Synopsis: The Thirst for God and the Paradox of Pursuit
A.W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God stands as a timeless devotional classic that challenges the spiritual complacency and intellectualized faith prevalent in modern Christianity.1 The book’s central thesis posits that a genuine, intimate relationship with God is not merely a matter of correct doctrine or intellectual assent but a passionate, reciprocal pursuit of a knowable and personal God.1 Tozer’s prophetic voice laments the spiritual shallowness of his era, which he attributes to a shift away from a heart-level hunger for the Divine towards “mechanical and spiritless” religiosity.1 He argues that this condition is a tragedy, as God is a living Person who desires to be known and can be cultivated just as any human personality can.1
The author’s primary argument is that the human quest for God is a paradox of love. It is initiated not by human effort, but by God’s own “prevenient grace,” which first places an urge in the human heart to seek Him.1 The spiritual life, therefore, is a continuous response to a divine call—a relentless “following hard after” the God whom one has already found.3 Tozer meticulously dismantles the barriers that impede this relationship, including the internal “tough, fibrous root” of possessiveness, the opaque veil of the self-life, and the intellectualization of faith.3 His counsel is not a new method but a radical return to fundamental biblical truths: humility, the renunciation of worldly possessions, the cultivation of spiritual senses, and a life of ceaseless worship. The ultimate aim is to move beyond superficial practices and into a state of “conscious personal awareness” and “unembarrassed interchange of love and thought” with the Triune God.1 By pursuing God alone, without any accompanying “ands,” Tozer contends that one can find everything for which their heart has secretly longed.3
Chapter-by-Chapter Review
Chapter 1: Following Hard after God
Tozer establishes the theological foundation for the book in this opening chapter by introducing the doctrine of prevenient grace. He argues that the impulse to seek God does not originate with man, but rather with God’s prior action of putting “an urge within us that spurs us to the pursuit”.1 This divine drawing, he asserts, is the secret cause of all human desiring, seeking, and praying that follows. This theological position serves a critical purpose: it removes all “vestige of credit” from the human act of coming to God, rooting the pursuit in divine initiative rather than human pride. Tozer observes that this divine “upholding” and human “following” are not contradictory but are two parts of a unified process.3
The chapter presents a poignant critique of modern religious practices, which Tozer believes have turned the Christian experience into something “mechanical and spiritless”.1 He diagnoses a faulty interpretation of the doctrine of “justification by faith,” which, while a biblical truth, has been misused to bar people from a deeper knowledge of God. As a result, individuals are “saved” but lack a genuine hunger or thirst for God, becoming “content with little”.3 This observation reveals a profound spiritual dynamic: abstract theological concepts are not inert but can, when improperly applied, lead directly to a lack of genuine spiritual life. This spiritual pathology, characterized by complacency and a lack of holy desire, prevents the manifestation of Christ to His people, who, in Tozer’s view, “wait to be wanted”.3
To counter this religious malaise, Tozer calls for a return to simplicity. He warns against “losing God amid the wonders of His Word,” a spiritual error that mirrors the modern scientist losing God amid the wonders of His world.1 The author contrasts the “religious complexity” and “nervous activities” of the age with the “simplicity which is in Christ”.3 He encourages believers to “strip down to essentials” and, in the words of an old English classic, to “mean Himself, and none of His goods.” This concept—seeking God “only,” without any accompanying “ands”—is presented as the key to finding full revelation and the satisfaction for which the human heart secretly longs.3 The enduring relevance of this critique suggests that the spiritual ailments Tozer diagnosed are not unique to his era but are a recurring human tendency to substitute external activity and intellectualism for a sincere, heart-centered pursuit of God.
Chapter 2: The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing
In this chapter, Tozer addresses the deep-seated human problem of possessiveness. He argues that before God created man, He prepared a world of things for him, but these gifts were always meant to be external and subservient to the man.3 Sin, however, introduced a “monstrous substitution” where “things have taken over” the central shrine of the human heart, leading to a state of perpetual inner conflict and unrest. The author identifies a “tough, fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess” and points to the pronouns “my” and “mine” as symptoms of this deep spiritual disease.3 The path to true spiritual rest, therefore, lies in “the lonely valleys of soul poverty and abnegation of all things,” where one can root out this inner clinging.
