by T. Austin-Sparks
First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazines, 1947, Vol. 25-1 - 25-3.
A spiritual state is the key to all that is of God. Spirituality is the door, and the key to the door, beyond which lies everything that relates to God. Without spirituality, there is no way through, the door is closed. The word "cannot" stands written as an impassable barrier - "cannot understand or receive the things of the Spirit of God." In reality, our lives are set in a realm of things spiritual. God is Spirit, therefore the supreme Reality, the supreme factor, the ultimate environment of this universe - God - is Spirit. Man, in the deepest and truest nature of his being, is spirit.... A real life with the Lord is something very simple, shorn of all the art of religion; a few children of God gathered together in something which has no ecclesiastical traditions, no religious embellishments, no external forms, but just a simple meeting in the Name of the Lord: there you have life, power, fulness. I am not saying that things must be shoddy in order to have spirituality: I am saying that the law of life is spirituality.
