I remember reading the advice of someone saying, instead of trying to read a bit of anyone and everyone, find yourself one Christian leader, and spend much time boring into his reading, until his thoughts have started to become your own. For some that is someone like Jonathan Edwards, or Charles Spurgeon or Martyn Lloyd-Jones. For me, for the most part, it is A.W. Tozer. I actually don’t remember where or when I first encountered his writings. Among them were The Pursuit of God, and The Knowledge of the Holy. Reading them was a transforming experience for me.

Here was a man who was solidly evangelical, he was considered a fundamentalist in his day, but he wrote about knowing God in a way that transported. He was in a class by himself when it came to talking about worshipping God, illumination, loving God. The others seemed like mere scribes compared to a man who sounded like a prophet. In Tozer’s own words, “the scribe tells you what he has read, but the prophet tells you what he has seen.” Tozer was able to marry sound orthodoxy, with a burning heart of devotion for God. He was able to combine razor-sharp clarity of thought with poetic adoration of God.

Since that time, when I have found a Tozer book, I have bought it, and recommend you do the same.

Tozer was not the greatest preacher to have ever lived. He was interesting, imaginative and compelling, but no Spurgeon. He was not a missionary martyr. He was not a Bible translator, or a powerful evangelist. Though he became fairly well-known in Chicago, he was by no means a worldwide celebrity, or the pastor of a mega-church of thousands. He was a pastor, a writer, an editor, a conference speaker, in some respects simply an ordinary pastor, but he continues to be quoted and read by hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Christians. What makes Tozer then so compelling? What was unique about Tozer that makes him something of an example to follow?

I think the answer is in the image of Psalm 42:1-2:

As the deer pants for the water brooks, So pants my soul for You, O God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

In fact, in one of the first editions of The Pursuit of God, the image on the front cover was a deer.

This was the heart of Tozer’s life – a pursuit of God. He followed hard after God. His preaching and writing flowed out of a life of communion with God. Tozer was really a mystic, in the best sense. There is a good mysticism and a bad mysticism. A bad mysticism is close to the mysticism of Eastern religion. This is how Tozer himself described mysticism:

The word ‘mystic’ “…refers to that personal spiritual experience common to the saints of Bible times and well known to multitudes of persons in the post-biblical era…[he] has been brought by the gospel into intimate fellowship with the Godhead. His theology is no less and no more than is taught in the Christian Scriptures. … He differs from the ordinary orthodox Christian only because he experiences his faith down in the depths of his sentient being while the other does not. He exists in a world of spiritual reality. He is quietly, deeply, and sometimes almost ecstatically aware of the Presence God in his own nature and in the world around him… It is immediate acquaintance with God by union with the Eternal Son. It is to know that which passes knowledge.”

In some ways, Tozer was a kind of Jeremiah to his generation. American fundamentalism and evangelicalism was at a real crossroads in the 40s, 50s and 60s, specifically in the areas of worship, ministry technique and piety. Tozer warned that the direction most were taking was wrong. Today, we can see that he was right. Most did take the wrong road, and the harvest of another 60 or seventy years of those decisions is still coming in. To read Tozer is, in a way, to retrace our steps back to the crossroads, and get back on the right path, the path that few churches are on today.

So, who was Tozer?

In 1810, Gilbert Tozer emigrated from England to the United States, in the mountainous region of western Pennsylvania. His first wife died young; he remarried and had eight children. He ended up establishing a locale that was known as Tozertown, but he became concerned about the influences that city life was having on his children. He bought a farm outside of town, and moved his family there. He continued to work in town, and came home on weekends. His main reason for the farm was not to make money, but to keep his boys out of trouble. Most of his children moved on from the farm, and by the time Gilbert died, the farm fell to Jacob Tozer. Jacob married Prudence Jackson, and they had six children. Aiden Wilson Tozer was born on April 21, 1897, one of three boys, along with three sisters. He never liked his given names, he preferred to be called ‘A.W.’, or just ‘Tozer’.