The narrative of Abraham and Isaac is presented as the central metaphor for this spiritual principle.3 Tozer reinterprets this story not just as an act of obedience, but as a divine intervention to correct a “perversion” in Abraham’s love. God’s command to offer Isaac was not an act of malice but an effort to remove the son from the “temple of [Abraham’s] heart” so that God might reign there without a rival.3 The agony and “inward bleeding” of the parting is presented as a necessary, violent spiritual surgery, which ultimately leads to a higher blessing. The spiritual progress Abraham experienced came not from avoiding pain, but from enduring it as a means of relinquishing control. This underscores that true spiritual growth is not a painless process but requires a death to self, which is a precondition for a resurrection into a new way of living.
The profound paradox of the chapter is that having surrendered his most cherished possession, Abraham “had everything, but he possessed nothing”.3 Tozer makes a critical distinction between “having” external things and “possessing” them with an internal clinging. The man who has God for his treasure has “all things in One,” so that whatever he may lose, he has “actually lost nothing” because he possesses it purely, legitimately, and forever in God. This is the “sweet theology of the heart which can be learned only in the school of renunciation”.3 It is a life lived free from the “tyranny of things,” a liberation achieved not by fighting them, but by surrendering them entirely to God.
Chapter 3: Removing the Veil
This chapter explores the profound separation between humanity and God, an interior state of being that persists even after justification. Tozer begins with Augustine’s famous statement that our hearts are “restless till they find rest in Thee” and then uses the Old Testament tabernacle as a metaphor for the soul’s journey toward God’s manifest presence.3 He explains that while the legal barrier to God’s presence—the temple veil—was gloriously “rent from top to bottom” at the crucifixion of Christ, another veil remains in the human heart.3 This second, internal veil, he explains, is made of the “living spiritual tissue” of our “fleshly, fallen nature living on”.3
Tozer identifies the threads from which this veil is woven, naming a host of “hyphenated sins” that are not merely external actions but deep-seated aspects of our nature: self-righteousness, self-pity, self-confidence, and self-love.3 He points out the insidiousness of these sins, noting that they “dwell too deep within us” and can even thrive in environments of “impeccable orthodoxy” and “Bible conferences”.3 The author’s observation that religious activity and correct doctrine can paradoxically become a fertile ground for these spiritual pathologies to grow is a profound commentary on the human tendency to replace heart-level devotion with external performance. This reveals that the true work of God must go beyond mere intellectual assent and address the very fabric of who we are.
The removal of this inner veil, Tozer asserts, is not a painless or passive process. He calls it an “ordeal of suffering” and a violent act, describing it as tearing a plant from the soil or a tooth from the jaw.3 The veil is “sentient” and “quivering,” and to remove it is to “injure us, to hurt us and make us bleed”.3 He rejects any “lazy ‘acceptance'” or “tinkering with our inner life,” insisting that we must “invite the cross to do its deadly work within us”.3 The ultimate goal is not mere self-improvement but a death to the self-life, which precedes the “resurrection glory and power” of dwelling in the actual presence of God.3
Chapter 4: Apprehending God
This chapter addresses the critical distinction between intellectual, inferential knowledge of God and a personal, experiential apprehension of Him. Tozer observes that for many, even Christians, God is an “inference, not a reality,” a deduction from evidence or something known only by hearsay.3 He argues that this abstract, ideal-based faith is a far cry from the scriptural teaching that God is a loving Person who can be known with the same immediacy as any physical object.3 The Bible uses sensory language to describe this knowledge, inviting us to “taste and see,” “hear,” and “see” God.3 Tozer concludes from this that humanity has “spiritual faculties” by which to know God, faculties that are quickened in regeneration and made functional through faith.
