Navigating by a Fixed Point

28Jul10 Navigating by a Fixed Point

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.

Staying on course throughout our Christian voyage requires that you learn to navigate by fixing your gaze on something that does not move – the unmovable God of the universe. Remember that your spiritual odyssey originally began by focusing on him. In so doing, you became aware of the infinite distance between him and you, between his holiness and your sinfulness. And so, in a step of faith, you chose to accept his free gift of grace.

Now, as you continue on in your faith, you have come to understand that the only way to a closer relationship with your heavenly Father is to once again focus on him – to increase the degree to which you exalt him. By taking daily readings from his Word and choosing to lift him above all else, you can navigate life safely, maintaining the proper alignment between Creator and creation.

This is the theme of the eighth chapter in A.W. Tozer’s book, The Pursuit of God, which he titles: “Restoring the Creator-Creature Relation.” So far, we’ve pondered the following questions from each chapter: Chapter 1 – How are you doing with following hard after God? Chapter 2 – How are you doing with the blessedness of possessing nothing? Chapter 3 – How are you doing with removing the veil? Chapter 4 – How are you doing with apprehending God? Chapter 5 – How are you doing with our response to his universal presence? Chapter 6 – How are you doing with listening to his speaking voice? Chapter 7 – How are you doing with focusing the gaze of our soul?

And now, Chapter 8 – How are you doing with restoring the Creator-creature relation? In Chapter 7 Tozer challenged us to a new kind of seeing – the gaze of a soul transfixed upon its beloved. In this chapter, he calls us to continually lift up the Creator in our hearts so that he reigns above all else. This is the chapter in which we progress from being impressed with the infinity of God toward being amazed by our intimacy with God.