Progress in the Things of God

 The following is from the book Filled Unto All the Fulness of God  by T. Austin-Sparks:

"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 acknowledgement 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. We were once told by somebody that they had been to all the conventions for the last forty years and they knew all the teaching of all these different conventions, and they did not feel that there was anything fresh to be had; and from our own personal association with that person we knew that they had the very smallest spiritual capacity and the most limited measure of personal knowledge of the Lord.  Spiritual knowledge is quite other than the grasp of truth and teaching.

"The child of God is one whose spirit has been renewed and who has at the centre 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. Take Abram and Lot as an illustration of this. Abram heard God speaking to him and walked with God in an inner fellowship. Lot went the same way historically, but Lot walked with Abram, not with God. His was a second-hand walk with God, so to speak, and that is an illustration of the spirit and the soul. One has the first hand union with God; the other has a hearsay knowledge of God. The true family is of the first order. It may not be fully developed and it may be in its infant stage; but the true family is composed of those who have inner spirit union with God as the result of a supernatural act: new birth."