Tozer’s analysis establishes a direct connection between a person’s thought habits and their spiritual state. He contends that the “chronic unbelief” and “inward insensibility” of many Christians stem from a “bad thought habit” of viewing the visible world as real and the spiritual world as less so.3 This pervasive mindset, which mirrors a broader societal secularism, has clouded the “lenses of our hearts” and made us unable to see the ultimate reality of God. Tozer challenges this view by clarifying that the spiritual world is not imaginary; it is the most enduring and objective reality, “contingent upon His” existence alone.3
The key to overcoming this spiritual insensibility is to “shift our interest from the seen to the unseen”.3 Tozer introduces the term “reckon,” defining it not as visualizing or imagining, but as trusting in something that already exists.3 Faith, therefore, is not a creative act but a receptive one—an act of accepting and acting upon the reality that God is already present. This “new God-consciousness,” which brings an “inward revelation of the Godhead,” is the path to overcoming the limitations of an intellectualized faith. Tozer’s perspective elevates spiritual knowledge from a mental exercise to a tangible, sensory experience, making the pursuit of God a deeply personal and practical endeavor.3
Chapter 5: The Universal Presence
Tozer addresses a foundational, yet often ungrasped, truth: the doctrine of divine immanence, which asserts that “God dwells in His creation and is everywhere indivisibly present in all His works”.3 He carefully distinguishes this from pantheism, clarifying that while God is immanent within His world, He is also transcendent, separated from it by an “impassable gulf”.3 This means that God is “here” wherever a person is, and no point in space is any closer or farther from Him than another.3 Tozer insists that this truth, while accepted in theology, has failed to become a personal, living reality for most Christians, a condition he attributes to a fear of being accused of pantheism.
A crucial distinction is drawn between God’s omnipresent reality and the “manifestation of the Presence”.3 God is always here, even when we are entirely unaware of Him, a truth illustrated by Jacob’s cry, “Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not”.3 The manifestation of His presence, however, is a matter of personal experience, not physical proximity. Tozer uses the analogy of a father who says his son is “coming nearer” to him, not in a physical sense, but in a deepening of their relationship and understanding. Similarly, the prayer “Draw me nearer” is a plea for a more profound awareness of God’s presence, not a shorter physical distance.3 The author’s observation is that the pursuit of God is successful precisely because “He is forever seeking to manifest Himself to us”.3
The chapter explores why some individuals experience this divine manifestation while others do not. Tozer’s answer is spiritual receptivity, which he describes as a “compound” of desire and a “bent toward” God.3 He critiques the modern church for its impatience and reliance on “machine-age methods” and “glamour” to achieve spiritual goals.3 This cultural influence, Tozer argues, has led to a “deep and serious malady of the soul,” resulting in “shallow lives” and “hollow religious philosophies”.3 He concludes that a return to biblical ways of “cultivation and exercise” through trust, obedience, and humility is the only way to develop this receptivity and experience the universal presence of God as a living reality.
Chapter 6: The Speaking Voice
Tozer opens this chapter by asserting that it is the nature of God to speak. He challenges the notion that God is a Being who spoke in the past and then lapsed into silence. Instead, he argues that God “is speaking” continuously and fills the world with His voice.3 The “Word” of God is not limited to the Bible; it is the very breath and expression of the Godhead that brought all things into being.3 The Bible, while “the written Word of God,” is a document made alive by God’s present and continuous Voice.3 Without this living Voice, the written words would “lie locked in slumber within the covers of a book”.3 This is a profound and crucial distinction that liberates the reader from the intellectual trap of bibliolatry and re-centers faith on a dynamic Person.
Tozer notes a tragic human tendency to explain away this speaking voice. He uses the biblical example of the crowd who, upon hearing God’s voice, dismissed it by saying, “It thundered”.3 He applies this to the “secular age” in which we live, where the inclination is to “explain than to adore”.3 The author suggests that much of what we attribute to naturalistic causes—such as genius, the troubled conscience, or a deep longing for immortality—may in fact be a “faulty and sin-blocked response to the creative Voice sounding over the earth”.3 This re-frames all human virtue and creativity as a form of divine revelation, even when the individual is unaware of its source. It positions the divine initiative at the root of all that is good and beautiful, implying that God is constantly seeking to communicate with humanity.