Tozer worked hard on the farm, but was something of a naughty boy. He got into a fair number of scuffles, and was known for tormenting his sisters. In rural Pennsylvania, education was limited. He received a basic primary school education, and later enrolled in a correspondence course in drawing cartoons, which he didn’t finish. He did love to read, and read anything he could get his hands on.

In 1907, a tragedy hit the family. Grandmother Tozer, living in their home threw pine chips on the fire in the fireplace, which burst into flame, overheating the chimney and setting fire to the roof. The whole house burnt down. Strangely, Tozer had dreamt about the house burning down, and had a plan in his mind of what he would do if it should happen, and he followed that plan exactly. No one was hurt.

Although they rebuilt the house, things were never the same. Five years later, Jacob agreed to sell the farm, and the family moved to Akron, Ohio, where Goodyear had many rubber factories.

His first job in Akron was selling peanuts, candy and books. He didn’t do well because he preferred to sit and read the books he was supposed to be selling. He eventually got a job at Goodyear, cutting rubber into pieces. While he did that, he would sit with a book of poetry propped up, and memorise it.

He enrolled in high school, and lasted for one day, concluding that he would do better in independent study. That was his last day of formal education. He never went to university, seminary or any place of higher learning. And yet, he did not despise it. He would later say, a minister should get as much education as he can. He was not one of these people that despised learning. He was one of those rare people that do much better with a personal library than with a classroom.

In Akron, they had a neighbour by the name of Holman. Tozer said that one day, when he was 17, Holman came up to him, put his hand on his shoulder, and said “You know, I’ve been wondering about you. I have been wondering if you are a Christian, if you are converted. I just wanted the chance to talk it over with you.” Tozer responded “No, Mr Holman, I am not converted, but I thank you for saying this to me. I am going to give it some serious thought.”

It was a little later at the age of 17, as he was walking home from work, he saw a small crowd of people gather around a street corner. They were listening to a man who spoke with a German accent. Tozer was shocked to realise the man was preaching, and asked himself why the man didn’t have a church to preach in. But as he listened, he heard the man say, “If you don’t know how to be saved, just call on God, saying, “Go be merciful to me, a sinner,” and God will hear you.” Those words burned in Tozer’s heart, and he went home, went straight to the attic and spent the afternoon wrestling with God.

Tozer had been saved. He was a new creature, and the change in him was radical. Not long after, he led his mother to salvation, as well as his three sisters. He became a member of Grace Episcopal Methodist Church, but was baptised in a Brethren church. It was in this Methodist church, that he met 15 year-old Ada Pfautz, whom he took a keen interest in. Her mother, Kate, began giving Tozer all sorts of spiritual books to help him grow. She also urged him to preach, often gathering people in her home to hear him. Kate also encouraged Tozer to pray for the filling of the Spirit, and Tozer would later recount the experience he had at the age of 19. I think Tozer had what many saints have had, a concentrated, intense experience of the presence of God, of His delight, which marked him forever.

Five days after turning 21, Tozer married Ada, his wife until he died. Shortly after that, he was drafted for service in World War I, but the armistice was signed on November 11, and Tozer returned home.

Tozer was still a worker at a rubber factory, but he had begun helping others with street preaching. His English was poor, filled with Pennsylvania slang, and bad grammar, but his wife Ada thought he was wonderful. Unfortunately, Grace Methodist Episcopal Church was rather opposed to street preaching. A.W. and Ada began visiting a church begun by the Christian and Missionary Alliance. The Christian and Missionary Alliance was originally not a denomination. They were Christians from varying churches who met together to promote evangelism, missions, and an interest in what they called the fourfold Gospel – Jesus as Saviour, Sanctifier, Healer and coming Lord. They also stressed what was called ‘The Deeper Life’, which formed a major part of Tozer’s writings. They joined this church, and after doing some itinerant preaching for the CMA, in 1919, Tozer was called to pastor a small storefront church in Stonewood, West Virginia. He was ordained in 1920, and the prayer he prayed before his ordination he later wrote down and printed.

