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5Feb10 The Pursuit of God – Part 4

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.

Next comes the Ministry Maturing phase. Here, the task is to grow up with respect to serving God by developing your exterior “ministry proficiency.” As a maturing person, you must discipline yourself in the realm of biblical knowledge, ministry skills, proven techniques, and valuable resources. This is the season where you should begin to recognize and express the unique way in which you have been designed to contribute to the Body of Christ. As you integrate all of God’s good gifts (i.e., your deepest convictions, your unique enablement, your providential life experience, your educational background, your network of relationships, your complementary skills, etc.), you should sense a growing clarity regarding God’s sovereign call for you.

For example, if God has gifted you to teach, you should be aware of several things by the time you reach this phase. First of all, you should have observed that your gift of teaching has been present within you from your earliest days, albeit sometimes cloaked in not-so- obvious expressions. Secondly, you should have recognized that your gift of teaching is highly conditioned as to what topics you prefer to teach, what ages you are most comfortable teaching, what environments motivate your teaching, what teaching style comes most naturally to you. And finally, you should have sensed that your gift of teaching expresses itself as something you “love to do” and “do well,” as you define well. This means that it is much more than something you “can do” or even something you “can do well.” It will feel more like a mission, a destiny, a calling, a “must do.”

Furthermore, as you continue to express your teaching gift, you should become very aware of your dependence upon God. For even though teaching gift is God given, it still must be God powered to be pleasing to him. You must recognize that your effort alone, no matter how disciplined and committed, is not enough to meet the needs of those who come hungry for God. Thus the stewardship of your gift must involve extended time on your knees in communion with him. But what happens after you’ve taught for a while? You’ll be tempted to depend upon your technique and experience, rather than the power of the Holy Spirit. And the day you stop being totally dependent upon the Spirit is the day you stall out in this phase and fail to progress to the next phase.

Have you sought to identify, develop, and express your God-given gifts?

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4Feb10 The Pursuit of God – Part 3

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.

How God Grows a Saint

In Robert Clinton’s book, The Making of a Leader,” he lays out a process by which God often grows his spiritual saints. It includes 6 developmental phases: (1) Phase 1 – Sovereign Foundations; (2) Phase 2 – Inner-Life Growth; (3) Phase 3 – Ministry Maturing; (4) Phase 4 – Life Maturing; (5) Phase 5 – Convergence; and (6) Phase 6 – Afterglow.

During the Sovereign Foundations phase, God providentially works through a person’s family, environment, and life events in such a way as to woo them, court them, and draw them unto himself in the “in-Christ relationship.” For instance, if you were to think back over your lifetime, you would realize that your life is much like a story, with certain actors, a unique plot, riveting drama, ongoing narrative, captivating suspense, and surprising resolution. No two people have life stories that are identical. Everyone who is “in-Christ,” was brought into that relationship in a different way. For our infinite God has an infinite number of ways to connect with each of his unique children.

After the Sovereign Foundations phase, comes the Inner-Life Growth phase. Here God’s emphasis is on growing the interior life of the believer. One learns the importance of understanding and obeying God’s word, of becoming fluent in the two-way dialogue of prayer, of trying and testing one’s ministry muscles for the first time. For just as a newborn will naturally progress from infancy to childhood and on to adolescence and adulthood, so the new believer should intentionally progress beyond spiritual infancy. The absence of such growth is what appalls Tozer, as it ought to shock us. A baby acting like a baby is cute. But a mature adult functioning like an infant is not cute, it is tragic. But it is infinitely more tragic in the spiritual life of the believer.

Where do you think you are in these developmental phases?

Related Articles
- The Pursuit of God – Part 1
- The Pursuit of God – Part 2

1 Comment Posted by Kenneth Boa in Christian Life, Devotional, God, Great Books, Inspiration, Religion, Spiritual, Spiritual Formation, Spirituality, Thoughts

3Feb10 The Glory of the Creator: A Prayer

O Lord my God, You are exalted above all things we can conceive and imagine. Time and space are a part of Your created order—You brought them into being, and You dwell in all times and places. You are the eternal now, the great i am, the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last. You are present everywhere and You rule all things, from the microcosm to the macrocosm. You spoke, and energy and matter came into being. Your boundless power and wisdom are evident in Your works, and all things derive their being from You. The beauty, radiance and wisdom that abound in Your creation all point beyond themselves to You, their Creator and Sustainer. I ask for the eyes to see Your goodness, beauty and truth as I behold plants, trees, animals, insects, sunrises and sunsets, landscapes and the starry sky.

How frequently do you give thanks for specific wonders in God’s creation?

