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Following Hard After God, part 3 of 7: The soul's paradox of love · The Pursuit of God Daily

• 0:00
  Host: Good morning. This is The Pursuit of God Daily for Wednesday, October fourteenth. We continue in chapter one of The Pursuit of God, Following Hard After God, with the third of seven readings, where Tozer describes how finding God is only the beginning of seeking Him.
• 0:16
  Reader: Romans eleven, verse thirty-three. O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!
• 0:29
  Reader: From A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God, chapter one, Following Hard After God. You and I are in little (our sins excepted) what God is in large. Being made in His image we have within us the capacity to know Him. In our sins we lack only the power. The moment the Spirit has quickened us to life in regeneration our whole being senses its kinship to God and leaps up in joyous recognition. That is the heavenly birth without which we cannot see the Kingdom of God. It is, however, not an end but an inception, for now begins the glorious pursuit, the heart’s happy exploration of the infinite riches of the Godhead.
• 1:11
  Reader: That is where we begin, I say, but where we stop no man has yet discovered, for there is in the awful and mysterious depths of the Triune God neither limit nor end.
• 1:22
  Reader: Shoreless Ocean, who can sound Thee? Thine own eternity is round Thee, Majesty divine!
• 1:29
  Reader: To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart. St. Bernard stated this holy paradox in a musical quatrain that will be instantly understood by every worshipping soul:
• 1:52
  Reader: We taste Thee, O Thou Living Bread, And long to feast upon Thee still: We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead And thirst our souls from Thee to fill.
• 2:01
  Reader: Come near to the holy men and women of the past and you will soon feel the heat of their desire after God. They mourned for Him, they prayed and wrestled and sought for Him day and night, in season and out, and when they had found Him the finding was all the sweeter for the long seeking. Moses used the fact that he knew God as an argument for knowing Him better. “Now, therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, show me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight”; and from there he rose to make the daring request, “I beseech thee, show me thy glory.”
• 2:38
  Reader: God was frankly pleased by this display of ardor, and the next day called Moses into the mount, and there in solemn procession made all His glory pass before him.
• 2:50
  Host: There is a paradox in this passage, and Tozer calls it the soul's paradox of love: to have found God and still to pursue Him. We might think that once a person is saved, the seeking is over. Tozer is saying the opposite. The new birth is real and it is decisive. Jesus said, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. That is John chapter three, verse three. But Tozer reminds us that this birth is not an end but an inception. It is the door, and beyond the door lies the whole house. Why does the pursuit never run out? Because of who God is. Paul, after eleven chapters of Romans unfolding the gospel, does not reach a tidy conclusion. He breaks into worship: O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! The more Paul understood, the deeper the depths became. And in Ephesians chapter three, he prays that believers would know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. To know what passes knowledge. That is the holy paradox again, put in Paul's own words. Look at Moses. Exodus chapter thirty-three tells us God said to him, I know thee by name, and thou hast also found grace in my sight. Moses had already found God. And on that very ground he asked for more: I beseech thee, shew me thy glory. He used what he had received as the reason to ask for more. And God was pleased to answer. Paul lived the same way. In Philippians chapter three he writes, Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after. This is the man who had seen the risen Christ, and still he says, I press toward the mark. Here is the warning in the passage: the too-easily-satisfied heart. It is possible to know the Lord and settle down, content with yesterday's portion. So here is something to carry into today. Take one thing you already know to be true of God, perhaps that He has been faithful to you, and pray it back to Him the way Moses did: Lord, because You have shown me this, show me more of Yourself. Let what you have received become the reason you seek Him again.
• 4:53
  Host: Father, we thank You that by Your Spirit You have given us new birth and brought us to know You through Jesus Christ our Lord. Keep us from being too easily satisfied. Because we have tasted, make us hungry still. Show us Your glory, as You did for Moses, and draw us on into the depths of Your riches. We ask it in the name of Jesus. Amen.
• 5:13
  Host: For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen. That is Romans chapter eleven, verse thirty-six. Go with God.