Paul professed that he had learned to be content with such earthly goods as fell to his lot. That is something else from being content with his spiritual attainments. With these, he specifically declared that he was not satisfied: "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." Contentment with earthly goods is the mark of a saint; contentment with our spiritual state is a mark of inward blindness.
One of the greatest foes of the Christian is religious complacency. It (complacency) is encountered almost everywhere among Christians these days, and its presence is a sign and a prophecy. For every Christian will become at last what his desires have made him. We are all the sum total of our hungers. Selah....
The great saints have all had thirsting hearts. Their cry has been. "My soul thirsts for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before Him?" Their longing for God all but consumed them...it propelled them onward and upward to heights toward which less ardent Christians look with indifferent eyes and entertain no hope of reaching. Many of us fear extremes and shy away from too much ardor in religion as if it were possible to have too much love, too much faith or too much holiness....
But His Word exhorts us to pray on, fight on and sing on! Press on into...God. Keep your feet on the ground, but let your heart soar as high as it will. Refuse to be average! Unless you do these things, you will reach the mediocrity to which you will have been drifting for so long. From such a state, God save us all. Amen....
Adapted from A. W. Tozer's "The Root Of The Righteous" (1955)
A heart after...,
Mitch
