Possessing Nothing, But God

Some quick nuggets from chapter 2 of The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer.  The chapter is entitled, “The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing."

• In Eden, “things” were made for man’s use, but they were always to be external to the man and subservient to him.  In the deep heart of man was a shrine where none but God was worthy to come.  Within him was God; without, a thousand gifts which God had showered upon him.
• There is within the human heart a tough, fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess….The pronouns my and mine look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant.  They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do. They are the verbal symptoms of our deep disease….Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God’s gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.
• The chief characteristic of the self-life is its possessiveness; the words gain andprofit suggest this. To allow the enemy to live is, in the end, to lose everything. To repudiate it and gift up all for Christ’s sake is to lose nothing at last, but to preserve everything unto life eternal. (Matthew 16:25-26)
• The way to deeper knowledge of God is through the lonely valleys of soul poverty and abnegation of all things. 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 (Matt. 5:3).
• [Tozer uses Abraham as an illustration of letting go of all things, including Isaac, to possess God alone; he then states,] For Abraham, he had everything, but he possessed nothing….Things had been cast out forever. They had now become external to the man.
• There can be no doubt that this possessive clinging to things is one of the most harmful habits in life.
• Our gifts and talents should also be turned over to Him. They should be recognized for what they are–God’s loan to us.
• Whoever defends himself will have himself for his defense, and he will have no other. But let him come defenseless before the Lord and he will have for his defender no less than God Himself.
• Let him insist that God accept his all, that He take things out of his heart and Himself reign there in power….If he will become drastic enough, he can shorted the time of his travail from years to minutes and enter the good land long before his slower brethren who coddle their feelings and insist upon caution in their dealing with God.
• Father, 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.

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