Recently I’ve seen a number of mentions of books along the lines of A. W. Tozer’s Pursuit of God and John Piper’s Desiring God. While I never read Piper’s book and read Tozer’s book so long ago I don’t remember any of it, I do remember that I found Tozer’s book unhelpful, and every indication is that Piper’s book is of a similar vein. Another book of this type is Francis Chan’s Crazy Love (which I read more recently than Tozer’s book).
In every case, the Christian is told to love God better. I remember a phrase from Piper: “… to savor him duly….” I may be misquoting but I particularly remember the sense that one has a certain duty to properly savor God. I also recall from Crazy Love the old saw that we are “commanded to rejoice always.”
The problem I have with all this is that it puts the onus on us. By this I mean that we are given a kind of standard to live up to: have we pursued God? Have we loved him enough? Have we rejoiced properly? Have we savored him duly?
The simple fact is that the Bible hardly focuses at all on our love for God. Instead we see God’s faithful love that always seeks us: “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10).
This is a love that always takes the initiative, that bears the cost of loving us, that remains faithful:
The saying is trustworthy, for:
If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
if we endure, we will also reign with him;
if we deny him, he also will deny us;
if we are faithless, he remains faithful — for he cannot deny himself.
– 2 Timothy 2:11-13