My Soul Thirst — A.W. Tozer

The Soul’s Thirst for God

I want to begin by saying that there is a vast difference in poems between the text which I have read and the great Bible giants and the shining souls that have lived through the Bible times and present-day Gospels.

David’s Longing for the Living God

You think for instance about the man David, how David sought after the Lord in the book of Psalms. As a half-pentecostal who was addicted to all the pentecostal art, I say of this person, for God, for the living God, when shall I come and appear before God?

And O God, thou art my God, all the world I seek thee. My flesh, my soul is precious to thee. My flesh is in the grand place of the land where my wife is. Receive thy power and thy glory, for as I have seen thee in Abraham.

And then he continues and says, My soul will follow it hard after thee, O man, that upholds me. Now that's the language of the man David. You find it through the Old Testament, you find it beginning back with Abraham.

And taking all the way down through, they were a festivity, a lot. And the difference between them, between the time of their lives and the time of our lives, is that they sought him, and found him, and sought him still, and found him and sought him more.

But he, the living God, did not accept him and keep him. Now that is the difference. And every day, deep in my heart, I can't say it is easy, but I can, I can think about some great souls, some great souls.

And I'm nice about them. And how there are very many who are musical to us, because they are associated. They said, we don't play to them, and they have no virtue for us. They get their virtue when we get ours, from Jesus Christ our Lord.

And the same is found now as does, and ours is the same as theirs. They were not deifying him or canonizing him, but their names were associated with this curse that Paul expressed here. When he said, I sing the gloss, you doubtless, I follow after.

If I may apprehend and I forget the things which are before, come to those things, it was this, that gave music to the name of Augustine, and Tala, and Jacob Bate Tempest, and Richard Rowe, and Bernard of Clairvaux, and Bernard of Cluny, and John of the Cross, and Madame de Mines, sound to us.

Why do they bring us up like tuning an instrument when we hear them? Not that their nice names had anything that you and I don't have potentially and by nature, but that they were associated with the long and proud, and Nicholas of Keetha, and Jan Reisberg, and Lorenzo Scipoli, and Cengelon, and Henry Cecil, and Samuel Rutherford, and I've interdicted with Henry Cecil, brother, that said there is a difference in hearing a lute sweetly played and only hearing that one hadn't been played.

Most Christians, I'll get the word to this effect, they only hear that there has been a lute played, but they've never heard it. Well, that was Henry Cecil. And then there was Samuel Rutherford, and Tinker, and Heber, and Samuel King, and John Newton, and Samuel Medley, and Chase Steven, and Paul Gerhardt, and Sennett, and Dobridge, and Lindemann.

Their names are musical names, and why? They're musical names because they associate the best of souls. We see them as the deer that's been chased by the hounds longing for the water, and saying, let me alone for my soul is seeking God.

And they caught him again. And what a tragedy it has been in our time that we are taught, believe on him, accept him no more. And that's where we are today. And what I'm trying to do, my brethren, is to say that if you want to don't care so much exactly what you receive at a given time, that's not the point.

When you aim the arrow, it misses away. When you aim the target with the arrow, it misses out. It is direction and motion that matters. What is the direction? And if we're moving toward God, I'm not so concerned that we have a great image.

Not at all. What I want to see is, as the old book that I've been quoting from, ever more crying after him, thou lovest. If that is the testimony of your soul, ever more crying after him, thou lovest.

And you know that I've heard of people who got blessings like this, and that's what I'm looking for. And I receive. But in the meantime, I'm pretty concerned because what you want, sir, is a heart that ever more cries out, thou lovest.

And the heart that's crying after the one he loves is better indeed than the heart that has such a rotten head. Now, there's a book of the Old Testament that very few people read. The theme, it seems, I don't like to read at all.

The Song of Solomon as a Picture of Christ’s Love

It's the Song of Solomon. And most people don't read it because they don't know what it means. But it was the very, the very joy of these great things that I've been telling you about. Bernard achieved a sermon on the Song of Solomon, and he had only preached the sermon on the first chapter when he died, bearing glory.

