If ever you would attain to higher degrees of holiness than any yet you have attained to, then labour to be more and more sensible of your spiritual wants and deficiencies of grace and holiness.

O Christians! you must look as well to your spiritual wants as to your spiritual enjoyments; you must look as well to your layings out as to your layings up; you must look as well forward to what you should be as backward to what you are.

Certainly that Christian will never be eminent in holiness that hath many eyes to behold a little holiness, and never an eye to see his further want of holiness. He that is more affected with that holiness he hath than he is afflicted about those great measures of holiness that he needs, will never be but a puny, a dwarf in holiness. The more sensible we are of our own weakness and emptiness, the more pleasure God will take to fill us with his own fulness, and to perfect in us the work of holiness.

—Thomas Brooks
Adapted from The Complete Works of Thomas Brooks, 4:384–385.

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