Looking back over this progression, one of the most important things for us to see and accept is that, once confidence in Jesus lives in us, we must be intelligently active in stages or dimensions 2 through 5. We do this by unrelenting study under Jesus, and in particular by following him into his practices and adapting them to form an effective framework of spiritual disciplines around which our whole life can be structured. This is precisely how we “through the spirit do mortify the life of the flesh” (Rom. 8:13) and “put off the old person and put on the new” (Col. 3:9–10, etc.). Though we
...more
