I Press Toward the Mark — A.W. Tozer

Pressing Toward the High Calling of Christ

Now, again in the syllabus, after I'm only going to read this verse 13 and 14. Brethren, brethren, says the Apostle, I count not myself to have apprehended, but this one thing I do. Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press as of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Now, did you know that he wrote this two years before he died? He just had two years to go. And then at the end of the two years, or between the writing of this and his testimony, something had happened evidently, because the man of God said that here that he was, and that he had fought a good fight, and that he had kept the faith, and that he was now ready.

Now, that something happened in those two years to the man of God. Now, you have been listening to me over these last years, and again we ask, what is the pastor advocating? What is this that he's preaching?

Christ as the Center of All Christian Teaching

I'm concerned that it be nothing else but Christ, because anything anybody offers you is not just more of Christ, it's false. I'm concerned that his doctrinal foundation would be the Scripture, and in its whole spiritual meaning would be apostolic, and that it be in harmony with the best in the history, the best in devotional literature, the best in humanity, and the best in biography.

And yet, why does this preaching sound different? Why does it sound strange when compared with much so-called and true gospel preaching? Well, what is this, before I enter in really to the message for the night?

But I wanted to tell you that about a general textualism captured the gospel church. By the gospel church, I mean the fundamentalists, the gospel church, those who believe in Christ the Savior and accept him as such.

And the scribes and the lawyers took over and set up a hierarchy in schools and Bible conferences and churches, and they all went, and the rule became a rigid adherence to words. Now, it so happens that I believe, and have never believed anything else in my entire life, but in the plenary, that means verbal, inspiration of the Scriptures as originally given.

And you'll be honest with me, there's no reason to quote me, quote this, that I believe, and have always believed, as a responsible Christian teacher, in the plenary, verbal inspiration of the Scriptures as originally given.

But it was, and still is, that the, by school I don't mean in particular to talk, the verbal inspiration, rigor mortis set into it. And with the result that we were, we were, the religious imagination was sultified, the learning was choked down, the religious aspirations flapped down, and the longing aspirings of the children of God were clipped like a hen in a hen coop, and we were told to shut up and like what, this was it.

Evangelical Entertainment and Rationalism

Brethren, do you know what happened to this? The resulting, with the language of the New Testament persisting, and the spirit of the New Testament green, do you know what happened? Well, I'll tell you.

There came about a revolt, a revolt against the two directions. The masses of evangelicals revolted without knowing they were revolting. It was the gasping of a fish in a bowl where there's no oxygen.

The masses revolted with entertainment, until the gospel churches are now camping on the doorsteps of, and then over against that and on the opposite side, some of the more intelligent fundamentalists revolted into evangelical rationalism, which is already business liberalism, and the result is that you just don't hear what, what the rest of the time, it sounds strange to hear anyone preaching as I preach, because on one side we have the masses saying, I've accepted Jesus' works to do, let's go and have fun, and on the other side, serious revelers thinking their way perilously near to the borders of liberalism.

The New Testament message, objectives, and methods have been wide-dominated, and in the name of the lordship of Jesus, which is lordship in name only, our own message, our own objectives, and then have thought out our own methods, leaving those objectives which are, in many cases, not scriptural at all.

Longing for God and the Devotional Tradition

Now, my brethren, is it heresy to yearn and pray and long after God? Is it heresy to constitute a radical mind to yearn and pray and fight? Do you remember when I read the first night, the great prayer in the cloud of unknowing, God, I beseech thee, show me the intent of mine heart, with the unspeakable gift of thy grace, that I may lovely and wordly praise thee, to long perfectly to love God, wordly to praise him, to mean more than words when you say it, meaner everything.

Is that heresy? Should they put a man in jail for it? Should he be ostracized in the light of our hymnody, in the light of our devotional books back to Paul, in the light of the prophecy of the saints?

