On Spiritual Progress

We churchgoers have our certain ways of doing things, which we love for their familiar ease. Our love for familiarity even leads us to lift up tradition as profound or meaningful in itself. However there is nothing inherently meaningful about tradition (all by itself).
Our hunger for familiarity handicaps our spiritual senses so that we forget to take God as He is.

For those of us who are considered “established” or “experienced,” we should take care lest we neglect the man-reducing nature of being established in God's Spirit.

The theory of gaining superior godliness through theological institutions betrays itself (or at least it should… as students will discover if they listen to God as they learn about Him). This is the theory of depending on men to learn about God.

We churchgoing westerners are, by and large, so engrossed with unspiritual chores that we neglect the most fundamental aspects of our calling, which amount to listening to and obeying Jesus Christ.

We do well to surrender to God's Spirit because spiritual realities exceed our natural realm of thinking in any case. We are inherently clueless about Spirit-led living, therefore we should take our spiritual Teacher at His word. In this way, we will most substantially honor Him as Teacher.

Christ is already holding the whole world together simply because He chooses to, therefore He will also teach and train us however He sees fit. Our goal as Christ-followers is to adapt ourselves to His way of getting things done, which will happen as soon as we decrease so that He might increase in and through us. This might be agonizingly difficult at first, but the eventual results of our sincere efforts amount to unspeakable, heavenly blessings in Christ. The fact that God works Himself out in us despite us demonstrates the overwhelming nature of His grace.

by Patrick Roberts

www.BooksByPatrick.com

Patrick is an average Christ-seeker. His goal is to turn people to Jesus Christ.