The Shortest Route To Spiritual Perfection

SYNOPSIS: I know of no other road to the kind of wisdom that Proverbs promises, no other route to spiritual perfection, no other path to a thriving Christianity, and no other spiritual discipline that will lead you to a God-pleasing life than by centering your life on God’s Word — reading, meditating, journaling, praying, then obeying the Scriptures. Nothing will contribute to your growth, health, and success in every area of life as a believer than that. It is this simple, my friend—not easy, but simple.

Moments With God // Proverbs 7:1-4

Follow my advice, my son; always treasure my commands. Obey my commands and live! Guard my instructions as you guard your own eyes. Tie them on your fingers as a reminder. Write them deep within your heart. Love wisdom like a sister; make insight a beloved member of your family.

In the first ten chapters of Proverbs, Solomon, the primary author of this amazing book, uses a literary technique by which he personifies wisdom as a woman. This woman, we might call her Lady Wisdom, calls out to a young man, who represents us, offering insights that will keep him from foolish decisions that will train wreck his life. Obviously, Lady Wisdom is God’s call to you and me to invest our highest and best energies in that which will enable us to lead a good life—one that is successful, satisfying, and most of all, pleasing to him.

Now that sounds like a huge task—and in many ways, it is—but the path to that kind of life, let’s call it spiritual perfection, is quite straightforward. And it is a way of the Word of God, where those who make the journey will grow in their knowledge of and obedience to God’s revealed truth. A.W. Tozer said it this way:

The Word of God well understood and religiously obeyed is the shortest route to spiritual perfection. And we must not select a few favorite passages to the exclusion of others. Nothing less than a whole Bible can make a whole Christian.

I know of no other path to the kind of Wisdom that Solomon talks about, no other path to spiritual perfection, no other path to becoming a whole Christian, and no other spiritual discipline that will lead us down that path to a God-pleasing life than by centering our lives in God’s Word—reading, meditating, journaling, praying the Scriptures. Nothing will contribute to your growth, health, and success in every area of life as a believer than that.

It is this simple, my friend—not easy, but simple. If you want to mature in your faith, morph into greater Christlikeness, deepen your knowledge of God, insulate your life from sin, enlarge your Kingdom effectiveness, increase your spiritual power, develop life skills for the daily challenges you face, and in general, live in the blessing zone of God’s favor, you’ve got to be in God’s Holy Word on a regular, if not daily, basis. Here is how King David said it in the very first Psalm:

Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither — whatever they do prospers.

That’s the kind of life I want! How about you?