HOW TO MAKE SPIRITUAL PROGRESS

"Time is short, and eternity is long. The end of all things is at hand. Man has proved himself morally unfit to manage the world in which he has been placed by the kindness of the Almighty," so writes A.W. Tozer. "He has jockeyed himself to the edge of the crater and cannot go back, and in terrible fear he is holding his breath against the awful moment when he will be plunged into the inferno . . .

In the meantime, a company of people exist on the earth who claim to have the answer to all life's major questions. They claim to have found the way back to God, release from their sins, life everlasting and a sure guarantee of heaven in the world to come. These are Christians!"

As Christians we are in process to our final destination. How to we press on and grow in the Christian life? A.W. Tozer suggests five things:

1. Strive to get beyond mere pensive longing. Set your face like flint and begin to put your life in order. Every man is as holy as he really wants to be. But the want must be all-compelling.

2. Put away every un-Christian habit from you. If other Christians practice it without compunction, God may be calling you to come nearer to Him than these other Christians care to come. Remember the words, 'Others may, you cannot.' Do not condemn or criticize, but seek a better way. God will honor you.

3. Get Christ Himself in the focus of your heart and keep him there continually. Cultivate His knowledge above everything else on earth.

4. Throw your heart open to the Holy Spirit and invite Him to fill you. Make your heart a vacuum and the Spirit will rush in to fill it. Nowhere in the Scriptures nor in Christian biography was anyone ever filled with the Spirit who did not know that he had been, and nowhere was anyone filled who did not know when. And no one was ever filled gradually.

5. Be hard on yourself and easy on others. Carry your own cross but never lay one on the back of another. Begin to practice the presence of God. Cultivate the fellowship of the Triune God by prayer, humility, and obedience.

Let any Christian do these things and he will make rapid spiritual progress." Good words from A. W. Tozer as written in MAN: THE DWELLING PLACE OF GOD.