A. W. Tozer - Alive in the Spirit: Experiencing the Presence and Power of God

2016 by James L. Snyder

Published by Bethany House Publishers

11400 Hampshire Avenue South

Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

www.bethanyhouse.com

Bethany House Publishers is a division of

Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan

www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

Ebook edition created 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansfor example, electronic, photocopy, recordingwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016942353

ISBN 978-1-4412-3048-5

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture quotations marked ASV are from the American Standard Version of the Bible.

Cover design by Rob Williams, InsideOutCreativeArts

James L. Snyder is represented by The Steve Laube Agency.

Contents

T he subject of this book, Alive in the Spirit , is a very crucial theme for the day in which we live. No other subject could be as controversial as dealing with the Holy Spirit.

One of the things that impressed me as I collected A.W. Tozers sermons in preparation for this book is that Tozer says the evangelical church of his day treated the Holy Spirit as the liberal modernistic church did the person of Jesus Christ.

The liberals did not deny Jesus; they more or less ignored him. And the evangelicals in Tozers day did not deny the Holy Spirit; they more or less ignored Him and His rightful position in the church. His observations are still true today.

Tozer implies that the evangelical church is going down the same path that the liberal churches did. That being said, he offers a possible solution to bring our churches back under the authority of the Holy Spirit.

The authority of the Holy Spirit must begin with the individual Christian and then flow over into the local congregation. Our strategies are backward. Local church leaders and even denominational leaders are trying to set the tone for the congregations to follow. They have boiled it down to a despicable term (from Tozers perspective)a formula . All you need is the right formula and everything will be all right.

The focus in this book is on the individual. Yes, there are some encouragements for local assemblies, but the emphasis is on the individual Christian. The local church comprises individual Christians, and as those individual Christians go, so goes the local church.

This was Tozers passion and it is shown here in this book. He bemoans the fact that the evangelical church has been so divided that it has lost its influence in the culture. Instead of the church influencing the culture, culture is not only influencing the church, it is taking over the church. Tozer declares that what we find in the world we also find in the local church. This ought not to be so.

Tozers presentation does not go to extremes. The problem is that one group goes to a far extreme and another group goes to the opposite far extremethe exhibitionists on one end and the cessationists on the other. This has done critical damage in the church, as Tozer notes. The only way to remedy this is to put the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in its proper perspective. That is what this book does.

In one chapter, he talks about his love of great paintings and says that a painting is not comprised of just one brushstroke, but of many. When you look at that painting you are not conscious of one brushstroke. When you become conscious of one brushstroke, you lose the picture altogether. This, Tozer says, is what has happened concerning the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

To understand the Holy Spirit and His rightful place of authority in the life of the believer, and then in the life of the congregation, we have to surrender personal opinions and prejudices. It is critical to check everything with the Word of God.

Tozer often proposes that people can take a verse of Scripture out of context and make it say anything they want it to say. But each verse must be read in the context of the entire Bible. It takes all the Bible to make the whole Bible. When we splinter the text, pulling out a single brushstroke, we lose what it is all about.

His view on the gifts of the Spirit is that they are not to promote any one person. When one person or even one gift is exalted in a congregation, it is probably not the work of the Holy Spirit. This sounds harsh, but we need to get serious about the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in the life and ministry of the local congregation.

Tozer is very careful not to attack individuals or even denominations, but he does attack errors of doctrine. As a man of God called to do the work of God, he felt an obligation to speak out against the spiritual errors of his day. The thing that is most amazing to me is that the sermons forming the basis of this book were preached in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I have to remind myself that Dr. Tozer died in 1963. What he said then is true today and even more so. The warnings he gave then apply to our situation today.

I believe that if a person takes this book seriously, it will deeply affect their spiritual life. The end goal is to become Alive in the Spirit .

According to Tozer, one of the things that has replaced the work of the Holy Spirit in the local church is entertainment. Our society is obsessed with entertainment, and this has come into the church of Jesus Christ. Tozer objects to this. Worship and entertainment are opposites and cannot be mixed. It is either one or the other.

The problem Tozer had with entertainment is that it always promotes a person. Even though that person may mention Jesus or God and claim to be a Christian, the focus is really not on God but on the person and the performance.

I chuckled when I heard Tozer tell the story of a person who wrote to him explaining that singing a hymn was a form of entertainment. He said, If thats entertainment, then Im an entertainer. But he quickly followed by saying, Its not and Im not.

He went on to explain that his top priority in life was to be a worshiper. It was the purpose and focus of the Holy Spirit in his life to exalt Jesus Christ and to bring into his life the spirit of worship. The same should be true of us today. Worship is critical, and for Tozer, worship could not be man-induced. Worship that does not start with the Holy Spirit is not true worship.

Tozer suggests that our worship services today are mancentered and man-promoted as a result of neglecting the authority of the Holy Spirit in our congregations. As such, they cannot exalt Jesus Christ.

Throughout this book, he says that people can do good works, but they are not the kind of works that promote and accomplish the holy work of God. Only the Holy Spirit can do the holy work of God. It begins with the Holy Spirit and it ends with the Holy Spirit.

This book reflects the passion Tozer had for the body of Christ.

Throughout the book, Ive tried to capture Tozers tone, which is conversational. In some sermons, I discovered him sharing his testimony, and I thought that was very good to include here. He is not talking about something that he heard about or read about, but rather something he experienced personally. His testimony both of being born again and being filled with the Holy Spirit lays the foundation for what Tozer says throughout this book. I found the influence of the Holy Spirit in his life and his daily walk fascinating.

This book is not to be read in one sitting. Although it could be, you will not reap the greatest benefit by doing so. Reading a chapter at a time and then pausing and thinking about it and applying its truths to your heart is really what Tozer intended. This is not simply literature to be enjoyed, but spiritual truth to be absorbed on a personal level. Knowing about the Holy Spirit is different from knowing the Holy Spirit by personal acquaintance. That is Tozers emphasis throughout.