No, I think not. No, I want to read to you, just briefly, from Necephorus, from a book called the Philokalia. He starts out, he wants to move forward to know God, to do what the cloud calls being one with God, united with God.

Now, I want you Christians to ask yourself the question, could I go along with this? Now, this Necephorus was a Greek, that is, he was over on the Greek side. He wasn't a Protestant, and he wasn't a Roman Catholic, and he wasn't a Coptic, nor a Mexican.

He belonged to over on the Greek side, but he was the same. To help people to go on with God, and he said, you who desire to capture the wonder and illumination of our Savior Jesus Christ, you believe in this.

And he seeks to feel the fire in your heart. Now, here was a scholar and a saint, and he wrote it into a book in the, I think, which is a classic, and is recognized as such. And he dared to use the word, he seeks to feel the divine heart, and strives to sense and experience the feeling of reconciliation with God.

Who, in order to unearth in the field of your heart and to gain possession of it, have renounced everything worldly. You desire that your soul to burn brightly, even now, not in the future. We have become so discontented that we push everything into the future, everything into the future.

But this man says, you desire your soul to burn brightly, even now. And Peter said, in this present world, for this purpose have renounced all this world. To wish by conscious experience, conscious experience, a modern psychologist, to know and to receive the kingdom of heaven existing within you.

He said what I'm teaching all the time, that Christ dwells in the heart of every believer. Know ye not that Christ is in you except you do? And if a man has not the spirit of Christ, he is none of you.

And the riches of the Lord lie potentially there. But we have been forbidden to believe it, or forbidden to think. We have been choked down, and the oxygen cut off, and our wings flipped, and our longings killed.

And that's why when I say it sounds different and strange, and people say, what is this new doctrine? It's no new doctrine. My brother, I want to talk a little bit tonight about the cloud of concealment.

Christ's Full Atonement and God's Favor

It has made full atonement for us. Let's start there. Christ has made full atonement. Christ has, for sin atonement, made a wonderful Savior. Would you like to hear it said for you by somebody else that could say it better than the field?

Little Lady Julian, here's what she said. The precious amends for satisfaction are for man's sin, turning all our blame into endless honor. Could it be said sweeter than that, that in our Lord hath made for man's sin, turning all our blame into endless honor?

He said where grace abounded, sin does what? Where sin abounded, grace does not. Turning all our blame into endless honor. Now God's face is turned toward us. Think like that tonight. Don't let the devil cheat you.

Don't let doubt deceive you. Don't let anything I say or anybody have ever said cheat you. But the face of God is turned toward you. And as a Christian, the smiling face of God is turned toward you. Why then do we not enjoy, now to use these words again, why then do we as Christians not wonder at the divine illumination of the Savior Jesus Christ?

Why do we not feel the divine fire? Why do we not strive to sense and experience, or why do we not sense and experience, feel affiliation with God as well as the knowledge of it? And why do we not gain possession of it?

Oh, I know they dismiss it by word, your position and your possession. But that can get so cold as dry ice. Why is it that the candles do not burn more brightly even now? Why is it that we do not have the conscious experience we need the kingdom existing within us?

The Cloud of Concealment

Well, I'll tell you why. Because there is between smiling face of God a clouded concealment. Now my friends, there is never such when the sun doesn't shine. In some of the cities, I think it's Atlanta, Georgia, maybe I'm wrong, but one of the southern cities offers that they will give all that run, that day's run to the newspaper free of charge if the sun doesn't shine somewhere.

Well, now let me tell you something, that the sun shines every day and there never has been a day from the hour God said, let the sun rule the day. But there are dark days and misty days and cloudy days and days that get so dark, you have to like days that get so dark that in the country the chickens go to roost, I think.

Now there are dark days and yet the shining just as brightly as on the brightest, clearest day in June. Why then does it not shine on the earth between the sun and the earth, a clouded concealment? The sun is all right, the sun is up there brimming broadly and just as bright and just as hot as rain in the desert.

