let me present a brief summary of these conditions as taught by the Bible and repeated through the centuries by the holiest, sweetest saints the world has ever known:

1. First we must forsake our sins
2. Second, there must be an utter committal of the whole life to Christ in faith
3. Third, there must be a reckoning of ourselves to have died unto sin and to be alive unto God in Christ Jesus , followed by a throwing open of the entire personality to the inflow of the Holy Spirit
4. Fourth, we must boldly repudiate the cheap values of the fallen world
5. Fifth, we must practice the art of long and loving meditation upon the majesty of God
6. Sixth, as the knowledge of God becomes more wonderful, greater service to our fellow men will become for us imperative.”

Now, that is simply a taste of what Tozer brings to the table in The Knowledge of the Holy. Hopefully, Tozer has encouraged you today to pursue God like you’ve never pursued Him before. I want to encourage you to dig into the Word of God and discover for yourself the One, True God. Most Christians only have a superficial, surface knowledge of God, but God wants to be known intimately and deeply by His chosen ones. Why not make it your life goal to pursue that knowledge of the holy?