The pilgrim's progress



January 15, 2011
Andrée Seu

Three wishes and ways for moving forward in the new year

The pilgrim is meant to make progress. This is a great joy for many of us. But perhaps it has to be contended for in our day. In Bunyan's tale, our protagonist puts miles between himself and the City of Destruction on his journey heavenward. But in real life one sees uncertainty as to how much progress can be made on this side of the Jordan's icy flow...

C.S. Lewis, critiquing his book The Pilgrim's Regress 10 years later, said it suffered from "needless obscurity." (He was right.) Here are three simple wishes for your new year:

-Pray to have friends (at least one) who have more faith than you do...

-So my next wish for you is to get rid of everything doubtful in your life this year, since the unclean may not pass by that highway...

-My third wish for you is mastery of the tongue.

Full essay here image

The march, not the dirge, has ever been the music of Christianity...

I do not advise that we end the year on a somber note. The march, not the dirge, has ever been the music of Christianity. If we are good students in the school of life, there is much that the years have to teach us. But the Christian is more than a student, more than a philosopher. He is a believer, and the object of his faith makes the difference, the mighty difference. Of all persons the Christian should be best prepared for whatever the New Year brings. He has dealt with life at its source. In Christ he has disposed of a thousand enemies that other men must face alone and unprepared. He can face his tomorrow cheerful and unafraid because yesterday he turned his feet into the ways of peace and today he lives in God. The man who has made God his dwelling place will always have a safe habitation. ...AW Tozer image by Stig Nygaard

Happy New Year 2011!

"The God of Israel will be your rereward." Isaiah 52:12

Security from Yesterday. "God requireth that which is past." At the end of the year we turn with eagerness to all that God has for the future, and yet anxiety is apt to arise from remembering the yesterdays. Our present enjoyment of God's grace is apt to be checked by the memory of yesterday's sins and blunders. But God is the God of our yesterdays, and He allows the memory of them in order to turn the past into a ministry of spiritual culture for the future. God reminds us of the past lest we get into a shallow security in the present.

Security for To-morrow. "For the Lord will go before you." This is a gracious revelation, that God will garrison where we have failed to. He will watch lest things trip us up again into like failure, as they assuredly would do if He were not our rereward. God's hand reaches back to the past and makes a clearing-house for conscience.

Security for To-day. "For ye shall not go out with haste." As we go forth into the coming year, let it not be in the haste of impetuous, unremembering delight, nor with the flight of impulsive thoughtlessness, but with the patient power of knowing that the God of Israel will go before us. Our yesterdays present irreparable things to us; it is true that we have lost opportunities which will never return, but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past sleep, but let it sleep on the bosom of Christ.

Leave the Irreparable Past in His hands, and step out into the Irresistible Future with Him. ...Oswald Chambers image