This morning began as most of my mornings, slow. Slow to wake up. Slow to get up. Slow to get to the coffee pot. Slow to get started in my Kingdom start-up time. Now, over three hours later, I am still chasing a thought generated by my Kingdom start-up study based on Oswald Chamber’s “My Utmost for His Highest.” By today I mean March 23, so you can check out today’s reading; it’s titled, “Am I Carnally Minded.” Not the happiest question to begin the day. Today’s reading was also a slow take-up for my mind. This is my fourth or fifth time going through the daily readings in this book. It has never disappointed me.
I got little from the initial reading from today’s installment. But then a thought began to ricochet around in my cranial cavity, how do you know when you are making progress in your walk with Jesus? It’s not one of the things marked off by miles, or millimeters, or time. Nor is it marked off in the acquiring of knowledge. I have changed over the last seven decades. Is the change because my body and mind can’t do what they used to want to do. Are old temptations no longer appealing because they have been mastered or is the body no longer able and the mind too fragmented? Have I grown, and am I still growing spiritually mature? From the inside, it’s hard to tell.
From the word “cranial,” my mind went to the word “carnival” then to Christian’s experience in the city of Vanity, Vanity Fair. (Not the magazine or the clothier.) So, I did a quick search to remind myself of John Bunyan’s classic book, “Pilgrim’s Progress.” Did you know the full title is “Pilgrim’s Progress from This World, to That Which Is to Come?” Did you know John Bunyan wrote much of the book while in prison for worshiping without the Anglican Church’s permission? His book was first published in 1678 and has never been out of publication, not ever! That’s four hundred and twenty years. That’s a lot of paper and ink. It has been translated into more than 200 languages and was first published in the United States in 1681.
So now, I’m wondering If I’m making “progress” in this “Vanity” city I live in, overcoming the carnal temptations that besiege me. And, again, how do I measure that growth?
I do not think Christ-likeness can be measured by counting the bad I do not do and the good I do and comparing those to a list of their counterparts. That system feels like it flows from the “vain” vane that runs throughout my physical and mental being.
I think the only way to assess my spiritual growth is to exam the desires which drive me. Those desires in me which recoil at the injustice in the world cannot be counted. Even those who claim there is no god have those desires. The desires I speak of here are of a different palette. This palette of desires contains only those tents and shades of the desire to live in and from “the image of God” in which we were created. The desire He had when He created us.
I have come to believe all progress in our spiritual development can only be measured accurately by Him. The truth is we will never really know until all this earthly part of being is stripped away from the eternal part. But when that happens, we probably won’t care; we will have reached our Creator’s goal for us.
The level, or intensity, of desire to fulfill our God-given purpose, is the closes means of measuring our spiritual growth. The question which helps me is this, “What am I willing to give up of Fred, to be more like the physical presence of Jesus on earth?” It’s not what I have done or become that measures maturity. It is what I desire to come and to become.
Listen to the Apostle Paul’s driving desire; I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. (Philippians 3:10-11, NIV)
(Sometime soon, I need to share how important these two verses are to me.)
Baldwin Heirlooms 