The Deeper Life

Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. PHILIPPIANS 3:12

The phrase the deeper life was common coin in the circles Tozer moved in, and he used it freely; one of his short books is called Keys to the Deeper Life. But he was uneasy with it too. He knew that it could suggest a special tier of Christianity, reserved for enthusiasts, above the ordinary faith of ordinary believers. What he meant by it was something simpler and more demanding. The deeper life, he said in effect, is nothing but the normal Christian life as the New Testament describes it. It is deeper only by comparison with the shallow thing that most Christians have settled for.

Discontent as a gift

Where does such a life begin? Tozer’s answer, repeated in many forms, was that it begins with holy dissatisfaction. A man who is content with his present experience of God will not seek more, and God does not force Himself on the unwilling. But a man who has come to see the gap between what Scripture promises and what he actually knows, and who is troubled by it, is already on the way. That dissatisfaction, Tozer believed, is itself the work of the Spirit, and it should be welcomed rather than soothed away.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. MATTHEW 5:6

He was scathing about religious teachers who hurried to comfort every troubled conscience, assuring the seeker that he already had all there was and need not trouble himself further. Some troubles, he thought, are God’s own summons, and to quiet them is to silence God.

Why believers go back

The reverse of the deeper life is backsliding, and Tozer preached on it with sober seriousness. His sermon Causes of Backsliding, in the Ochorus library, takes its text from Proverbs.

The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways: and a good man shall be satisfied from himself. PROVERBS 14:14

He traced backsliding to two roots. The first is the fickleness of the human heart, which moves easily from one interest to another and holds firmly only to what instinct or necessity compels. The life of God in the soul is not an instinct of fallen nature; it runs against the grain, and so without steady attention it is easily neglected. The second root is the evil that still lives in the heart, which pulls continually away from God. Put the two together, he said, and the wonder is not that Christians go back but that any go on.

He made two further observations that are worth carrying. Backsliding begins in the heart, not in the circumstances a man blames for it. And it is discovered in a certain order: God knows it first, then the man himself, then the church, and only at the last the world. By the time anyone else can see it, it has been going on inwardly for a long time. Its symptoms, he said, are a loss of appetite for the things of God, prayer grown dull, church attendance grown dutiful, giving grown grudging — a religion kept up from habit after the love has cooled.

Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. REVELATION 2:4

Prepared in the garden

In another sermon in the Ochorus library, Prepare by Prayer, Tozer turned to Gethsemane and drew a lesson he considered vital for anyone who would go deeper with God. The Lord foresaw the crisis of the cross and prepared for it by prayer. The disciples did not. They slept. And the next morning one betrayed Him, one denied Him, and all forsook Him and fled.

Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. MATTHEW 26:41

Tozer’s point was that the outcome of a test is usually settled long before the test arrives. Peter did not fall in the courtyard; he fell in the garden, when he slept instead of praying. So it is with every believer. The crisis reveals what the quiet days have prepared or failed to prepare. The deeper life is not built in the moment of testing but in the unwitnessed hours before it.

The way back and the way on

For the backslider, Tozer’s counsel was full of hope. Close to the end of the backsliding sermon he turned to Peter again, and to the look the Lord gave him across the courtyard after the third denial.

And the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord … And Peter went out, and wept bitterly. LUKE 22:61–62

That look did not destroy Peter. It restored him. Tozer longed for his hearers to be looked at in the same way, and to weep in the same way, because such tears are the beginning of return.

Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings. JEREMIAH 3:22

For those who would go on, his counsel was simple and unspectacular. Seek God deliberately. Refuse to be content. Give Him time. Pray in advance of the battle. Surrender whatever He puts His finger on. And keep going.

Weighing it

Here we meet the fourth caution raised in the introduction. Tozer sometimes wrote as though the deeper life were the possession of a few — a small, earnest minority set apart from the great mass of nominal and carnal believers. There was truth in his observation; not every professing Christian is pressing on. But the language of the spiritual few can breed a subtle pride in those who think themselves among them, and a hopeless discouragement in those who are sure they are not. The New Testament knows no spiritual aristocracy. Every believer is called to press on, and every believer who presses on is given grace to do it.

Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection. HEBREWS 6:1

Take Tozer’s summons as addressed to you, not as a description of an elite you may or may not belong to. The deeper life is simply the next step of obedience, taken today.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Ask yourself whether you have been soothing a dissatisfaction that God put there. Stop soothing it, and bring it to Him.

2. Read Tozer’s sermon Causes of Backsliding in the Ochorus library. Test yourself honestly against its symptoms.

3. Identify one test you can see coming — a conversation, a decision, a season. Begin praying about it now, before it arrives.

4. If your first love has cooled, read Revelation 2:1–7 and do what it says: remember, repent, and do the first works.

5. If you have thought of the deeper life as for others, confess that, and take one concrete step of obedience this week.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, I have not already attained. I have settled for far less of You than You have offered.

Keep me from the slow cooling of the heart. Where my love has grown cold, look on me as You looked on Peter, and let me weep and return.

Teach me to watch and pray before the battle, and not to sleep when You call me to wake.

I do not ask to be counted among a spiritual few. I ask only to follow You further, today. Amen.