This listing is True Discipleship: Embracing the Call to Follow Jesus to Calvary with Faith, Sacrifice, and Devotion, credited to A.W. Tozer and published as a “Grapevine Edition,” part of a series called The Essential A.W. Tozer, with Caleb Sinclair credited as editor.
Read this before you buy
The edition matters more than usual here, so start with it.
Tozer died in 1963. He did not write a book with this title or this subtitle. What you are buying is a modern compilation of Tozer material, packaged by a print-on-demand publisher, with a long descriptive subtitle attached by whoever assembled it. The ISBN on the paperback carries a 978-93 prefix, which is an Indian registration, consistent with the print-on-demand series it belongs to. There is no meaningful information available about the editor or about which Tozer sources were used and how they were selected or trimmed.
That does not mean the words are fake. Tozer wrote a great deal about discipleship and the cost of following Christ, and the substance of what is here is recognizably his. It does mean you cannot tell what you are getting, what was left out, or whether the arrangement reflects anything Tozer intended.
If you want Tozer on discipleship, buy Discipleship: What It Truly Means to Be a Christian, the compilation from Moody Publishers. It is a properly edited collection from Tozer’s actual publisher, and you will know what you are holding.
What the material itself says
The theme is that discipleship is not an upgrade available to committed Christians but the ordinary shape of following Jesus. Tozer’s argument, made in his usual blunt style, is that a Christianity with no cross in it is not Christianity. He is relentlessly hard on comfortable, cost-free faith, and he wrote most of this into a mid-century American church he thought had gone soft.
That critique lands. Tozer is one of the few writers who can make a settled reader genuinely uneasy in a few paragraphs, and the passages on self-denial and obedience are as sharp as anything he wrote.
What it does not have
No study questions, no discussion guide, no action prompts. An earlier version of this review claimed it had Scripture-based action prompts and small-group discussion questions. It does not, and neither do the other volumes in this series. If you want to use Tozer in a men’s group, you will be writing the questions yourself.
Who it suits
The material suits a reader who wants to be confronted rather than encouraged, and who already has enough footing to take it. Tozer does not do gentle and he does not qualify himself.
But on the edition specifically, most readers are better served by the Moody collection. Buy this one only if it is what is in front of you and the price is right.
Bottom line
Real Tozer substance in a repackaged edition of unclear provenance. The teaching is worth your time. The book itself is not the version to own, and the Moody compilation is.
Check the current price of this Grapevine edition on Amazon
Or check the Moody Publishers compilation, Discipleship: What It Truly Means to Be a Christian