But the one in the first chapter, I have his book on the Song of Solomon. The song by the psalmist seems that we love so much. His presence, my soul takes delight, was taken directly from the Song of Solomon.

And it is the story of a girl very deeply in love with a young shepherd. And yet she is so beautiful that a king demands her favor. And she pays royal to her shepherd, her simple shepherd, who gathers little in the day of the night, and comes to her and calls her to the latter.

It's quite, it's quite a wonderful love story indeed. And it has been said so by the church as being the Jesus, the shepherd, the rejected shepherd. And the word, all it offers is being the king, demanding or coaxing and winning, trying to rule and win.

Meanwhile, he waits, gathering ladies in the night. And where a king, and that's the story, will have made a great many songs of this one. Peace is the odor of thy joy, thy name poured forth through all the places of heaven.

Thy perfect name, the virgin's love, drawn by thy unction from above, they run, they plead to thee. Israel, in mine, the joy and desire of my heart, so close to communion I pine, I long to reside before thou art.

Be that happiest place, that place of thy people's abode. For saints in an ecstasy gaze and hang on the cheekly side. If I could even find a company of people that could go that far, I'd be a happier man than I am tonight.

For there, where I flock, there only I cover to rest. To lie at the foot of the rock or rise to be hid in my breast. There I would always abide and never a moment depart. Concealed in the clenched of thy pride eternally held.

These, these great souls that I've mentioned, that's the way they talk about God. But I've believed on Christ, let's go have a sober. Christ is Christianity. Brethren, if we don't have, I said this good enough.

The Church Must Recover Heart Religion

If we don't have a return to this time, the thing that I'm teaching about to you now. Evangelicalism will be liberalism in thirty years, twenty-five or thirty years. Always remember that the church never runs on its head.

The church runs on its heart, always remember that. Always remember that the Holy Ghost never fills a man's head. But the Holy Ghost fills a man's heart. And the efforts of this Christianity with all learning and all philosophy and all science.

Which is being made by some evangelicals to get a cold crown from Almighty God. And He will let them go their blind ways to liberalism at last. You see it a little, protesting they're not while they are.

But somewhere God will have himself a people. I don't know where they are, but God's people. And they will be those who evermore cry after Him they love. Now, I want to point out that this is no place for human effort.

Knowing God Beyond Human Thought

The old man of God says, be wary in this work, travel not in my imagination. He said, now remember, you are on the ask of God, don't try to think your way through. Because there is an element of unknowing, a deep divine abyss of the Godhead.

I won't settle for anything less. Now, I'm going to try not to be critical, but I won't settle for anything less. Then the deep divine abyss, the soundless, amazing sea of being that we call God, it is there and it's beyond the power of thought or vision.

And it's utterly and completely futile in trying to think your way through. And that's been our difficulty in the day and night. A young man gets hungry and he's hot and he goes to see a teacher. And the teacher shuts him down and begins to think his way through.

He's all fixed up. And he goes away, says, thank you, thank you, doctor. He's all fixed up, but he hasn't received a thing. He has in his head, but his heart still goes away hungry. Listen to the old man.

Of all the teachers, he says, and their works, even of the works of God himself, a man may through grace have fullness of knowledge. Now, let's get that. Don't show the hate. And so of all the teachers, owners, and their works, and even the works of God, can a man have any small rights?

Through grace, man can have fullness of knowledge, but of God himself can no man think at least. Think about him, but you can't think around him and think equal to him and think up to him. He may well be loved, but not by love may he be gotten, and by love may he be held, but by thought never.

How then can we know him? With a devout and pure love, to pierce that cloud of darkness and strike upon it with his sharp dart of longing love. For it's such a naked intent direct unto God without any other cause than himself.