But he doesn't get through to the earth because there is a clouded concealment. This cloud, my brother, you know what it is from the standpoint of the weather, but what is it as applied to Christians?

Why, what's the matter? Well, it's the cloud of concealment, the cloud that we allow to be over. What is this cloud? Atonement has been made, there's nothing to do for it's all been done, not a drop to be shed, not a spear needs to enter a holy heart, not a tear nor a groan nor a drop of sweat, not a day, death has no more dominion over him, it is done, it is finished, it is forever done, because God shines down upon us.

And even upon Christians there's that cloud or above the cloud of concealment betwixt thee and thy God, as the brothers say. Now what is that cloud? Well, it's a cloud in things, it may be many things.

There is the cloud of pride for atheists. You are your father's child, your home, and yet for a lifetime you may go without the wondrous divine illumination of the Savior, without feeling the divine fire in your heart, or sensing or experiencing the healing of wretched God, and without the candles of your soul burning brighter, because you allow a cloud of pride over your head.

And the devil says, well, God hit you, God turned his back, the devil lies. You've never been turned to a child of God, nor to a repentant sinner since the hour Jesus groaned and died and said he couldn't, because God has turned all away.

But we allow this cloud of pride and the cloud of stubbornness, but a just plain stubbornness. They will not bend, they will not kneel, neither to man or God, or to anybody, law and death, they will not.

And so this cloud of stubbornness, God complained about Israel, it cracks, and the forehead is hard, and it couldn't get into you, and then there is self-will. Now self-will is a very religious thing, and it may become religious, get converted, and enter right with you into the church when you join, and bring you into the chamber when you pray.

Self-will, and self-will, you'll note, is good-natured only when it's getting its own way, and it's grouchy and ill-tempered when it is crossed. Think about that. Is your surrender to God sufficient so that you can be, or even win, your cross?

And then there is ambition, and you know there's even religious ambition. People that are religiously ambitious say something perhaps that isn't in the will of God, or that's for self-aggrandizement, and the result is that it's a cloud above them, between them and their God.

Pride, Self-Will, Ambition, and Possessions

Now there's a literal proverb, Knox translation, it reads like this, it rather amuses me, because it's so true, and it's the picture of the human heart. He says, Cripped by, cripped, here I P-P-E-D, cripped by his own heart, a man eats his heart out, finding fault even with God.

And you'll find Christians like that. Cripped, golly, they eat their heart out, finding fault even with God, having what God calls a controversial religion, and then, everything I claim for myself. Now this is the one thing I've been teaching, I suppose it's hard, that I've got to give up everything.

But this pastor that I have here, must go on the block, and I must be ready to give it up, and let it ride away on any sermon I preach, or any position I take. I dare not, my job as editor of the weekly, my position in the world, my, and I must put everything on the block, and ready to go.

If I own it, it is a cloud over my head. It becomes a cloud of obscurity that nothing will penetrate. And people try to pray through it, but through it nothing can penetrate. You try to fast through it, there are people that fast for days, out of nothing but stubborn.

You know that, the history, I won't go into politics, but over the world in the last 25 years, you remember that there were some who died for political reasons, just sheer downright stubborn. And there are those who try to fast, you can't do it, brother.

The cloud of concealment, if it is something that you say is yours, and you won't do it, but you don't, it'll put a veil over it. And if there's any sun, it'll not be very bright. It'll be a cloud, pray through it.

Prayer, Fasting, and God's Sovereignty

This idea that if you pray long enough, everything will be all right. Why, God got some people up off their knees and told them to quit. Who did? Stopped praying. Did you know that? Said, no use. There was a man, Saul, and he was praying and praying.

God came, put his hand over his mouth, not Saul, Samuel. Said, Samuel, don't pray anymore for Saul. He's through. Don't pray for him. Shut him up. And there was another instance where Joshua was lying face down praying.