The practical challenge of the chapter is to learn to listen. Tozer encourages the reader to “get still to wait on God” in solitude, with an open Bible.3 He outlines a progression of hearing: from a vague “sound as of a Presence,” to a more intelligible “Voice,” and finally to an “intelligible word, warm and intimate and clear”.3 This act of listening is presented as the key to moving beyond a “dead, impersonal world” and making the Bible a living, personal book.3 The author’s insistence on quietude is a direct counter to the modern emphasis on religious noise and activity, which he sees as a symptom of a deeper spiritual illness. He asserts that our “strength and safety lie not in noise but in silence”.3
Chapter 7: The Gaze of the Soul
In this chapter, Tozer presents a deeply spiritual redefinition of faith, moving it from a mere intellectual act to a continuous, sensory experience. He argues that faith is not a one-time act of belief, but a “continuous gaze of the heart at the Triune God”.3 He supports this by drawing a parallel to the biblical story of the fiery serpents, where “looking” upon the brass serpent was synonymous with “believing” on Christ.3 This means that believing is fundamentally an act of “directing the heart’s attention to Jesus” and “never ceasing that beholding for the rest of our lives”.3
A primary benefit of this constant inward gaze is the “blessed riddance” of a self-regarding nature.3 Tozer observes that sin has “twisted our vision inward and made it self-regarding,” leading to a life of constant internal struggle and self-purification.3 However, when one looks away to the “perfect One,” the very things they have been striving for will be “getting done within them”.3 The author’s point is that faith is the “least self-regarding of the virtues” because it is occupied with its object—God—and not with itself. This reframes the path to sanctification not as a work of self-effort, but as a byproduct of a surrendered focus on Christ.
The chapter culminates in the beautiful concept of a reciprocal gaze. Tozer says, “When we lift our inward eyes to gaze upon God we are sure to meet friendly eyes gazing back at us, for it is written that the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout all the earth”.3 This mutual indwelling is where “heaven has begun right here on this earth”.3 Tozer also offers a brilliant analogy for Christian community: one hundred pianos tuned to the same pitch fork are automatically in tune with each other. Similarly, Christian unity is not achieved by striving for fellowship directly, but by a hundred individuals, each with their hearts fixed on Christ.3 This suggests that genuine fellowship is an emergent quality that results from the vertical relationship between the individual and God, a powerful counter-cultural take on the nature of the church.
Chapter 8: Restoring the Creator-Creature Relation
Tozer asserts that the Fall was a “radical moral dislocation,” a fundamental upset in the proper relationship between man and God.3 Salvation is not just a judicial matter but the restoration of this Creator-creature relation.3 Tozer establishes God as the fixed, unchangeable center of all reality, the great “I AM” against which everything else is measured.3 Our human miseries, he argues, stem from a denial of this central reality and our “unnatural usurpation of the place of God”.3 The path to a right spiritual life begins with accepting God as He is and making a “voluntary exalting of God to His proper station over us”.3
The core of the chapter’s argument is that a person’s life is “out of joint” until they make a conscious, determined decision to exalt God above all other things, including money, ambition, and self.3 Tozer refers to the biblical principle that “Them that honour me I will honour” as an unchanging law of the kingdom, which he illustrates through the contrast between the tragic life of Eli and the blessed lives of God’s faithful servants.3 He points out that the honor that came to figures like Abraham, David, and Daniel was not a result of perfection, but of a “holy intention” to glorify God above all.3
Tozer offers a transformative perspective on the act of surrendering one’s will, reframing it not as a loss of freedom but as a choice of masters. He posits that a person is always a “servant to someone, either to God or to sin”.3 The sinner prides himself on his independence while being a “weak slave” to the very sins that rule him. The man who surrenders his will to Christ, therefore, is not degrading himself but exchanging a “cruel slave driver for a kind and gentle Master whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light”.3 This voluntary act restores man to his rightful place as one made in the image of his Creator, a position of far higher honor than his fallen state could ever provide. Tozer’s perspective suggests that this fundamental decision is a “little key” that unlocks great grace and solves a “thousand minor problems” by addressing the root cause of all human disorder.
Chapter 9: Meekness and Rest
Tozer begins this chapter by observing that the human race lives in direct opposition to the Beatitudes.3 He identifies the “heavy and a crushing” burden that mankind bears, not as external circumstances like poverty or oppression, but as an interior affliction rooted in pride and the “labor of self-love”.3 This burden manifests as a constant, defensive effort to protect one’s honor and cower under criticism, leading to a life without inward peace. Jesus’s invitation to “learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls” is presented as the only antidote to this exhausting struggle.3 The rest offered by Christ is the “blessed relief which comes when we accept ourselves for what we are and cease to pretend”.3
Tozer delves deeper into the nature of this internal burden by identifying its two main forms: pretense and artificiality.3 Pretense is the secret fear of being “found out”—the deep-seated human desire to hide one’s “inward poverty” and appear more than one is. This fear is a “gnawing disease” that affects people at all levels of society. Artificiality is the constant tension of trying to appear intelligent, traveled, or cultured to others. The author’s diagnosis is that these are not minor character flaws but “unnatural” conditions that little by little “kill the victims”.3 The solution, he explains, is to “become as little children” who are able to enjoy what they have without comparison and to “cease to care what men think” so long as God is pleased.3
The man who embraces meekness is not a “human mouse” but someone who has stopped being “fooled about himself”.3 He accepts God’s estimation of his life—that in himself he is “nothing,” but in God, he is “everything”—and is content to “let God defend him”.3 He has ended the “old struggle to defend himself” and has found peace. Tozer explains that the meekness of Christ is a “yoke” that we do not bear alone, but with the “strong Son of God Himself”.3 The chapter’s argument reveals that rest is not a passive state but a direct consequence of a specific act of internal surrender, where a person relinquishes their pride and embraces a genuine self-acceptance rooted in their identity in Christ. This internal transformation is a necessary step on the path to a deeper life with God.
