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Friends United Meeting |
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January/February 2001
Valiant for Truth
By Trish Edwards-Konic
Having just returned home from visiting family for Christmas, I was amazed at how everyone had changed. Some were taller, some had more gray in their hair (or less of it), some had changed in weight. It was easy to spot these outward changes. Snapshots were taken to be added to ones chronicling our physical growth from childhood onward.
But suppose we had snapshots chronicling our spiritual growth as well. Would our spiritual growth be as evident as our physical growth? Charles Spurgeon said: "We have the likenesses of our boys taken on every birthdayÉso that we see them at a glance from their babyhood to their youth. Suppose such photographic memorials of our own spiritual life had been taken and preserved; would there be a regular advance, as in these boys, or would we still have been exhibited in the perambulator? Have not some grown awhile, and then suddenly dwarfed? Have not others gone back to childhood? Here is a wide field for reflection."
The object of spiritual growth is to become holy by taking on more and more of the characteristics of God. "For I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy" (Leviticus 11:44).
Growing in holiness is not following a set of rules. Rather it is conformity to the very character of God, being holy because God is holy. God's plan is for us to grow more holy.
The choices we make daily determine the person we will be in the future. We are going to be what we are now becoming. The Advices and Queries help us to keep focused on spiritual growth, on that which helps us to conform more into the very character of God. Reading, reflecting and praying over our responses enables us to make better choices about the use of our time, finances and talents.
After listing twenty Advices, The Balby Epistle of 1656 concluded: "Dearly beloved Friends, these things we do not lay upon you as a rule or form to walk by, but that all, with the measure of light that is pure and holy, may be guided: and so in the light walking and abiding, these may be fulfilled in the Spirit, not from the letter, for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life."
Copyright (c) 2001 Friends United Meeting
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