No Comments Posted by Kenneth Boa in Christian Life, Creation, Devotional, God, Inspiration, Photos, Prayer, Religion, Renewal, Spiritual Formation, Spirituality, Thoughts, Worship

2Feb10 The Pursuit of God – Part 2

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.

Following Hard After God

Tozer was not a man who spoke of God by way of hearsay, like those religious leaders of his generation, for they hungered not for his presence, but for his presents. But he spoke of God as one who spent extended time with God. He knew God as an intimate friend. To highlight the difference between the two, he takes us back to Mt Carmel where Elijah is doing battle with the prophets of Baal. In Tozer’s retelling, he pictures the religious leaders as those who have carefully laid out the stones for the altar, and have precisely divided the sacrifice into parts. But instead of calling down God’s fiery presence from heaven, as Elijah did, they are caught up with the ritual of counting the stones, arranging and rearranging the pieces, as if that is what will please the Lord, oblivious to the fact that God is not there.

Is this not often true of many of us? We take such delight in bringing our sacrifice and in building our altar to code, and yet seem unable to reconcile ourselves to the continued absence of fire. He cites biblical teachers who, while satisfied to teach the biblical fundamentals of the faith year after year, seem strangely unaware that there is no manifest Presence in their teaching, nor anything with the mark of the divine in their personal lives. People come longing to meet with God, but leave with that longing still in their breasts. Still there are those few who “are athirst to taste for themselves the ‘piercing sweetness’ of the love of Christ.”

Do you long for the manifest Presence?

Related Articles
- The Pursuit of God – Part 1
- The Pursuit of God – Part 3

2 Comments Posted by Kenneth Boa in Books, Christian Life, Devotional, God, Great Books, Inspiration, Prayer, Religion, Renewal, Spiritual, Spiritual Formation, Spirituality

1Feb10 The Pursuit of God – Part 1

This is the first 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.

Following Hard After God

“As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.” (Psalm 42:1)

The Question

“What do you want more than anything else in the world?” The question is always there. It ignites the wish behind every birthday candle ceremony. It enchants the dream expressed in every child’s Christmas list for Santa. It informs the hope that accompanies every wedding toast. It breeds the expectation that attaches to each new birth. It fuels the yearning that erupts in a mid-life crisis. It colors our understanding of every promise in Scripture. And it articulates the imbedded anguish in every prayer request. It is the question: “What do you really want?” “What do you really want from God?” “What do you really want from God, more than anything else in the world?”

Aiden W. Tozer’s answer to that profound question is elegant simplicity itself. More than anything else in the world, he wanted God, God alone. And so he chose to order his life around that one single pursuit – the pursuit of God. And he penned a classic little book that invites us to join him in that holy pilgrimage. In 1948, he offered The Pursuit of God as a “modest attempt to aid God’s hungry children so to find Him.”

In many ways Tozer was a modern-day prophet as well as a down-to-earth mystic. He was a self-educated man, forced by his home situation to forfeit the formal education of either high school or college. Yet, through years of diligent study and disciplined prayer, he prepared himself for the God-ordained role of calling the modern Church back to the practice of godliness. With no teacher but the Holy Spirit and many good books by ancient spiritual masters, he looked up from his lifelong posture of kneeling and cried out for others to follow him in the only pursuit that truly satisfies. He was convinced that a life given to seeking God first does not constrict one’s life, but enlarges it beyond one’s wildest wishes, hopes, and dreams.

If God were to ask you what you want more than anything else, how would you answer?

Related Articles
- The Pursuit of God Part 2
- The Pursuit of God Part 3

9 Comments Posted by Kenneth Boa in Books, Christian Life, Devotional, God, Great Books, Inspiration, Religion, Renewal, Spiritual, Spiritual Formation, Spirituality

31Jan10 Launching a New Blog

I am launching a blog that will be a bit different, insofar as it will consist of several elements. The first of these is a group of articles based on a series that I have adapted from my 11-part CD teaching on A. W. Tozer’s spiritual classic, The Pursuit of God.

The second element is a series of prayers based on my forthcoming book, Transforming Prayers.

In addition to these and other resources, I plan to make occasional posts related to a variety of issues and ideas.

“Blogging at the Nexus of Worldview, Spiritual Formation, Culture, and Leadership” summarizes the varied approach I want to take.

Below you will see a list of the categories I hope to touch on in the days ahead.

Feel free to add your comments and dialog about the issues discussed here. I will do my best to read all your comments because your thoughts are important to me. I cannot promise I’ll be able to respond to everyone as my time is generally very full. I look forward to our time ahead.
-Ken