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A. W. Tozer (1897–1963)

Author of The Pursuit of God

343 Works 28,462 Members 149 Reviews 45 Favorited

About the Author

Aiden W. Tozer was born in La Jose, Pennsylvania on April 21, 1897. He was raised on a farm and never received more than an elementary school education. While on his way home from the Akron, Ohio tire company where he worked as a teen, Tozer overheard a street preacher and decided to follow Christ. show more In 1919, he accepted an offer to pastor his first church in Nutter Fort, West Virginia, which began 44 years of ministry with the Christian and Missionary Alliance. He served as pastor of the Southside Alliance Church in Chicago from 1928 to 1959 and spent his final years as pastor at the Avenue Road (Alliance) Church in Toronto, Canada. He wrote more than 40 books during his lifetime including The Pursuit of God and The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God - Their Meaning in the Christian Life. He died on May 12, 1963 at the age of 66. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Photo courtesy of Lowell Tozer

Series

Works by A. W. Tozer

The Pursuit of God (1948) 6,838 copies
The Knowledge of the Holy (1961) 4,417 copies
The Divine Conquest (1950) 940 copies
The Root of the Righteous (1955) 616 copies
That Incredible Christian (1964) 504 copies
I Talk Back to the Devil (1972) 348 copies
Keys to the Deeper Life (1961) 307 copies
God Tells The Man Who Cares (1969) 285 copies
Best of A.W. Tozer, Book 1 (1984) 284 copies
Gems from Tozer (1978) 281 copies
Of God and Men (1960) 272 copies
Born After Midnight (1959) 254 copies
Who Put Jesus on the Cross (1975) 244 copies
I Call It Heresy (1974) 238 copies
Paths to Power (1701) 204 copies
The Crucified Life (2011) 186 copies
Faith Beyond Reason (1987) 171 copies
Set of the Sail (1986) 165 copies
Men Who Met God (1986) 165 copies
When He Is Come (1968) 154 copies
Christ the Eternal Son (1982) 141 copies
Delighting in God (2015) 129 copies
A Treasury of A. W. Tozer (1979) 124 copies
Jesus Author of Our Faith (1988) 122 copies
Jesus Is Victor (1989) 120 copies
We Travel an Appointed Way (1988) 118 copies
The Price of Neglect (1991) 95 copies
Next Chapter After the Last (1988) 80 copies
The Tozer Pulpit, Volume One (1883) — Author — 57 copies
Essays on Prayer (1968) 53 copies
Leaning into the Wind (1984) 50 copies
The Tozer Topical Reader (1999) 31 copies
Spiritual Warfare (1993) 11 copies
God's Greatest Gift to Man (1960) 10 copies
The Deeper Life (1995) 7 copies
DISEÑADOS PARA ADORAR (2011) 7 copies
[Data Missing] (2017) 6 copies
Tozer Speaks Vol II (2010) 6 copies
The Old Cross & the New (1995) 6 copies
Pursuit of God (1982) 6 copies
The Apostles' Creed (2023) 5 copies
Pursuit of God Bible-NIV (2013) 5 copies
Those Amazing Methodists (1995) 4 copies
O PROPOSITO DO HOMEM (1905) 3 copies
Die vergessene Kraft (1975) 3 copies
Tuo Uskomaton Kristitty (2004) 2 copies
Paths to Power 2 copies
4 Seasons of Life (1996) 2 copies
Das Wesen Gottes (2015) 2 copies
Voice of the Spirit (1997) 2 copies
The Cozer Pulpit (1972) 2 copies
Shun fu shen (2007) 2 copies
Como provar os espíritos (1999) 2 copies
Putting God First (1997) 2 copies
Approachable Christ (1997) 2 copies
Miracles Follow the Plow (1997) 2 copies
Sovereignty of God (1997) 2 copies
Evidence of Salvation (1997) 2 copies
Unity-Key to Revival (1996) 2 copies
Fruit of the Spirit (1997) 1 copy
A.W. Tozer Bible-KJV (2012) 1 copy
受教的心 1 copy
渴慕神 1 copy
受教的心 1 copy
Deleitando-se Em Deus (2016) 1 copy

Tagged

A.W. Tozer (128) adult non-fiction (45) Attributes of God (194) Bible (205) biography (57) Christian (475) Christian Classics (72) Christian living (1,482) Christian non-fiction (66) Christianity (456) classic (133) classics (119) Devotional (444) Discipleship (173) Doctrine (60) ebook (110) faith (94) God (309) Holiness (118) Holy Spirit (166) inspirational (41) Kindle (141) Logos (130) Logos 4 (103) non-fiction (301) prayer (84) read (47) religion (191) religious (44) Sanctification (74) Sermons (152) Spiritual Formation (61) Spiritual Growth (214) spirituality (215) Theology (971) Theology Proper (80) to-read (386) Tozer (223) unread (48) Worship (196)

Common Knowledge

Members

Reviews

A classic lived by many, but this is my first reading. I wasn't as blown away as I'd hoped. There were things I liked and some that really didn't resonate with me (probably the Arminian flavor)
 
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jfranzone | 50 other reviews | Feb 14, 2024 |
First sentence: Every battle begins with understanding who the enemy is. If soldiers do not know who the enemy is, how then are they going to be prepared to deal with them? I believe a lot of Christians today do not know their real enemy. The enemy is not in the church pews. Many Christians spend a lot of time in conflict with one another, much to the great delight of our enemy the devil. It's in our understanding of the enemy that we can begin to prepare ourselves for the battle and ongoing conflict that is before us. As Christians, we are engaged in what is called spiritual warfare, and this war cannot be fought with physical or military might, guns, and torpedoes. How we comprehend spiritual warfare says a lot about our relationship with Christ.

