The Pursuit of God

What The Pursuit of God is

The Pursuit of God is a ten-chapter devotional book on knowing God personally, first published in 1948 by Christian Publications and now kept in print by Moody Publishers. Each chapter is short — between eight and fifteen pages — and ends with a written prayer that gathers the chapter’s argument into something the reader can actually pray.

A.W. Tozer (1897–1963) was a Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor and editor who never attended seminary and read his way into his theology through the Christian mystics, the Puritans, and the King James Bible. He wrote The Pursuit of God on an overnight train from Chicago to McAllen, Texas, asking only for tea and a folding table. The book has never been out of print since.

Why readers across every tradition keep this one in print

The single biggest practical difference between The Pursuit of God and the wider devotional shelf is that Tozer refuses to settle into a tribe. He quotes Augustine and Bernard of Clairvaux. He quotes the Puritans. He quotes the German mystics and the Wesleyan holiness writers and Brother Lawrence. He treats them as fellow travelers rather than as evidence for one team. The result is a book that does not require you to be a Calvinist or an Arminian or a Catholic or anything in particular — only a person who suspects God might be available for direct encounter and wants to know how.

That is rare. Most devotional writing carries the fingerprints of its tradition so clearly that it functions as in-group literature. Tozer’s fingerprints are there too — he was a Wesleyan-leaning evangelical pastor, and it shows — but the book’s register is high enough above the denominational floor that readers from very different traditions find themselves nodding at the same paragraphs. That is what keeps it on Reformed seminary reading lists and in Catholic spiritual direction recommendations and in Orthodox parish bookstores.

Ten short chapters: the architecture that makes it re-readable

Tozer’s structure is deceptively simple. Ten chapters, each between eight and fifteen pages, each on a single theme — the divine pursuit, the recovery of meditation, removing the "veil" of self, apprehending God, the universal Presence, the speaking voice, the gaze of the soul, restoring the creature-Creator relation, the meekness that produces restful sweetness, the sacrament of living. Each opens with a Scripture passage, builds an argument in plain prose, and closes with a written prayer.

The economy is the point. A chapter takes twenty minutes to read and a year to absorb. Most readers do not finish Pursuit and shelve it — they finish it and start it again, more slowly, with a pen. The book is short enough to live with for a season. That is by design: Tozer believed the modern Christian had read too much and pondered too little, and the form of his own book is an argument against the problem he is diagnosing.

The "veil of self" and the recovery of meditation

The two themes Tozer returns to most often — and the two most quoted by later writers — are the "veil of self" and what he calls "the lost art of meditation." The first is his diagnosis: the obstruction between the soul and God is not chiefly intellectual or even moral in the obvious sense, but the thick inner veil of self-reference. The self insists on being the subject of every sentence. Until that veil is rent — and Tozer is clear that only God can rend it, though we must consent — the experiential knowledge of God is muffled even in those who hold all the right doctrine.

The second is his prescription: meditation, by which Tozer means not the emptying of the mind but the slow, prayerful, scriptural pondering of God himself. He laments that twentieth-century Christians had largely forgotten how to do this — they could study the Bible, debate it, defend it, but they could not sit with it. This is the book’s most enduring contribution. Half a century before "lectio divina" became a buzzword across traditions, Tozer was insisting that without meditation the Bible becomes information rather than encounter, and information will not feed the soul.

Tozer’s prophetic voice: calling lukewarm Christians to depth

Tozer’s tone is the third feature worth naming, because it is so rare. He writes as a pastor diagnosing a sickness in his own people, not as a critic standing outside. The diagnosis is severe — he believed mid-century evangelicalism had traded depth for activity, intimacy with God for orthodoxy about God, and the costly inner life for entertaining services — but the voice is grieved rather than contemptuous. He never sneers. He invites.

That is what gives the book its long shelf life. Readers in 2026 still recognize themselves in his pages because the diseases he names — distraction, self-occupation, religious activity as a substitute for God, the substitution of correct ideas for living communion — have if anything intensified. Tozer reads like a man who has seen all of this and still believes the reader is capable of more, and that confidence is itself pastoral. It is the reason people who would otherwise have no patience for a 1948 American Protestant keep finding their way back to the book.

Pricing

Where The Pursuit of God falls behind

No practical scaffolding for small groups. The original edition has no discussion questions, no journaling prompts, no reading plan. The Updated Edition adds some, but if you want a book engineered for group study with weekly assignments and breakout questions, Pursuit is not it — you will be building the scaffolding yourself.

Mid-century language throughout. Tozer writes "man" for humanity and "he" as the generic pronoun, and the cadence is unmistakably 1948. Readers who find that grating will find it grating for 130 pages. The Updated Edition softens some of this; most readers report adjusting within a chapter.

Light on systematic argument. Tozer is not building a case. He is meditating with the reader and assumes the basic Christian frame is already in place. If you want a closely reasoned defense of the doctrines he is meditating on, you will need to read Pursuit alongside something more structured — Tozer’s own The Knowledge of the Holy, or a systematic theology.

Loose Scripture citation in places. Tozer occasionally paraphrases Scripture or quotes from memory without naming the translation, which can frustrate readers trying to trace a verse. Not a dealbreaker — every quotation is recognizable — but worth knowing if you read with a Bible open.

Almost no engagement with the surrounding world. Pursuit is interior almost to a fault. There is little here on neighbor-love, social ethics, vocation, or public witness. Tozer wrote other books on those themes; in this one, the lens is fixed on the soul before God. Real gap, but worth knowing about going in rather than a dealbreaker.

The Pursuit of God vs. Knowing God vs. My Utmost for His Highest

These three short classics tend to live on the same shelf, and readers often ask which to start with. Different strengths.

The Pursuit of God is the shortest and the most mystical. It is meditation rather than instruction — Tozer is trying to draw the reader into encounter with God, not to teach a doctrine of God. It is the book to read when you sense your faith has gone interior-dry and you want to be moved rather than informed. Ten chapters, weekend-readable, designed to be re-read.

Knowing God by J.I. Packer is the longest and the most teaching-driven. Packer is broader (the character of God, the gospel, the Christian life), more carefully argued, and tied tightly to a Reformed evangelical frame. It is the book to read when you want to understand who God has revealed himself to be in Scripture and what difference that makes. Twenty-two chapters, several-month read, designed to be studied.

My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers is a daily devotional rather than a continuous book — 365 entries compiled from his lectures by his widow. Wesleyan-holiness in flavor, intense in tone, and meant to be read one page a day for a year rather than straight through. It is the book to read when you want a daily companion that confronts you with the radical demands of discipleship.

A reasonable order for many readers: Pursuit first (to be drawn in), Knowing God second (to be grounded), Utmost as an ongoing daily practice. The three together cover what most Christians want from the devotional aisle — encounter, understanding, and daily formation.

Alternatives to The Pursuit of God