Friday, February 15, 2013

"Progress..................."

I’m about half-way through a biography of Jim Elliot’s life. He was the 28 year-old missionary killed, along with four other men, in Ecuador back in 1956 by the very people they were trying to win for Christ. It’s a hard read for me, his faith, as represented here by his wife, the author, a bit too “holier-than-thou” in his younger days, a condition perhaps due to a very strict up-bringing by his parents, members of something called the Plymouth Brethren. He would outgrow some of that during college while, at the same time, evolving into a feeling of having failed, himself, to achieve a certain level of “righteousness”. Hopefully that, too, changed at least somewhat before his death. On the other hand, while I want to believe that A.W. Tozer held no misconception that it’s possible for any of us to obtain such actual state of perfection, in this book of his that we’re reading for class, he talks of “levels of spirituality” one can know if we are willing to just be “possessed” by the Holy Ghost. He puts that in terms of the Spirit not permitting us any sins of “self”-ishness and makes it sound as if Christians can gradually climb to a place where humanity is completely lost along the way. If that be true, I’ve not yet met such a person in my journey of four decades. The Apostle Paul said that he had to “die daily”; and that seems to suggest there is no complete transformation, not in this life, anyway, the journey a matter of learning to put it all, stumbles, bad decisions, sin, our mess, into His hands and, with Him, take the next step.....

2 comments:

  1. Talk of "levels" also raises my eyebrows some although I look back at some of the things I've written in the past and wonder how people didn't tell me to just shut my yap.

    Agree about the daily thing. I remember reading a book by John Eldredge in which he says that we live in the land of forget. I know I need regular reminders.

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    1. Was talking Friday with the Catholic fellow who loaned me the Jim Elliot book. We agreed that it all boils down to Christ being the only one who models "perfection" and that, in fulfilling His commandment to "pick up your cross and follow me", He, Himself, is ever the goal in front of us, not a condition we conquer in this lifetime...

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