My Coward Heart

“Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” — Matthew 5:3 (KJV)

Tozer's second chapter is about stuff, and something deeper. When God made people, he surrounded them with good gifts, which Genesis simply calls “things.” Those things were meant to stay outside us. “In the deep heart of the man was a shrine where none but God was worthy to come.”

Sin changed that. Now the things have moved inside. Tozer says there is “a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess.” Listen to how often you say two small words: “The pronouns 'my' and 'mine' look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant.” The result is upside down: “God's gifts now take the place of God.”

Tozer calls this grabbing enemy inside us “the self-life,” and says it is beaten not by fighting harder but by surrendering. That is what Jesus meant by “the poor in spirit.” The word “poor,” Tozer explains, pictures “the common beggar in the streets of Jerusalem”: someone who holds on to nothing.

To show what this looks like, Tozer tells one of the hardest stories in the Bible. Abraham waited until he was old to have a son, Isaac, and loved him so much that the boy became “the delight and idol of his heart.” Then God told Abraham to take Isaac up a mountain and offer him as a sacrifice. It is a disturbing story, and Tozer doesn't pretend otherwise. He imagines the old man that night, “the bent form and convulsive wrestling alone under the stars.” By morning Abraham had decided to obey and to trust God to raise his son from the dead.

God stopped him before he harmed the boy. Tozer imagines God saying to Abraham, “in effect”: “I never intended that you should actually slay the lad. I only wanted to remove him from the temple of your heart that I might reign unchallenged there.” Abraham went home with Isaac alive and well, and Tozer's summary is one of the best lines in the book: “He had everything, but he possessed nothing. There is the spiritual secret.”

Abraham didn't lose his son. He lost his grip. Tozer adds a promise for anyone scared to let go of people they love: “Everything is safe which we commit to Him, and nothing is really safe which is not so committed.” The same goes for our talents: “We have no more right to claim credit for special abilities than for blue eyes or strong muscles.”

What should we do? First, stop making excuses. “Whoever defends himself will have himself for his defense, and he will have no other.” Then get specific: “It may be he will need to become specific, to name things and people by their names one by one.” Tozer is honest that this hurts, like a tooth being pulled.

His prayer at the end of the chapter is the bravest in the book, because it admits fear:

“Father, I want to know Thee, but my coward heart fears to give up its toys. I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide from Thee the terror of the parting. I come trembling, but I do come. Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that Thou mayest enter and dwell there without a rival.”

“I come trembling, but I do come.” That might be the most useful sentence you take from this chapter. Giving things to God doesn't mean throwing them away. Abraham kept Isaac. You may keep your phone, your sport, your music, your friends, your plans. The question is whether they hold you, or God does. Maybe there is one thing, a person, a dream, the way people see you, that you would really struggle to hand over. That's the one Tozer means.

One thing to do this week: write down, by name, the one thing you would find hardest to hand over to God. Then pray Tozer's words over it: “I come trembling, but I do come.” You don't have to feel brave. You just have to come.