Chapter 10: The Sacrament of Living
In his final chapter, Tozer confronts what he considers one of the greatest hindrances to inner peace: the “common habit of dividing our lives into two areas—the sacred and the secular”.3 He argues that this dualistic mindset has no biblical basis and is a “creature of misunderstanding” that has crept back into the church.3 The author contends that after the coming of Christ, the old distinctions—holy days, holy places, holy things—were abolished in favor of a “full sun of spiritual worship”.3 This means that for the Christian, every day is holy, all places are sacred, and every act can be acceptable to God.
Tozer’s central thesis is the “sacramental quality of everyday living,” an idea that elevates all aspects of a Christian’s life into acts of worship.3 He asserts that by a single, comprehensive act of consecrating one’s “total selves to God,” every subsequent action can express that consecration, whether it is eating, drinking, or engaging in one’s daily labors.3 He is careful to clarify that this does not mean all acts are of equal importance, but rather that all can be performed with the same level of spiritual purity and are accepted by God with equal pleasure.3 The critical factor, he emphasizes, is the motive: “It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it”.3
Tozer concludes that for a person who “sanctify the Lord God in his heart,” their “living itself will be a priestly ministration”.3 He notes that breaking free from the sacred-secular duality requires “intelligent thought and a great deal of reverent prayer,” as well as an “aggressive faith” to believe that God accepts all of our actions when offered to Him.3 This concept represents a profound challenge to much of traditional Christian practice that compartmentalizes faith into distinct spiritual activities. Tozer’s final counsel is a call to a life of conscious awareness, a “restful sincerity of heart” where every thought and act is an offering of “sweet incense ascending to Thee”.3 This re-establishes the home, the workplace, and the mundane activities of life as a sanctuary for continuous worship.
Conclusion: The Enduring Legacy of A.W. Tozer
The Pursuit of God is more than a book of spiritual maxims; it is a unified and coherent spiritual theology designed to lead the hungry soul into a profound and continuous communion with the Divine. Tozer’s vision seamlessly connects the theological with the practical, demonstrating that the pursuit of God, while initiated by divine grace, requires a radical and intentional human response. His arguments are a systematic dismantling of the common barriers to this intimate relationship, from the internal idolatry of possessions and the deep-seated pride of the self-life to the intellectual and procedural traps of modern religion. The author’s emphasis on the need for a personal, experiential knowledge of God, the cultivation of spiritual senses, and the restoration of a proper Creator-creature relationship forms a powerful and cohesive path to spiritual reality.
The book’s enduring legacy lies in its prophetic voice and its timeless relevance. Tozer’s critique of the “mechanical and spiritless” faith of the 20th century is not time-bound; it diagnoses a perennial human tendency to replace the spiritual with the transactional. He spoke of the danger of a church filled with “nervous activities” and a lack of “acute desire” for God, a condition that resonates deeply in a contemporary culture still preoccupied with programs and performance.3 Tozer wrote from a posture of profound humility, having made a personal discovery of the “holy mysteries” and spiritual realities of which he wrote.1 His call for a sincere, simple, and passionate pursuit of God remains a powerful summons to all who are thirsty. The book’s final and most hopeful message is that the pursuit of God is “successful just because He is forever seeking to manifest Himself to us”.6 It is a humble invitation to join in a divine romance, where the seeker is always met by the searching eyes of God.
