The Mark of a Healthy Spiritual Life, J. R. Miller. As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. Psalm 42, 1 and 2. Hunger is a mark of health, and the lack of appetite proclaims disease. The cessation of the desire for knowledge shows that intellectual growth has ended. Just so in spiritual life, dissatisfaction is the token of health. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. Blessed are the unsatisfied. Blessed are those who long for more and more. The mark of healthy spiritual life is an intense thirst for God and a deep passionate yearning for closer, fuller, richer, more satisfying communion with Christ Himself. The ideal Christian life is one of insatiable thirst, of unquenchable yearning, of divine discontent, wooed ever on by visions of an increase in spiritual life, new joy, and new attainments in Christlikeness. The best thing in us is never what we now are, nor what we have already reached, but the longing for that which is yet higher and holier. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it, But one thing I do, forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3, 12-14.
