Love, Discipline, and Time

22Jul10 Love, Discipline, and Time

This is another installment in a series that has been adapted from my 11-part CD teaching series on A. W. Tozer’s spiritual classic, The Pursuit of God.

In the words of A. W. Tozer, “The Triune God will be our dwelling place even while our feet walk the low road of simple duty here among men. We will have found life’s summum bonum indeed.” Through the gaze of faithful eyes, allow the Triune God to be your dwelling place. He wants the simplicity of a child-like faith that turns to him and says, “My heart’s desire is to habitually gaze upon you. And even when I stray from you, I want you to draw me back to yourself as many times as it takes before I no longer want to gaze upon anything else.”

The capacity to look for God is intuitive and universal – all human beings are created with a soul that seeks out the soul of another. Therefore, gazing upon God is not what good people do when they are doing their religious best, but rather what ordinary people do when they are pursuing the Lover of their souls.

But, in order for this inborn capacity to become a lifelong habit, it requires the motivation of love, the motor of discipline, and the movement of time. We need each of these three elements in order to avoid being deceived by outer circumstances and into thinking: “Wait a minute! That’s not the God I committed my life to long ago. I want a better one.” And we need each of these three things in order to learn to linger longer with him so that we might grow to say, “Wait a minute! Behind all the ugly scars of life I can more clearly see the beauty of my Lord.” Over a lifetime, the uninterrupted gaze of the soul becomes a muscle memory of the heart.

Let’s close with Tozer’s own prayer,

“Oh Lord, I have heard a good word inviting me to look away to Thee, and be satisfied. My heart longs to respond but sin has clouded my vision ‘til I see Thee but dimly. Be pleased to cleanse me in Thine own precious blood and make me inwardly pure so that I may with unveiled eyes gaze upon Thee all the days of my earthly pilgrimage. Then shall I be prepared to behold Thee in full splendor in the day Thou shalt appear to be glorified by Saints and admired in all them that believe. Amen”