We'd have written a tract about him. We'd have said, oh, what a thing. God says, well, she's lying there on your stomach. I don't honor a man for lying on his belly. Get up off your feet and deal with the crowd, and then I'll bless you and save all that lying around going.

So remember that this modern idea that if you pray, everything will be okay. It's not right, but the Saint of God loves these long seasons of prayer, and God gives an answer to prayer, and the soul seeks his desire, and the breath of the Saint, and all that I believe, and I think practice in some ways.

But I can hang on to things and then pray the cloud away while I'm hanging on to the cloud. No, no, you can't do it. And that's so nothing will get to it. Then there is fear. Fear is always a child of unbelief.

No matter what, whether you've got cancer, or whether your child's likely to have polio, or whether you're likely to lose your job, or whether she will send a guided missile and destroy Chicago. Remember, always that fear is a child of unbelief.

And fear over your head skewers you, and hides that smiling face from you. It doesn't, it doesn't turn the face away, for the blood of its only face forever turns towards its people and towards repentant sinners.

Self-Love, Money, and Fear of People

And then there is self-love. Self-love. We make a joke out of it, but we never should make a joke out of it, friends. Because self-love, a concealment, a cloud of obscurity, and even the Christian who has offered himself to Christ and has, has been reverted, that Christian can keep a cloud of concealment over him simply by loving himself.

And to fall out of it is an accident. That is, it is, I don't mean an accident, I mean a curse. It hurts you like falling off of something. And this relation, and self-admiration, these self-things, they're there, remain there, and then the odd thing about it is that the scribes have excused these, and proved that they could be there, and you can't do anything about it.

And yet we cry within us, oh, that the candles of my soul might burn brightly even now. Oh, the divine illumination of my Savior Jesus Christ. And we groan with the groan that goes back to Paul in Philippians, it goes back to David, that we might come into a warm, personal, pleasant, lasting fellowship with Jesus Christ that lifts us, and we're irradiated so high, and yet we can't because we admire him, and we're not going to have anybody disturb us, and we congratulate ourselves, and we love him.

And then there's money. Money these days gets between, betwixt thee and thy God, betwixt thee and thy God. Some evangelist years ago in my hearing pointed out that you can take two dimes, and shut out, you can take two dimes with you to the Great Smoky Mountain, and go clear to the top knob of the Great Smoky.

And with two dimes, shout out all the glorious, green, rolling, blue-capped great smokies. Just put them in front of your eyes and put them close, and if that's all it takes. The mountains are still there, smiling in the sun, because there's a dime in front of each eye.

It doesn't take much money. We who don't have much money are always snide remarks that the rich man, but brother, you can be rich and only have ten dollars. Because if it is between God, then that cloud, that cloud is concealing God from you.

And then there's people, just plain people. The Lord tells us that we shouldn't be afraid of man with his breath and his nostrils. And yet there are people, we're Christians, a cloud of fear of others.

Relationships, Positions, and the Cloud of Forgetting

Constantly a cloud of fear. They want us to sit in, they want us to sit in here, and the sociologists tell us we must do this, that we must adjust to society. And the schools are breaking the history and writing and reading and arithmetic and all the rest.

They're teaching the children to not to be queer and to get along well. Well, if you've got that as your goal, you have heart, my Christian friends. And then there are our friends. And then there's a position we hold, whatever it may be, for loved ones.

And it is the tenderest and perhaps the hardest. But that's all got to go. He said in one verse, if this cloud is over my head, is a cloud of concealment, when my Father's smiling and I can't see his face, what shall I do?

Well, the old brother suggests, and I have to do as a beautiful illustration, he calls it a cloud of forgetting. He said, put this cloud that's above you, under you, as a cloud of forgetting. And Paul said exactly the same thing.

Forgetting those things which are behind, force under those things which are before. You see, the things which were behind Paul were clouds. And if they'd been in front of him, then he'd shut out God, but he put them behind him.

