A Pilgrim's Progress

Been thinking about life lately—particularly, the Christian life—and how little I feel I am making progress.

A pilgrim’s journey has windy paths and bumps and hills and valleys.

Often, you feel you’re walking backward.

In circles, at best.

And most often, you feel farther away than you’ve ever been.

You remember that moment when you knew you were a new creation, made righteous and whole, loved by a Savior who died for you and rose again.

Today, that joy is stifled because you know you’re prone to wander.

You find your life in Christ falls short of your position in Him.

You wonder why He calls you His own, and marvel that He will welcome you into the Celestial City.

You know your own heart, so you feel you're going backward.

In actuality, you're making a pilgrim’s progress.

Listen to the Apostle Paul as he wrote of his own progress in Christ:

               

·         Written in A.D. 55: “I am the least of the apostles” (1 Cor. 15:9).

·         Written five years later in A.D. 60: “Me, who am less than the least of all the saints” (Eph.3:8).

·         Written three years later in A.D. 63: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief” (1 Tim. 1:15).

The truth is, the closer we draw to Christ, the farther away our hearts will feel in light of who we discover Him to be.

Progress is made in that paradoxical stride of walking closer and shrinking backward.

Because the greater our sin seems, the closer we really are.

This is a pilgrim’s progress.

“We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, 

are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory,

 just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” (2 Cor. 3:18)