There's that word himself again, and I have been taught from that word himself occurs. Did you know that this society always began on the word himself? And it was himself that gave us the message. But we're away from it today, and we're satisfied with the works, knowledge of God.

But you'll never get there that way, my brother. You'll bump your head and you'll never get there because thought is the intellectual element in the gospel, and there is an intellectual element in the gospel, remember that.

Remember that one of the appendices. And there is an intellectual element in the gospel, and that's what we call theology or doctrine. And it is theology. Thought engages doctrine and is necessary and right.

And is that beyond the intellect which we need and seek. It is that which we can't get to with the head. Now, one song says the spirit breathes upon the word and brings the truth to sight. It depends on the scriptures how much more wonderful the scriptures are than when they are merely taught, when we merely found it.

Its founding of the word of God without the spirit breathing upon it can be wholly a useless thing. And we sing sometimes beyond the sacred page, what? Beyond the page, not apart from the sacred page, not away from the sacred page, not contrary to the sacred page, beyond the sacred page I speak thee, Lord.

The sacred page is not to be a barrier to God. The sacred page is not to be a substitute for God, though it is made that by millions of people. The sacred page is the end, but only the means toward the end, and God is the end.

It is God that we seek, my brethren. The intent unto God, there we have it. It is specific enough, a naked intent direct unto God, and without any intellect. Now, the parent already said if you have the text, you have the emotion of angelica, settle for that.

If you have the text, you have the experience. My brethren, it's all wrong. The text, you have the text, but the experience ought to result from the text. But you can have the text and not have the experience.

The Inheritance Must Be Possessed, Not Merely Read

I remind, people remind me of an heir, a rich man, a very, very rich man died. And in that will, he passes on to his only son all of his riches, running into the moon, and so the heir gets the will, borrows it from the lawyer, and carries it around.

And here he is, the angel, ragged and hungry, begging a crust on the street and walking around in ragged jeans. And they say to him, you're in bad shape, you're ragged, your skin's going through, and your feet must be quivered like this, and you're old.

And he talks that way to me. Listen to this. And then he opens the will. And unto my dear son shall I teach. And then he names bonds and stocks and poverty and yachts. But poor Charles is satisfied with this.

He's never had to kill anybody. He's never had to take anything. He's never gotten anything. He simply has the will. You and I go around with the bits and pieces. And we're lean and we're hungry and we're pained and we're pale and we're dry and they can see our, the rags that we wear.

And some evangelist comes along and starts saying, you're ragged and you're hungry looking and you're weak. And we giggle up and say, what a way to talk. Am I not accepted in the beloved? Do not I have everything there is in Jesus?

Is not God my God and where is God? And we go in for a ragged lonely way down the street. If you're getting to have the will, it's another thing to have what you will. And the will of God is one thing but it has another thing.

But I want to tell you, as the old man said, be thouware. And don't try to think you'll come up to a point where you'll talk your way up as far as you can get. And you'll never get any further with your head now.

The Holy of Holies and the Need for Spiritual Solitude

You might just well put. I want to give an Old Testament illustration and show how this was. I've used this before but I illustrate with it here. The rest of the high priest into the holy of holies. You remember there were three places.

There was the outer court which had no sun shown down. And when the priest was there, he had the light of nature. Then he passed through. And when the veil fell back in place, that was called the holy place.

And in there, there was no light of nature, just a light. A light that the priest himself made and lighted and kept lighted. But that wasn't enough. There was the holy of holies. That holy spot where the can of glory burned and burned.

And there, there was no light of nature. The holy of holies couldn't get in there. And there was no artistic, enthusiastic light. No long-tailed coated creature inclining in a ministerial dome. None of that there.

It was the supernatural light of God, this spot. It was the shining from the mercy seat. And so when the priest got in there, he had nothing. Absolutely nothing. Would you like to have been a high priest and know that the God that made heaven and earth was running in fire between the wings of his chariot?