His deceit, his mistakes, his errors, his wrongs, the times he'd fallen on his face, and the time of the Lord to have his pride, and all this, he put them behind him, and under his feet is a cloud of forgetting.

And the old man of God said, under me, and have them not be Christi and thy God. Right so shall it be, to be Christi and all the creatures that ever God made. We've got to get that cloud of forgetting under us, and of course that's the job of the Christian, and that's why I'm preaching like this, and some are understanding about it, others are not.

Others have come up to me, a kid by me, want to eat from me, and have turned back, and wonder why they're standing in their shoes. It's because we would not go on a kid by me. Right so it's getting, these days, and all this that has been a cloud of confusion, now becomes a cloud of forgetting.

Rising Above the Clouds

The face of God, I repeat, is smiling still, and not all the cloud I've mentioned, and not all the cloud the devil can blow up there, and the devil can come and put it between you, and the face of your God, experientially, but that God is waiting within the veil, or to change the figure, he's waiting for you to move up, to move up.

I remember getting on a plane at LaGuardia Field in New York some years ago, it was about I would say 3 o 'clock in the afternoon, and a smiling, relaxed, friendly pilot came out and made a little speech.

He knew that old doctors like me would worry about it because it was raining. It was a miserable day, like as we get here sometimes, just plain miserable. And he said, now I'm leaving in a moment, and he said, the situation is this friend, in 15 minutes we'll be in the sunlight, in 15 minutes we'll be in the sunlight.

And he says, the weather report shows, and sure enough, we had a friend of ours. And so we got into that plane, almost feeling a little smog and a mist, and in 15 minutes we had put the cloud under our feet, and the bright sun above, and as we rose, even the cloud became white beneath us.

You've flown a lot, have had the experience of seeing that gray of whipped cream that are underneath you, white as whipped egg, and when you were underneath there were a misty, miserable, smoggy thing that cut out the sun.

But in 15 minutes, you put them under your feet, and oh brother, is it nice to take off in the smoke and rain, and fly 900 miles in the sun. Now, that's what I mean. You're going to have to keep this under your feet.

Get busy about it, do something about this, and more than sit and take in some more, you're going to have to work on yourself. I wonder if you are, I wonder if I'm not contradicting myself. For he says he will, but look on him and let him work.

I wonder if it's better, more active to say, no consent to put the clouds under, we'll put the clouds under. What does a man do in an airplane? Now I, if I help the pilot, I keep balancing the thing as a return.

Now really, I do. But what helps the pilot, that great big good-natured fellow sitting up there, what does he care about a little fellow weighing 159 in the summer and a little less in the winter? What can I do with that four-cylinder, four-engine monster?

Not at all, but I help him the best I can. Into the sunshine, look on him and let him alone. That's all. But you've got to be willing, that cloud get under your feet, I know it'll never go up. A lot of them.

Oh, they have every excuse in the wide world to say, he's not going up. They'd rather stay right down here. And they do. The sun shines brightly, and they think the sun will be shining when it is. Now, put it under you, money.

What is it? Well, I've said, money, people, friends, position, loved ones, fear, all that I claim and call my own, ambition, pride, stubbornness, nothing else the Holy Ghost may point to in your life.

Only you know what, he's a jealous lover and he suffers no rival. And whatever there is, is a cloud between thee and thy God. Now, I don't say that you're not joined to it, that you're not re-justified.

I say that this we've talked about, this wondrous divinity, this ability perfectly to love him and worship him, that has been choked out and smitten down, out of, for a generation. This, this, this, we lack, and we lack it because we will not put under our feet the cloud of its truth.

We let it rise between us and our, my brethren, if you will put it under your feet. Why, you will find that this hydroxin, all that that's bothered you, and that that changes you and worries you and dreams you, it's down there and it's out and it's gone and you've got the clear sky above you.