“Forbid that I should become a religious scribe and thus lose my prophetic calling. Save me from the curse that lies dark across the face of the modern clergy, the curse of compromise, of imitation, of professionalism. Save me from the error of judging a church by its size, its popularity or the amount of its yearly offering. Help me to remember that I am a prophet—not a promoter, not a religious manager, but a prophet. Let me never become a slave to crowds. Heal my soul of carnal ambitions and deliver me from the itch for publicity. Save me from bondage to things. Let me not waste my days puttering around the house. Lay Thy terror upon me, O God, and drive me to the place of prayer where I may wrestle with principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world.”

Two years later, a slightly larger CMA church in Morgantown called him. In those days, there was no pastoral salary. Whatever was put in the offering, a portion was taken and given to the pastor, whether or not it met his needs. With a growing family, things were very tight for Tozer and his wife. They would eventually have six boys: Lowell, Forrest, Aiden Jr., Wendell, Raleigh, and Stanley. However, Tozer never complained, and through his life ended up signing away the royalties he might have received from his books. He didn’t own a car for most of his ministry – he said he preferred to use public transport, and use the time for reading. Many years later, the church he was pastoring gave him a car, and he promptly handed the keys over to the missions department, saying, I don’t need a car.

He was called to another church in Toledo, and it was there that his father attended one of the services, responded to an invitation, and was saved.

Shortly after this, in 1925, Tozer was called to a church in Indianapolis, and it was this church that was to radically change his ministry. Up till this point, Tozer’s churches had been small and his focus had been mainly evangelistic. This church was bigger, more established, and the people wanted to be fed. Tozer’s study habits changed. Every Monday and Wednesday, Tozer would be seen heading to the library with an armful of books under each arm, returning some and heading out with others. People began worrying about his study habits, and some said he had gone off the deep end. But Tozer had really begun his pursuit of God in earnest. He knew that to seek God required solitude, study, meditation and prayer. He would later say “You should think ten times more than you read.” He never read a book merely to say he had read it. Always a book was to lead him on in his quest for God. In an editorial on the subject Tozer said that the best book was the one that starts the reader on a train of thought and then bows out, its work finished.

In 1928 Tozer received a call from The Southside Alliance Church in Chicago. Not too anxious to leave his congregation in Indianapolis, he pushed aside the invitation. After some persuasion Tozer agreed to go and preach, but he offered no guarantees. They kept persisting, and Tozer agreed on condition that he would come to preach and pray, not to do visitation, or administration. Tozer came to Southside Alliance Church, and remained there until 1959 – a 31-year ministry.

Numbering around eighty people when Tozer began, the congregation had to build larger facilities in 1941 to accommodate about 800. When the new church building was dedicated, Tozer proudly showed the building to visiting pastors. That Monday, he was smitten by conviction, and spent the day going into every room, and giving it back to God. Tozer was committed to tearing every idol from his heart.

People either loved or hated Tozer’s preaching. His congregation never averaged more than between 400-500 people. He spent hours meticulously producing sermons that were not so much exposition of a text, but timeless principles that came from text. He was almost more of a philosopher-pastor. Instead of shouting, he used crisp, precise, climatic sentences. He had a rather monotone, nasal kind of voice, but his imagination and powers of description meant he was never boring. He did not waste time dealing with side-issues, but focused on the most important matters: worship, devotion to God, holiness, consecration.

He seldom gave invitations. One time he told his congregation, Don’t come forward here and cry about it, go home and live it! Not that people did not respond. People were saved, and changed. He would receive phonecalls from people saying that they had been converted.

He was invited to preach at many conferences but did not care for man-pleasing. On one occasion, he was invited to a Holiness church dedication ceremony, and the service was filled with all kinds of levity, triviality and entertainment. When Tozer got up, he said, “What’s the matter with you holiness people? You used to have standards?” He went on to scrap his planned sermon, and gave those people a spiritual hiding to remember.