That that great God with his youth and his sea of endless bounded beings, this terrible God that made heaven and earth and all the things that are there, this God was there. And the priest was moving toward that God.

He said above to help him. That's very good. Sure, that's your denomination. That's natural things. And there went a little target of light. That's your theology. And he had to go on until there was no natural light, no artificial light, but a pure shining.

And there in the presence of the pure natural shining, he had nothing to proclude but the character of God. And he was all alone. But he could go in with the priest. They could help him. His helpers could help him to get the veils apart so that their eyes averted.

They could not enter into that holy of holies. That was alone with blood. And the blood protected him from death, from the burning, for he was alone with blood. And he would have burned and he burned in a fire except the blood was there to protect him.

And he had no one there to pat his back, nobody there to show him a check, nobody there to reach him, nobody there, nobody there to help him. He had nothing but the character of God's assurance. And he was all alone.

When you meet God finally, it has to be alone in your heart. It would take the crowd to get you converted if you haven't been converted. It would take the crowd to get you through to the fullness of the Holy Ghost you haven't had and then don't know anything about what I'm preaching about.

For there's a loneliness. I heard a grand old preacher preach one of the greatest, two greatest sermons I ever heard in my life. One was preached here by a person called, as the fine art of listening to God, by an old friend named Raymond.

The other was preached by Max Wright when he preached on Spirit. And there we are, alone. Alone. People don't want to be alone. They don't want to be. You young people, you don't want to be alone. You want the crowd around you.

You want people there that can laugh. You want people there that can take the heat off. You want friends and support and comfort here. But if you ever get through to where you should and if ever your lungs are watered it's going to be alone.

I don't mean you won't be able to work here but I mean you will be alone even though you're surrounded by a crowd. You know what? To be all alone even though surrounded by a crowd. God has to cut every maverick out of the herd and brand him all alone.

He doesn't do it by mass but it's all alone. And all those 3 ,000 that were converted each alone as if there'd been no other. And when the Holy Cross and sat upon each of them said the scripture each of them He didn't say it sat upon all of them it sat upon each of them and each one went through this experience as if he had been by himself.

When that remarkable Irish woman couldn't be able to get God to do anything she asked him to do this little woman up in Canada who died some years ago of her they said and prayed as if God were her father and he had as if she was God's only child.

There's what I mean my friend. We want to help each other. We want to help as far as we can. But God wants us to cut through where there is no natural light to help us. We can't answer. And where our denomination goes out from under denominations have their place and I'm not against them.

Denominational Dependence and Personal Faith

But prepare it if you don't watch it. We will lean upon our denomination. I read a letter in one of the evangelical magazines of a man who said I have accepted the doctrines of such and such a denomination and I expect them to bother me.

He had allowed somebody else to make up his mind for him. That's why millions of people have become Catholics because somebody does their thinking for him. Somebody assures him. Somebody says a word or an instant consolation and all of their thinking has been done and all of their responsibility is taken by somebody higher up than they are today.

Now is that unkind? I hope it isn't. I don't mean it to be so. I only say this is why people who live with denominations can hold their people. They never say it's you. You have to find God as an old founder of Waterbrook.

You have to seek God alone and I'll help you and do my best but when he meets you and you can't make an authority nobody can come and say alright it's done I'm hereby now as of today this hour declare you alright.

I almost got there some happy woman said to me I think you've got it. Well I thank God I found out that because that is somebody pointing to me and saying you've got it. But better than what we want is I repeat I'm going in his direction with nothing but a naked intent unto himself intent unto God I want God and want nothing more.

Justification, Redemption, and Assurance in Christ

Now what shall we do? When Christ has removed all the legal iron glass I heard a sermon today by some fellow with a very young voice I didn't wait to hear him out so I don't know who he was being justified Jesus and so on telling how that was that will be me and when he was through all I had was an illustration brethren they can't rob me.