But if you have put the cloud under you, then you will now do but look on in love. Simpson wrote this song that nobody ever sings anymore, for two or three reasons. One is, it seems bad. The second is, nobody sings it.

It is, I take the hand of love divine. I count it, take it, promise mine. It's eternal, count it fine. I take thee under me. I take thee, blessed God, I believe, and thou according to thy word dost undertake for me.

Christ doesn't have to die again. No cross erected again. No value needs to be added to the atonement. The face of God smiling, but the cloud hiding. Your cloud, my cloud. If you say that's too thin, it is, that's too thick, that is, but that couldn't be too good.

It is true of the masses, it is. And because that cloud has been above them and thought they can't rise, they've rushed to get a little heartbeat from the theatre, rushed to get a little bit of a feeling from hillbillies, ballads, religious songs and theatrics.

I don't blame them, they've been cheated, and the liars have wronged them, as in the days of Jesus. Jesus walked among men in that day with his eyes bright in his beating feet. And Jesus, they tell you, do because they're theologically right, but don't be like them.

And they said we'll kill that man, and they'll kill that man. But he rose the third day and sent down the Holy Ghost into the world, and he's mine, and ours to possess. And don't you let anybody tell you how much you can have of it.

We can tell you how much you can have of it. Don't you let anybody take you aside and tell you now not to get excited and not to get connected. That's a new job, all that there is. Brethren, don't you let any of that happen to you.

The Holy Spirit and Spiritual Vitality

Just as sure as God is, if we continue in the direction we've been moved in evangelical faith, that which is now fundamentalism will be liberalism in a short time. We've got to have the Holy Ghost back, and we've got to have the face of God shining down.

And I just told Bernie Bradshaw, and he said, sense and feel and know the wondrous divine illumination in him, he said, I'm yours. Does that make a fanatic out of you? Come on, let's talk a little fanatic, just go on, simply in the air.

No, no, that's not fanaticism. It's fanaticism in him going against the scriptures, imagined things, and he has to interpret the word of God, but he can't go over one line of the word of God, not one line.

It's all here with us. The doctrine of this faith, the faith of living still. So what about it? I take it and you take it. Now if you can go and put that cloud of self and cloud of self-love and cloud of fear and cloud of stubbornness and cloud of greed and cloud of ambition under your feet, then there's nothing to it.

There's nothing for you to do. You can't climb to heaven on a rope ladder. There's nothing for you to do. Take the hand of love divine, I pray you, take it, promise mine, with which you can accomplish thine, I pray you, take on the case, I say to you, blessed Lord, I give myself to thee.

And thou according to thy word does on this earth finish it. For a long time, you can't get above it, you can't. So you've tried to prune your way above it, you've tried to believe your way above it, you can't.

You've got to put it under your feet. The wise lover put all he could see and all he could teach his daughter to know and look away to the sunlight. And when you realize that there's nothing a man can do, he can't sell himself as a holy ghost, he can't sell his own heart, he can't crucify you, he can't, God has to do it.

Moving Forward in Faith and Rest

And you do it, in a way optimistic and friendly and on your side, wanting to help you a little bit, anxious to go, if you could use the word anxious, it's such a good word. But when you sit back, and you're blue, and you've been there through many aughters and you've read so many books, you're all confused.

Until the sun shines in, until God's cool, simple wind started on the way to you, until it comes down in fifteen minutes, until it comes down in fifteen minutes, God says that man is God's equal man, if he'll put it all in his blood and in his feet, and look the way the Lord did.

Not trying to tell him what to do and how to do it, but look how he's engaged in this. You will move up with him to a full restfulness and power such as you never knew before. And you'll have a marvelous deliverance, marvelous peace in you.

You'll believe in the scriptures, you'll believe in the word of God, in the Word of the Holy Spirit, in the Holy Spirit, you'll believe in it. And yet, hours that there will come, presence and radiance and illumination, you'll never see it.

All the glory to the Lord of Hosts and to His holy name. Amen.