A.W. Tozer

A.W. Tozer: The Prophet of the Burning Heart

A.W. Tozer never sought fame.
He sought God.
And in finding Him, he found fire.

Born in 1897, a poor farm boy from Pennsylvania.
No formal seminary. No degrees to his name.
But he knew God.

He was baptized in the fire of the Holy Spirit and never looked back.
He lived on his knees and preached from the mountain.

Tozer did not preach to be liked.
He preached because a burden from heaven was burning in his bones.

He feared no man because he feared God.
He did not whisper truth.
He thundered it.

Tozer saw something others missed.
While the Church was building programs, he saw a void.
A void of glory. A void of power. A void of God.

“The Church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshiping men.”

This was his cry:
“Know God. Not about Him. Know Him.”

His most famous book, The Pursuit of God, was written on a train in one night.
It reads like a psalm soaked in tears.
A cry for a deeper life. A real life. A God-filled life.

“O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more.”

Tozer wasn’t interested in surface-level Christianity.
He called it what it was: spiritual death in religious clothing.

He lamented a Church that was a mile wide and an inch deep.

He saw a crowd, but no Christ.
A pulpit, but no power.
A form of godliness, but no fire.

“The world is perishing for lack of the knowledge of God, and the Church is famishing for want of His presence.”

He wasn’t just a critic.
He was a prophet.
And prophets don’t entertain — they warn, they weep, and they awaken.

Tozer’s sermons weren’t polished.
They were piercing.

He once said,

“We must have the courage to turn from our sin and face the wrath and mercy of God.”

He didn’t want better methods.
He wanted better men — men who walk with God.

He said,

“We need men of the closet, men who have been with God and have come out only when God has sent them.”

He refused to be owned.
He turned down pay raises.
Lived simply.
Prayed deeply.
Preached boldly.

He never owned a car.
Never cared for applause.
He was not impressed by numbers — only by God’s nearness.

His second great work, The Knowledge of the Holy, is a spiritual earthquake.
Each chapter explores an attribute of God — holiness, omniscience, immutability.

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”

He believed that wrong thoughts about God were the root of all spiritual decay.

Low views of God produce low living.
But a high view of God? That produces saints.

Tozer died in 1963.
But his voice refuses to die.
It echoes in pulpits, whispers through pages, and burns in the hearts of the hungry.

He once prayed:

“God, I want to want Thee. I long to be filled with longing. I thirst to be made more thirsty still.”

That was Tozer:
Always seeking. Always burning. Never satisfied with second-hand fire.

He was not perfect — but he was pure.
He did not know everything — but he knew the One who does.

He gave us no gimmicks, no formulas.
Only God.

So what do we do with a man like A.W. Tozer?

We don’t admire him from a distance.
We follow him — not to Tozer, but to Christ.

He would have said, “Don’t read me if you’re not going to seek Him.”

In a day of shallow noise, his words still thunder:
“We need a baptism of holy reverence.”
“We need altars, not stages.”
“We need God, not gimmicks.”

Tozer reminds us that revival begins not in the church building — but in the prayer closet.
Not with a crowd — but with a man or woman who says,
“God, whatever it costs — I must have You.”

So may we, like Tozer,
hunger for holiness,
weep over worldliness,
and burn with the presence of the Living God.

He is not far.
He is near to the contrite.
And as Tozer showed us — He still answers those who seek Him.