I'm too tough and won't be robbed and let them try to rob me but I won't be robbed. I believe that when Jesus Christ came to me he meant he redeemed me and I'm not going to be shooed away by some bright fellow who tells me that was a figure drawn from there and when he said I'm justified I'm not going to be shooed away by some fellow who said it was an oriental illustration drawn from a court of law.

Maybe the illustration or the figure was drawn from there but back of that figure is more of reality and my life and future and hope depends upon that. And I'm not going to be shooed away by a solid hard core of facts harder than the rocks of Asia to remove all the legal hindrances.

The word legal sparked me off to say that to get a defense. I believe there are reasons why I ought not to go to heaven. I believe that there are governmental reasons why I ought not to go to heaven. Because I don't belong where be every one of them either intent or in purpose.

And so there's got to be a justification somewhere. There's got to be a redemption. She has to be done to legally permit me to have God and God to have me. And it's been done. Thank God it's been done.

Read Romans 3. So remember that every illegal hindrance has been taken away. There is not a thing in the right world and all the depths of the fullness of gullies. And there's not a reason why we can't enter in if we still evermore chastise with a naked intent of love.

Faith, Love, and Emptying Oneself Before God

Well then I point out to you that there's only eight of our way in. I have tried to deal with people who try to think their way in. A man used to come to me and talk about. He was a very good student a very good thinker.

I think he was. He read widely and was quite a theologian. And he equated King Paul with Charles B. King and arrived at a definition of grace that would satisfy him. He had become a paranoiac and believed that he'd gone off.

He'd gone off because he was trying to think his way in. Oh brother you know there's a time when all you can do is believe God believe what he says. Believe and love. Believe and love. The old brother says for God himself so well beloved but not sought the great God all universe it overflows into can never be surrounded by that little thing we call your faith like never, never, never.

He knows that all he could do would be to stand at the lowest point of God and think down there. You never can rise to the face of God but love and faith love and faith. These, these by these we can know God by love and faith.

I want to tell you that the very happy knowledge that there are in the kingdom of God you know what a vacuum is. It's an empty place where there isn't anything not even air and nature abhors a vacuum so they say.

And that wherever there's a vacuum unless it's protected by water, whatever it be. And the kingdom of God also abhors a vacuum. When you empty yourself God almighty rises in. And the reason that is that we are satisfied with what we have.

But if you have been you will find that God will rise into the vacuum. Somebody wrote this drawn by the water drawn by love after them. I follow fast drawn from earth to things above drawn out of myself at last.

But nothing shall be found there drawn out of myself at last. And that's to tell you to many of you and to many of us we've never been drawn from earth drawn out of myself at last. What a happy hour when we've been drawn out of ourselves.

And there's a vacuum and into that vacuum rushes the blessed presence. This is the risk you must know that it does not consist in anything else but in the goodness and greatness of God and of our own nothingness and information to every human in subjecting ourselves for love of him unto every people in the renunciation of all of our own and a complete resignation of ourselves to his good place.

And all will be done by us simply for the glory of God and for his favor alone and because he thus will to be thus loved and served. And this is the law of God and set by the hand of the Lord himself for his faithful service this is his easy yoke.

And this is his burdened life and the great things of other days. And here is the wonderful King Prince in his talks he always says the same thing to everybody. I have mentioned names from Augustine on down to later times and you can read the hymns and read their devotions.

And you will find that they all add up to the same thing. A sailor and a healer a Calvinist and an Armenian an Episcopalian and a Catholic as he lived in the day when there was power and light and they added up to the same thing so that the Holy Ghost doesn't say two things.

He says one thing and he says the same to everybody that's listening to him. And so I can tell you and you can quote from almost anywhere and not be contradicted the same Holy Spirit says the same thing to all his children.

He says pour yourself out to me empty yourself. Bring your empty earthen vessels not a few bring them and empty yourself same thing for the glory of God alone not mentality not intellect. But the Holy Ghost.

