From the preface: True religion confronts earth with heaven and brings eternity to bear upon time.
From chapter one: What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.
Why read A.W. Tozer's The Knowledge of the Holy?
Because…"It is impossible to keep our moral practices sound and our inward attitudes right while our idea of God is erroneous or inadequate. If we would bring back spiritual power to our lives, we must begin to think of God more nearly as He is."
Because…"What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us."
Because…"Wrong ideas about God are not only the fountain from which the polluted waters of idolatry flow; they are themselves idolatrous. The idolater simply imagines things about God and acts as if they were true."
Because... "If we insist upon trying to imagine Him, we end with an idol, made not with hands but with thoughts; and an idol of the mind is as offensive to God as an idol of the hand."
Because…"We can never know who or what we are till we know at least something of what God is."
Because…"It is not a cheerful thought that millions of us who live in a land of Bibles, who belong to churches and labor to promote the Christian religion, may yet pass our whole life on this earth without once having thought or tried to think seriously about the being of God."
Technically, all those reasons are reasons to read the Good Book, the Word of God, Holy Scriptures. But I think the Holy Spirit can and will use Tozer's words--long after he's dead--to inspire new generations to seek God.
The Knowledge of the Holy is a theological-devotional book about the attributes of God. You may not be used to theology crossing over into devotions, but this Tozer quote sums up how this is so.
The study of the attributes of God, far from being dull and heavy, may for the enlightened Christian be a sweet and absorbing spiritual exercise. To the soul that is athirst for God, nothing could be more delightful.What is an attribute?
- An attribute of God is whatever God has in any way revealed as being true of Himself.
- An attribute, as we can know it, is a mental concept, an intellectual response to God's self-revelation. It is an answer to a question, the reply God makes to our interrogation concerning himself.
- What is God like? What kind of God is He? How may we expect Him to act toward us and toward all created things? Such questions are not merely academic. They touch the far-in reaches of the human spirit, and their answers affect life and character and destiny.
- Between His attributes no contradiction can exist.
- The divine attributes are what we know to be true of God. He does not possess them as qualities; they are how God is as He reveals Himself to His creatures. Love, for instance, is not something God has and which may grow or diminish or cease to be. His love is the way God is, and when He loves He is simply being Himself.
I recommend Knowledge of the Holy to every believer--no matter their age, gender, or denomination. You may or may not agree with every single sentence Tozer ever spoke--ever wrote--but what you will find is someone who challenges you to think, to consider, to grow. Tozer rarely leaves readers the same.
© Becky Laney of Operation Actually Read Bible
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