Wednesday 10 April 2013

The mark of healthy spiritual life


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(J.R. Miller)

"As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. y soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?" Psalm 42:1-2

Hunger is a mark of health--and the lack of appetite proclaims disease. The cessation of the desire for knowledge, shows that intellectual growth has ended.

Just so in spiritual life--dissatisfaction is the token of health. "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness." Blessed are the unsatisfied. Blessed are those who long for more and more. The mark of healthy spiritual life, is an intense thirst for God, and a deep, passionate yearning for closer, fuller, richer, more satisfying communion with Christ Himself. The ideal Christian life is one of insatiable thirst, of unquenchable yearning, of divine discontent--wooed ever on by visions of an increase in spiritual life, new joy, and new attainments in Christlikeness. The best thing in us, is never what we now are, nor what we have already reached--but the longing for that which is yet higher and holier.

"Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Philippians 3:12-14
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