Aiden Wilson (A.W.) Tozer (1897-1963) traveled by train in the early 1940s on a speaking engagement in Texas from his Chicago home. Once he commenced writing, he couldn’t put it down. He wrote furiously all night long. By the time the train pulled into the McAllen, Texas station, the first draft of The Pursuit of God was complete.
A.W. was disheartened by what he perceived to be a lack of desire for God in American churches. “Complacency is the deadly foe of all spiritual growth,” he wrote. His book challenged “the spurious logic which insisted that if we have found him, we need no more seek him.” He coined the phrase “following hard after God” to express this desire. David described his desire in the Psalms as being hungry and thirsty for God (Psalm 42, 63). A. W. wrote in plain style that we pursue God because God has first placed this desire in us. He described it as “a glorious pursuit,” the happy discovery of those who find their delight in God. When the book was released in 1948, it quickly became a devotional classic. The magazine Christianity Today rated it one of the one hundred most influential books of the twentieth century. Not too shabby for someone with only a sixth-grade education. A. W. lacked any formal high school, college, or seminary education, yet he pastored three churches over forty-four years and wrote fifty books. He closed the first chapter, appropriately titled “Following Hard After God” with the prayer: