The Pursuit of God - Week #2

Chapter Two – The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing

“Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

God placed Adam and Eve in a Garden full of blessings, made for them to enjoy and use with the intention that these “things” would always be external and subservient to humans. Within the heart of man was a shrine that only God could inhabit, not things.

The sin of man complicated things, and now the very blessings that come from God threaten to be “a source of ruin to the soul.” God was removed from within the heart of man and things moved in, and there “in the moral dusk, stubborn and aggressive usurpers fight among themselves for first place on the throne.”

Tozer goes on to say that “there is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets ‘things’ with a deep and fierce passion…The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die…”

The self-life’s primary characteristic is possessiveness, and the Lord Jesus teaches us that the only effective way to destroy this is by the Cross:

“The blessed ones who possess the Kingdom are they who have repudiated every external thing and have rooted from their hearts all sense of possessing. These are the ‘poor in spirit.’ They have reached an inward state paralleling the outward circumstances of the common beggar in the streets of Jerusalem…They have broken the yoke of the oppressor not by fighting but by surrendering. Though free from all sense of possessing, they yet possess all things. ‘Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’”

The author goes on to speak of Abraham and his love for Isaac. It was a natural love but an “uncleansed” love which threatened to become more important to the elderly father than the love of God. God watches over our hearts carefully and lovingly and He was aware of Abraham’s love and affection for Isaac. When God asked Abraham to offer up his son, Abraham misinterpreted how God wanted him to do that, but “he had correctly sensed the secret of His great heart” and acted on what he saw of God’s heart.

At the last moment God stepped in to hinder the slaying of Isaac, and Tozer paraphrases God’s words to Abraham: “It’s all right, Abraham. I never intended that you should actually slay the lad. I only wanted to remove him from the temple of your heart that I might reign unchallenged there. I wanted to correct the perversion that existed in your love…”

In my walk with God and in helping others with their walk in God, I’ve come to see how much perversion there is in our love as humans. Those that we love are in the “temple” of our heart where only God should be; consequently, our love for them is perverted because it is selfish, and what we think is loving gestures are really ways to manipulate and control. I’ve discovered and continue to discover that without God enthroned as the only God in my heart, all love for humans is tainted with selfishness; I want to own and control those I love, use them to make my life more fulfilling and satisfying. Family relationships are full of manipulation in the name of “love.”

In His great mercy and tenderness, God brings to bear just the right pressures in our lives that force us to either face Him and His truth about our condition or to choose to live a lie.

I remember well when the Holy Spirit did this for me in my younger years, and I was forced to choose between God and another relationship which was very dear to me. It was a painful and wrenching experience because, similar to Abraham, my heart affections were bound up in this person. But I will never cease to be grateful for God’s kind severity with me in dealing with the “uncleansed love” that was there. A created being had taken the place in my heart that belonged only to the Uncreated God. When He, by His grace and power, wrenched this out of my heart, it was very painful but the freedom I experienced was glorious! God was enthroned in my heart, and the human relationship was now in its proper place outside of the shrine of my heart, and I could enjoy it as I had not been able to before!

Tozer goes on to say that after this experience with God, Abraham was a man who possessed nothing and yet was very rich. He came out of this fiery trial with all that had been his before (his herds and goods and family and even his son Isaac):

”He had everything, but he possessed nothing. There is the spiritual secret. There is the sweet theology of the heart which can be learned only in the school of renunciation…

“There can be no doubt that this possessive clinging to things is one of the most harmful habits in the life. Because it is so natural it is rarely recognized for the evil that it is…We are often hindered from giving up our treasures to the Lord out of fear for their safety; this is especially true when those treasures are loved relatives and friends. But we need have no such fears…Everything is safe which we commit to Him, and nothing is really safe which is not so committed.”

In closing the chapter, the author gives two instructions to those who long for God to do something about our clinging to other loves:

1. Put away all defense and make no attempt to excuse yourself either in your own eyes or before the Lord. In other words, get brutally honest with God and with oneself.

2. Remember that this is holy business, not something casual. “Let him insist that God accept his all, that He take things out of his heart and Himself reign there in power. It may be that he will need to be specific, to name things and people by their names one by one…”

Tozer goes on to warn that this cannot be done mechanically but must be taken seriously before God, allowing the pain of releasing the idol to touch our soul. “…the old miser within us will not lie down and die obedient to our command. He must be torn out of our heart like a plant from the soil…He must be expelled from our soul by violence as Christ expelled the money changers from the temple. And we shall need to steel ourselves against…self-pity, one of the most reprehensible sins of the human heart.”

In summary, I’ll add that this is the work of God’s Holy Spirit Who knows us and loves us so well; it is dangerous for us to try to do the work of the Spirit and engage in fleshly introspection. What I must do is place my heart before God, giving Him my permission and giving Him time to search me; if He exposes any perverted love (idolatry), then I must agree with His assessment and pray for His deliverance and then walk out my agreement with Him through obedience. When this experience and process is under His leadership, there is grace to bear the pain because He is in it with me.

The closing prayer of the chapter:
“Father, I want to know Thee, but my coward heart fears to give up its toys. I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide from Thee the terror of the parting. I come trembling, but I do come. Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that Thou mayest enter and dwell there without a rival. Then shalt Thou make the place of Thy feet glorious. Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for Thyself will be the light of it, and there shall be no night there. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.”

God bless you this week…Next week we’ll cover chapter three: Removing the Veil.