Not By Intellect, Reason, Or Emotion!

  

It is possible for a man to be marked by an analytical mind, so that he wants to argue out everything, reason out everything and subject everything to the microscope of his own brain, his own reason...

And just see the whole thing right through in that way not accept it until he can understand it like that. 

And so he becomes very analytical, very investigating in his mind over the thing...

And until he can have the very best answer to all his questions from every side, he is not going to accept it. 

That man will make very slow progress. 

The same will apply to one who thinks that by getting a mighty wave of religious emotion he is going to enter into the things of God. 

That is one of the great snares of the devil today. 

Religious emotion is no criterion; it is no ground of true spirituality.

Our knowledge of the Lord, the very remotest bit of it and the very first ray of it, depends upon our spirit being awakened and illumined by the Holy Spirit. 

Progress in the things of God is simply the growth of our inner man...

And not the acknowledgment of our intellectual capacity to grasp truth. 

We may have an increasing capacity, by reason of association and familiarity with truth, for grasping ideas and grasping truth and teaching. 

And that capacity may expand and expand until there is very little that is available to be grasped...

And yet with such there may be the very smallest measure of real spirituality.... 

The child of God is one whose spirit has been renewed... 

And who has, at the center of their being, a union and a communion with God...

Which is not the possession of any man by nature...

And which cannot come in any other realm but in the renewed spirit.

~T. Austin Sparks~