The Gaze of a Soul

“Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith” — Hebrews 12:2 (KJV)

Imagine someone reading the Bible for the first time. Tozer says one thing would quickly jump out: faith matters enormously. “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” So it is natural to ask, “What is faith?” And straight after that, the scary question: “Do I have faith?”

Most answers don't impress Tozer. Some teachers tell stories of answered prayers for health or money. Others pile on philosophy, “paring the slender hair of faith thinner and thinner till it disappears.” The Bible hardly defines faith; it shows faith in action. As he puts it, borrowing an old saying: “I had rather exercise faith than know the definition thereof.”

So he goes to a story. In Numbers 21, the Israelites complained against God in the desert, and poisonous snakes came among them. “And they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.” God told Moses to make a bronze snake and lift it up on a pole: “everyone that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.” Centuries later Jesus pointed to that very story: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”

Tozer's discovery is that looking and believing are the same thing. “'Looking' on the Old Testament serpent is identical with 'believing' on the New Testament Christ.” His definition follows: “faith is the gaze of a soul upon a saving God.” And it's not a one-off. “Faith is not a once-done act, but a continuous gaze of the heart at the Triune God.”

What about distraction? Tozer is realistic. Once your heart has turned to Jesus, even when your attention drifts, it comes back, “like a wandering bird coming back to its window.” God knows the direction you have chosen, and he “makes what allowances He must for the thousand distractions which beset us.”

Here is the most freeing part. “Faith is the least self-regarding of the virtues.” It is like an eye, “which sees everything in front of it and never sees itself.” “While we are looking at God we do not see ourselves—blessed riddance.” If you have spent years trying to fix yourself and failing, there is relief in this: stop “tinkering with his soul” and look at Jesus. While you look at him, God is at work in you.

And since faith is looking, anyone can do it, any time, anywhere. You need no equipment, no special day, no special building. “A man is not nearer to Christ on Easter Sunday than he is, say, on Saturday, August 3, or Monday, October 4.” You can do it on “a Pullman berth or a factory or a kitchen” (a Pullman berth was a sleeping bunk on a train). Is that selfish? No. Tozer says a hundred pianos all tuned to the same tuning fork end up tuned to each other. Christians who each look to Christ grow closer to each other too.

“When the eyes of the soul looking out meet the eyes of God looking in, heaven has begun right here on this earth.” Then he prays:

“O Lord, I have heard a good word inviting me to look away to Thee and be satisfied. My heart longs to respond, but sin has clouded my vision till I see Thee but dimly. Be pleased to cleanse me in Thine own precious blood, and make me inwardly pure, so that I may with unveiled eyes gaze upon Thee all the days of my earthly pilgrimage.”

If you have ever lain awake wondering whether you have “enough” faith, Tozer's answer is to stop staring at your faith. Look at Jesus instead. Faith that keeps checking itself is like trying to see your own eye. And if your mind wanders in prayer every few seconds, you haven't failed. You're the bird. Fly back to the window.

One thing to do this week: each time you unlock your phone today, before you open anything, take one breath and turn your attention to Jesus. That's it. One look. By evening you will have done it dozens of times, and you will have understood Tozer's chapter better than any definition could.