Summary of Key Arguments, Metaphors, and Biblical References by Chapter
| Chapter Title | Core Argument | Primary Metaphor/Analogy | Key Biblical Text |
| 1. Following Hard after God | The pursuit of God is a paradox of love initiated by divine grace. | A “paradox of love,” the hart panting for water brooks, and God’s “prevenient drawing.” | Psalm 63:8; John 6:44 |
| 2. The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing | Renouncing the internal clinging to things is the path to true spiritual freedom and rest. | Abraham’s offering of Isaac as the surrender of an idol. | Matthew 5:3; Matthew 16:24-25 |
| 3. Removing the Veil | The self-life acts as an opaque veil that must be removed for genuine intimacy with God. | The Old Testament tabernacle veil and the “hyphenated sins” of the human spirit. | Hebrews 10:19; Revelation 4:11 |
| 4. Apprehending God | True faith is not an intellectual deduction but a personal, experiential knowledge of God as a living reality. | God is a person who can be “tasted” and “seen” through spiritual senses, not just reasoned about. | Psalm 34:8; Matthew 5:8 |
| 5. The Universal Presence | God is everywhere and is constantly seeking to reveal Himself; human receptivity is the key to experiencing this. | God’s omnipresence versus His manifestation, using a father and son’s relationship as an analogy. | Psalm 139:7; Genesis 28:16 |
| 6. The Speaking Voice | God is continuously speaking in the world and in His Word, and the spiritual life depends on learning to listen. | God’s continuous Voice in creation, and the crowd saying, “It thundered.” | John 1:1; Psalm 33:9 |
| 7. The Gaze of the Soul | Faith is a continuous, outward-directed gaze of the heart at the Triune God, which leads to sanctification. | Faith as a “gaze,” and the analogy of pianos tuned to a single pitch fork. | Hebrews 12:2; Psalm 34:5 |
| 8. Restoring the Creator-Creature Relation | The fundamental problem of sin is a moral dislocation that can only be solved by exalting God to His rightful place. | God as the fixed, unchangeable center (“I AM”), and the sinner’s exchange of a cruel slave driver for a kind Master. | Psalm 57:5; John 8:34 |
| 9. Meekness and Rest | The “rest” of Christ is a release from the crushing internal burdens of pride, pretense, and artificiality. | The heavy burden of self-love versus the “easy yoke” of Christ. | Matthew 5:5; Matthew 11:28-30 |
| 10. The Sacrament of Living | All of a Christian’s life can be a sacred act of worship, challenging the sacred-secular divide. | The “sacramental quality of everyday living,” and Paul’s exhortation on eating and drinking. | 1 Corinthians 10:31; John 4:21-24 |
Tozer’s Critique of Modern Christianity
| Problem/Spiritual Malady | Tozer’s Diagnosis/Cause | Tozer’s Solution/Path to Deeper Life | Related Chapters |
| Mechanical and Spiritless Faith | A misinterpretation of justification by faith has removed the need for a genuine hunger for God. | A passionate pursuit of God initiated by His prevenient grace. | 1 |
| Inner Conflict and Frustration | The human heart is burdened by a possessive, self-regarding nature and the tyranny of things. | The practice of “soul poverty” and the blessedness of possessing nothing. | 2, 9 |
| Spiritual Stagnation | A “veil” of the self-life hides the face of God, despite Christ having opened the way. | A death to the self-sins through the work of the cross. | 3 |
| Intellectualized Religion | God is treated as an abstract ideal or an inference, not a personal reality. | Cultivating spiritual faculties to apprehend God through a conscious, experiential knowledge. | 4 |
| Hollow Religious Philosophies | “Machine-age methods” and the demand for fast, dramatic action have replaced the cultivation of spiritual receptivity. | A return to the biblical discipline of quieting the soul to listen and become aware of God’s presence. | 5, 6 |
| Performance-Based Growth | The struggle for personal purification through self-effort and introspection. | The “gaze of the soul” on Christ, which causes the inner work of sanctification to be done by God. | 7 |
| General Disorder in Life | The fundamental moral dislocation of exalting self over God. | A voluntary, conscious decision to restore the Creator-creature relation by exalting God over all. | 8 |
| Spiritual and Emotional Burden | The internal burdens of pride, pretense, and a life of constant comparison. | The rest found in meekness and the willingness to accept oneself for who one is before God. | 9 |
| Disconnection between Faith and Life | The “heresy” of the sacred-secular divide has created a frustrated, dualistic existence. | A life of “priestly ministration,” where all actions, regardless of their nature, are performed as acts of worship. | 10 |