Almost all of the A.W. Tozer books being published in the past forty to fifty years are really more compilations of sermons grouped together by theme, subject or topic. The topic in this one is either a) spiritual warfare in general or b) the tactics of the devil our adversary.

The chapter titles:

Facing Our Real Enemy
The Danger of Compromising Our Confidence
Causes of Backsliding, the Devil's Toolbox
Symptoms of Backsliding the Devil Uses
Self-confidence vs. Confidence in God
How We Can Prevent the Devil from Taking Advantage of Us
Discouragement: A Valuable Tool of the Devil Against Christians
The Mistakes of Israel and Possibly Ours
How the Devil Manipulates the Plague of the Heart
The Dangers of Arrogance and Defeat
The Root of Our Spiritual Warfare
The Wall Between Us and the Devil
The Ultimate Spiritual Temptation
Standing Against the Wiles of the Devil

I will say you can tell this is a compilation of different sermons. The flow isn't super-polished; the chapters don't always build upon one another. All of the chapters--many of which have a stand-alone feel--do share a common theme or subject. Some chapters were incredibly helpful and beneficial--true must reads. Other chapters perhaps less so.

A.W. Tozer, I believe, died in 1963. In some ways, his writings turned out to be prophetic. Yet if Tozer was alive and preaching, it would be a whole new world to him. I don't know that the state of the church in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s is similar enough to the state of the church the past twenty or thirty years that his statements still ring true. I will try to clarify. Truth does not change. I believe--and Tozer believed--in absolute truth. The Bible is the VERY Word of God--inerrant, infallible, inspired, God-breathed, TRUE. When Tozer is preaching the Word (which is often, his sermons are saturated in the Word) then he's always going to be relevant and worth reading. I am referring to Tozer's assessment of the world, the culture, the church. Like when he says that the enemy is NOT in the church. I think enemies can be found IN the church--in positions of power and influence, coming from the top down. I think that spiritual warfare includes discerning the dangers within the church as well as those outside the church. Tozer lived at a time perhaps when that was rarer. He saw no reason at all for denominations and saw [almost] all differences between denominations as insignificant and petty. While I do tend to agree that there won't be divisions and denominations in heaven, I do see them as a 'necessary evil' of sorts in the here and now. We are called to discern between truth and error.

Quotes:
You cannot have the armor of God and indulge the flesh.


Confidence in God releases us from the need to understand all that God is doing.


Whatever threat to our spiritual health we choose to ignore, the enemy twists around so as to compromise our confidence in God.


Because of the fall, we have been robbed of the power and desire to do this naturally. Sin remade our nature, thus it's not natural when we go to pray. We must override all the accumulated ages of sin if we are to say with sincerity, "Our Father in heaven." If sin hadn't entered the picture, we wouldn't have anything to override. Rather, we'd simply raise our voices like the songbirds that sing God's praises without effort.
People, then, tend to turn away from God, their desire and passion for Him growing cold, and go back to what comes natural to them.


We are backsliding when we have lost the relish for the Bible we once had.
We are backsliding when we're more tolerant of evil than we once were, when we don't have the horror of sin that we pray and sing about.
We are backsliding when we have less enthusiasm for spiritual things than we used to have.


I doubt that discouragement is the greatest enemy the Christian has, but it can easily be the greatest nuisance a Christian has to deal with. It is valuable to the devil in his war against us because it is seldom recognized for what it is. When Christians become discouraged, common sense tells them they are just begin realistic. We forget that it is not realism but discouragement, and it often works when no other temptation will. A Christian who would not be guilty of any sin willingly, and who has victory enough not to fall into temptation unwillingly, may yet be visited by this infernal dark shadow from the pit, which we call discouragement. And this greatly hinders the Christian life. Discouragement can easily become a ruling emotion. It is more than an emotion; after a while, it becomes a disposition, an outlook, and an attitude. A darkened lens through which we view everything before us. The mood is the mental climate. IT isn't the individual person so much as the weather on the landscape of their life, which has captivated the person. Just as the weather isn't the field or the farm, and yet it goes a long way in determining if the farm will yield a good crop or not.
You must go to God completely alone as if He were in the desert or in a cave.


We must respond to God's Word with a "Yes, He means what He says, and I surrender my life to Him."


We need to restore in the Church today that passionate love for God that nothing else can satisfy. If you're satisfied with something else, you haven't met the God of the Bible. The more of God you have, the more of God you want.


If you're not worshiping God in our prayers, we're not praying.
… (more)
 
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blbooks | Jan 19, 2024 |
This was a very good book - one I'll keep on my shelf for years to come, I'm sure. The first half in particular did really increase my desire to know God more intimately.

There was one chapter that talked about the Voice of God that seemed to state that the Bible isn't the only way to hear God's voice, and I feel that many may misinterpret this to mean that they don't need to verify what they hear with the Bible and be sure that the two are aligned, since the Bible is the only revealed Word of God. Tozer clarified in a later chapter that we are to refer to the Bible, but it was brief and could be easily overlooked, especially since it was in an entirely different chapter. Certainly, God speaks with a still, small voice, in the Spirit, but if what we hear is in any way contradictory to what the Bible plainly teaches, we are not hearing the Spirit of God speaking, but an evil Spirit - the Bible teaches to discern the Spirits, and we do this with the Bible. So for that reason, I gave only four stars. Other than that one issue, this book is stellar.… (more)
 
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RachelRachelRachel | 50 other reviews | Nov 21, 2023 |

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Works
343
Members
28,462
Popularity
#709
Rating
½ 4.3
Reviews
149
ISBNs
880
Languages
16
Favorited
45

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