This is Unnecessary

I just ran across this immense passage in Tozer’s The Knowledge of the Holy (a manual on God’s nature that I used to tell my students was worth a limb). In his discourse on the self-sufficiency of God he explains:

“So lofty is our opinion of ourselves that we find it quite easy, not to say enjoyable, to believe that we are necessary to God. But the truth is that God is not greater for our being, nor would He be less if we did not exist. That we do exist is altogether of God’s free determination, not by our desert nor by divine necessity. Probably the hardest thought of all our natural egotism to entertain is that God does not need our help. We commonly represent Him as a busy, eager, somewhat frustrated Father hurrying about seeking help to carry out His benevolent plan to bring peace and salvation to the world, but….the God who worketh all things surely needs no help and no helpers.

“Too many missionary appeals are based upon this fancied frustration of Almighty God. An effective speaker can easily excite pity in his hearers, not only for the heathen but for the God who has tried so hard and so long to save them and has failed for want of support. I fear that thousands of younger persons enter Christian service from no higher motive than to help deliver God from the embarrassing situation His love has gotten Him into and His limited abilities seem unable to get Him out of. Add to this a certain degree of commendable idealism and a fair amount of compassion for the underprivileged and you have the true drive behind much Christian activity today.” – A.W. Tozer

I sure like that about God. This truth just destroys my fat ego and confused thinking opposing the fact that I am the one that needs Him. The self-sufficient, self-confident, self-absorbed, independent me monster has all but consumed that humble creature God formed in His image. And as a missionary trying so desperately to fill the earth and subdue it with the glory of the Lord, what a wonderful reminder of His lovingkindness poured out on me: that He would even want me at His side in this labor.