“Self is the opaque veil that hides the face of God from us.” ~ A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God
We are discussing the book quoted above in our Wednesday night men’s class. This past week we discussed this issue of “self” sins; we all understand that a selfish focus can inhibit our ability to see God clearly or hear His call plainly. Tozer gives a few insights for how to battle these kinds of “self” sins. He gives three basic steps.
First, we must invite God to come in and destroy this selfish focus. We must first foster a willingness in ourselves to let God do this work that may destroy selfish corners of our hearts that we may not even be aware of when this process begins. The image of Scripture that comes to bear in this battle is the image of the cross. We must begin our journey away from selfishness by desiring that the cross would “do its deadly work within us.”
The concept of the cross naturally leads to Tozer’s second “step” which is to prepare ourselves for an ordeal of suffering. God does allow suffering in order to root evil out of our hearts, and this truth calls for a serious question on our part. Do we so desire to see God clearly, which calls for a killing of our selfishness, that we are willing to undergo whatever it takes to make that happen? Hebrews 12:7 tells us to endure suffering as discipline because God is treating us as children, and later in verse 11 we see that a harvest of righteousness is produced for those who are trained by this discipline through suffering. Are we willing to suffer whatever it takes to make us able to see God more clearly?
Finally, Tozer says that our part is to yield and to trust. We must repudiate, or denounce, our self-centered thought life, then yield ourselves to whatever means that God chooses to help us put that selfishness to death.
At the end of our lives, if we have been granted the ability to see Him well, then we will deem whatever it took to learn that, worth whatever it cost us. So let’s pray that God remove the veil of our selfishness wherever it may exist in our hearts, and then yield ourselves and trust Him in whatever He may do to complete that work in our lives.