He knows the things of a man but the spirit of the man that's in him to God but the Holy Spirit. So if you can't climb your way up Jacob's ladder hand over heels and you can't think your way through. You can only love your way in and believe your way in.

Deliverance from Self and the Solitary Encounter with Christ

And come and meet me like it's time and drawn by your Redeemer's love. Come and pour yourself out until at last you're delivered from yourself. You know that's your only problem yourself. You say if you had a better pastor I'd be a better Christian.

I wish that could be so. But you know it wouldn't be the better the pastor that you've got and the better preacher it would be. It would be him because you would tend to become a spiritual parasite and lean on him.

And all your people would come and help you. And the reason is have no help from the pulpit so to seek God alone. But if you get too much help from the pulpit you tend to become lean on your pastor. I don't want you to lean on me.

I believe in the threefold of believers. And I believe there's man here who loves God as truly as I do and have as much right to speak as I have. And ordination to me. The Virgin said no man ever laid his empty hands on mine she said.

And ordination to me that God Almighty hasn't called a man you can ordain until the cows come home and you'll still be a baby. So my brethren just be with yourself. Just be. And if you get delivered from yourself drawn out of myself at last.

But it'll be when when you're drawn out of yourself when you're stuck so far down in the mud of your own ego. There's doubt. And there'll be a sound that can be heard of blocking. When you're pulled out of yourself and you're somebody and you're sought seeking you'll feel over.

Oh you'd like to feel over. But brethren God can be loved and can be forgotten. And by love he may be whole but by thought never. So he said be careful. Don't try to give your life by your wits or your imagination.

Don't try to look unto God by yourself. Keep God in your in your own heart. I don't mean it's not alright to go to altar and pray and pray that thing about the loneliness of the soul that may be cut out of the crowd cut out all by himself like a little woman pushed herself toward Jesus.

And he was so crushed in the crowd that they were pressing him on every with one lonely little woman surrounded in chastened jostles touched to him and his feet. And he turned and said he touched me a little.

He said he touched me crowded on every side. He pushed that he touched me boy. I didn't mean that he said. I mean he touched me in the face he touched me with love. And the rest of them were merely jostling.

And so we have crowds people just jostle. That's all, just jostle. He's there but they're just jostling somewhere somebody pushed through and touched him and in love and in faith he touched him in the heart.

You know what a lot of us need. We need to have our hearts healed. You know we need to have the the ointment put on our hands. An old balm. Yes, yes, yes. There's a balm to heal the things that to my pain.

The Bride’s Missed Opportunity and Christ’s Patient Waiting

I don't know what else I can say tonight. And I want to leave you and say to you your beloved is gathering leaves. And if you walk hand to the left and say come my beloved rise up for the rain is over and gone.

Singing of the birds is heard in the land. And if you're not like the poor bride you know what the matter with her. She said oh in my hand and you could even back there. She said I've got ointment on my hand and I have my night diamonds on.

I'm all covered up. And so sadly he went away. And then her heart began to condemn her to a robe on. She started asking but she said I couldn't find it. Oh you daughters of Zion she said have you seen the star that on Israel shone, that's what the matter with her.

He had come and packed up but I can't come now. I'm sorry honey I'm all covered with ointment and he went sadly away to his work among the nymphs. But she followed him and the watchman saw her and banged her around and went to the pigeons and said have you found him.

And they said to her what is he. What is he above others that you are looking for. And they all altogether loved him. And I was fool enough to make it. I was fool enough to make it. He called and I didn't hear him.

I heard him but I didn't have the heart to go. And now I see what I've missed. And at last he said I found him in my saved life. And when she found him finally soon as they could come a force clear as the sun and bright as the moon terrible as an army was banished but none other than that.

And I told my friend he'll never be any place but very near. He's grieved and he's sad but he's very near and he waits. He waits for a vacuum to form inside their house. And I said well I don't know but whatever it is it's got to get out.

And when you pour it out.