How Close Can You Really Get to God?
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This article has been excerpted from Set my Heart Ablaze by A. W. Tozer.
Our Pursuit of God is successful just because He is forever seeking to manifest Himself to us.
The revelation of God to any man is not God coming from a distance upon a time to pay a brief and momentous visit to the man’s soul. Thus to think of it is to misunderstand it all. The approach of God to the soul or of the soul to God is not to be thought of in spatial terms at all. There is no idea of physical distance involved in the concept. It is not a matter of miles but of experience.
To speak of being near to or far from God is to use language in a sense always understood when applied to our ordinary human relationships. A man may say, “I feel that my son is coming nearer to me as he gets older,” and yet that son has lived by his father’s side since he was born and has never been away from home more than a day or so in his entire life. What then can the father mean? Obviously he is speaking of experience. He means that the boy is coming to know him more intimately and with deeper understanding, that the barriers of thought and feeling between the two are disappearing, that father and son are becoming more closely united in mind and heart.
“We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God.”
So when we sing, “Draw me nearer, nearer, blessed Lord,” we are not thinking of the nearness of place, but of the nearness of relationship. It is for increasing degrees of awareness that we pray, for a more perfect consciousness of the divine Presence. We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts.
Reflect:
Where, according to your own understanding, is God right now
Name one specific way you’ve experienced Him today (or yesterday).
What are elements in your life that may be clouding your awareness of the nearness of God?
More Than a Devotional
Set My Heart Ablaze contains no trite questions, and draws out more than shallow replies. Through penetrating prompts and profound writings from renowned Bible teacher, A.W. Tozer, this journal will push your limits, launching you on a relentless pursuit after the fiery heart of God.