He was not an echo chamber for other men’s opinions. Tozer was fond of saying, “I refuse to allow any man to put his glasses on me and force me to see everything in his light.” He was an independent, and here and there, his lack of formal education comes through. He at times shows a misunderstanding of the debate between Calvinism and Arminianism, for example. However, what he did preach and write without finishing high school was remarkable.

He was also a truly catholic Christian. He loved to quote from Christians from just about every century, from the Puritans, to the Reformers, to the early church fathers. He had special appreciation for the mystics, something for which he was criticised, But he was unapologetic. His great love and appreciation for these writers sprang out of his own heart’s deep longing after and thirsting for God. “These people,” Tozer would say, “know God, and I want to know what they know about God and how they came to know it.” On one occasion he met with his friend Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones in England, and said to him, “You know, we believe about the same thing, but came to it from two different paths. You came to it through the puritans, I came to it through the mystics.”

Tozer’s Writings and Ministry

Tozer is probably best known for his writings, most of which came out of his ministry while in Chicago.

Tozer would painstakingly write, and re-write. He said, “hard writing means easy reading.” He would sit in his study over his portable typewriter, with a green eyeshade to protect his light-sensitive eyes, wearing a jersey with the elbows out, and pound out editorials and books with Webster’s Dictionary within easy reach. He loved words, cherished them, and family dinner time was often taken up discussing word meanings, word origins and so forth. He would labour to find just the right word to use when writing. He told men to read people like John Bunyan, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson and the poetry of Wordsworth, Blake, Keats and Shelly. When travelling with his music man – MacAfee, he would pull out a book and they would discuss Shakespeare plots, the poetry of Milton and so forth. In his own words, he was like a bee that could pull nectar out of many flowers.

He would later say that seminary students should be required to sell potato peelers at Woolworths until they can learn to communicate. One such writing project has affected many lives.

In 1945 Tozer was preaching along a particular line of Bible truth. The subject had burned itself deeply into his heart and something had to be done. About this time Tozer received an invitation to preach in McAllen, Texas. This was an opportunity, he thought, to do something about this burden on his heart. The long train ride from Chicago to Texas would offer ample time to think and write. Tozer boarded the train in Chicago, requested a small writing table brought to his roomette and settled down to write. Along about 9:00 P.M. the porter knocked on the side of the room asking if he wanted something to eat.

“Yes,” Tozer mumbled, “would you bring me some toast and tea?” The porter did and Tozer continued writing. He wrote all night, the matter coming as fast as he could write.

When the train pulled into the station the next morning around 7:30 A.M. at McAllen, Texas, the rough draft of the book was finished. All he had before him was his Bible. They later published the book as The Pursuit Of God. To date, The Pursuit Of God has sold well over 1,000,000 copies. Translations have appeared in many foreign languages, including Arabic, Armenian, Chinese, Dutch, German, Swiss, French, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Japanese, Kisukuma (Tanganyika), Korean, Marathi, Portuguese and Spanish.

In 1950 Tozer was elected editor of the Alliance Weekly, now the Alliance Life, official magazine of The Christian and Missionary Alliance.

Tozer never wrote about the trivial, the obvious or the superficial. To read Tozer is to read someone with penetrating clarity. Tozer saw into the nature of things so deeply it burdened him. He once remarked that if you want to be happy do not pray for discernment. He could see through to the very nature of things and see beyond the present action to the impending result in the years to come. He could see that the way the evangelical church of his day was going they soon would be in serious spiritual trouble.

