The Knowledge of the Holy: Why We Must Think Rightly About God
[Editor’s Note: This is a 23-Day Series exploring different aspects of God’s nature and personality, using Tozer’s “The Knowledge of the Holy” as a discussion starter. You can read the introduction of the series here.]
Today is the first day in our journey with Tozer through the Knowledge of the Holy. Like any good author, Tozer seeks to convince us first that the journey is worth the effort. Why should we be concerned about knowing God? Why should how we think about God matter to us? Does it matter at all?
Tozer argues convincingly that it does. In fact, He argues that our spiritual lives, both as individuals and as churches, rises and falls based on what we think about God. In our spiritual lives, we move towards our perception of who God is, whether we know it or not. Over and over again the Scriptures say that we become like what we behold. We will become like the skewed images of God that we have. “To the pure you show yourself pure, but to the crooked you show yourself shrewd,” (Psalm 18:26). He goes on to argue that the heart of idolatry is recreating God in the image of ourselves. This erodes our worship of Jesus and our ability to follow Him wholeheartedly.
For me this morning, Tozer’s words are strong medicine. Within the last ten or fifteen years the church has undergone a revolution of sorts, where we’ve discovered that many of our beliefs about Christianity were inherited from our fathers rather than given from God. And the result has been at times a healthy questioning of a doctrine or practice and other times a denial of an essential truth of Christianity. I fear often that instead of an honest desire to know Christ, we are really remaking God in the image of our culture and the result is a Christianity that doesn’t look like it’s Christ.
This is why this journey is so important. Not so that we can say we know theology, but so that our lives can grow up into the image of Him who is the Head.
So, that’s my take on today’s chapter. Now it’s your turn. In the comments, leave a brief thought that struck you from Chapter 1 of “The Knowledge of the Holy.”
Day 1: Why We Must Think Rightly About God
Day 3: A Divine Attribute: Something True About God
Day 5: The Self Existence of God
Day 6: The Self Sufficiency of God
Day 9: The Immutability of God
Day 10: The Divine Omniscience
Day 12: The Omnipotence of God
Day 13: The Divine Transcendence
Day 15: The Faithfulness of God
Cluster Map
Pursuing Glory 