Three Major Concerns in Tozer’s Writings

• Textualism: He saw a trend where people were looking only into the expounding of biblical texts, with little to no expectation of the Holy Spirit’s ministry of illumination. He saw this as a terrible trend towards dead orthodoxy, and he called for people to recognise the need for the Spirit’s illumination. “You can be,” Tozer delighted in saying, “straight as a gun barrel theologically and as empty as one spiritually.” He saw the deadness and lack of piety as evidence that people were not seeking God Himself when reading the Word. He called for solitude, silence, and self-denial as part of seeking God in His Word so as to experience His illuminating ministry.
• Pragmatism in the Church: He saw a growing trend towards using all kinds of methods and techniques from the world to make church more popular, palatable, fun, or attractive to unbelievers. Tozer was writing in the 40s, 50s, and early 60s, but he could see where things were going. Long before Bill Hybels, Rick Warren and the worldliness you now see around you, Tozer stood as a signpost to the church pointing away from pragmatism.
• True Worship: Tozer saw that the church was losing a sense of majesty, reverence and awe in worship, and trivializing worship. He saw that worship was becoming a form of entertainment, and boldly opposed it. “Religious music has long ago fallen victim to this weak and twisted philosophy of godliness. Good hymnody has been betrayed and subverted by noisy, uncouth persons who have too long operated under the immunity afforded them by the timidity of the saints. The tragic result is that for one entire generation we have been rearing Christians who are in complete ignorance of the golden treasury of songs and hymns left us by the ages. The tin horn has been substituted for the silver trumpet, and our religious leaders have been afraid to protest.

It is ironic that the modernistic churches which deny the theology of the great hymns nevertheless sing them, and regenerated Christians who believe them are yet not singing them; in their stead are songs without theological content set to music without beauty.”

“Worship,” Tozer explained, “is to feel in your heart and express in some appropriate manner a humbling but delightful sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder and overpowering love in the presence of that most ancient Mystery, that majesty which philosophers call the First Cause but which we call Our Father Which Art in Heaven.”

The worship in Tozer’s church was carefully planned. He hated impromptu services, and wanted only the best hymns sung in his church. He rejected the hymnal used by the CMA, and instead used an old River Brethren one. He told people to get a hymnal, but no one newer than 100 years old. An ardent lover of hymns, Tozer had in his library a collection of old hymnals. Often, on the way to an appointment he would grab one of these hymnals to read and meditate. “After the Bible,” he often advised, “the next most valuable book is a hymnal. Let any new Christian spend a year prayerfully meditating on the hymns of Watts and Wesley alone, and he will become a fine theologian.” Then he added, “Afterward, let that person read a balanced diet of the Puritans and the Christian mystics. The results will be more wonderful than he could have dreamed.”

But like men like Robert Murray McCheyne, what made Tozer who he was was his prayer life. He often said, “As a man prays so is he.” To him the worship of God was paramount in his life and ministry. He believed that true service would flow out of pure worship. His preaching and his writings were but extensions of his prayer life. What he discovered in prayer soon found its way into his sermons, then articles and editorials and finally into his many books.

In the early days at Chicago he would often take a bus and go out to the lake early in the morning with only his Bible and spend many hours alone with God. When a young pastor came to Chicago, Tozer said to him, “This city is a devil’s den. It is a very difficult place to minister the Word of God, and you will come up against much opposition from the enemy. If you ever want to pray with me, I’m at the lakeside every morning at five-thirty.” The young man did not want to bother Tozer, so he did not accept the offer. But one day he was so troubled, that he made his way very early to the lakeside at about six o’clock, only to find A.W. Tozer flat on his face in the sand worshipping God.”

When praying with his music pastor, he would often read something aloud, something from the Bible, a hymnal, a devotional writer or a poem, and then begin praying.

His praying was like his preaching, honest, frank, intense, tinged with humour, and filled with reverence. In fact, to preserve the crease in his pants, he would change into what he called, ‘his prayer pants’, a set of overalls, and spend hours in his study on his knees or his face, praying. In the middle of praying, he would often grab a notebook, and begin writing, scribbling down some thought or meditation that had come to him while praying. It was not unusual for him to leave meetings, or even the family dinner table to simply be alone in prayer.

Personal Life and Character

Perhaps it was his focus on solitude to seek God that led to his most outstanding flaw. His essay, “The Saint Must Walk Alone”, explains to a certain degree his idea of true spirituality.

Tozer was really a bit withdrawn, and by no means a people-person. He was not a visitation pastor. After his sermons, he would often retreat to his study. If church members came over for lunch he would often be silent right through the meal, and be off to wash the dishes as soon as it was over. His family also felt the brunt of that. He was away on speaking engagements so much, that the brunt of raising six boys really fell on his wife Ada. He was not as sensitive or involved a husband as he certainly could have been. Ada was enormously industrious, having 46 shirts a week to wash by hand, no car to use to buy groceries, who sewed his children’s clothes, and kept a vegetable garden, along with missionary correspondence, hospitable hostess, member of the choir, and a great doer of mercy in the church. Often the only way she got A.W. to help with the chores was if she promised to read him one of his books while he was doing some ironing for her. After he died, Ada remarried and stated that Tozer had loved Jesus Christ, but her new husband loved her.

That is not to say that their marriage was stormy, cold or unhappy. Nor was Tozer completely distant from his children. Tozer seldom spanked his boys, but would put a hand on the offending boy’s head and speak to him in a quiet voice. The boys later said that they preferred their mother’s spanking than their dad’s talks. He was very even-keeled, one of the boys remarked, no outbursts, or extreme highs or lows. There was little to nothing in the way of family devotions or Scriptural instruction or prayer at home. Nevertheless, all the children were in church for all the services.

When three of his boys were drafted into the army during World War 2, Tozer spent many agonising mornings in prayer, and would rise at 4:30 to have breakfast with them before seeing them off. Two of his boys were wounded, but none of them were killed.

A lot changed in his parenting when his daughter Beckie was born in 1939, when Tozer was 44. He became enormously involved in her life, so much so that it seemed he showed her far more attention than his wife.

He told his children stories, and usually invented them on the spot. His daughter Beckie recalled one series he came up with about a rabbit detective. He enjoyed the occasional game of checkers with his boys, and on one occasion became so engrossed in the games that he forgot about a speaking engagement he had with Youth For Christ. All in all, Tozer was not someone whose family life was disastrous or a disgrace. It lacked the intimacy it could have had. It simply was not all that we would want in a man so used by God in other areas. If there was any imbalance in his life, this was it.

Later Years and Legacy

In 1959, Tozer retired from the church in Chicago, with a desire to focus more on writing. His health was failing, and the church needed to move from their area, which was declining, and he knew he was not the man for that job. A church in Toronto, Canada, persuaded him to come to be their preaching pastor. In these last years, he completed perhaps his greatest book – a work on the attributes of God called, The Knowledge of the Holy. He also put together a collection of what he thought were some of the most beautiful hymns and poems and called it The Christian Book of Mystical Verse. He enjoyed a fruitful ministry.

In May 1963, he experienced chest pains, and was hospitalised. They didn’t think it was serious. His wife visited him in the hospital on the Saturday night, and he asked her to pick him up early the next morning so they could travel to his next speaking engagement. She kissed him goodnight. An hour later, a nurse went in and found Tozer in the middle of a heart attack. They could not stabilise him, and on May 12, 1963, Tozer’s pursuit of God, in this life, ended.

At the funeral his daughter Becky said something typical of what Tozer himself would have said. “I can’t feel sad; I know Dad’s happy; he’s lived for this all his life.” One of his sons said, “Dad burned himself out for God. That’s the way he wanted to seek God.”

A simple tombstone marks his burial place in Akron, Ohio, with the simple words – A Man of God.

He being dead yet speaks: pursue God! Seek Him in living, vital experience. Do not give in to the pragmatism of our day, for it is a dead end. Do not give in to the trivialisation of worship, and the use of entertainment – for it will rob you. Follow hard after God.

“If you major on knowing God,” Tozer once wrote, “and cultivate a sense of His presence in your daily life, and do what Brother Lawrence advises, ‘Practice the presence of God’ daily and seek to know the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures you will go a long way in serving your generation for God.”