Sunday's My Utmost for His Highest used the scriptrure Revelation 4:1:
After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter.
Oswald Chambers made the point that God calls us higher (closer to Him) in our Christian walks. He also proposed an interesting way to determine if you are growing or not:
Compare this week in your spiritual history with the same week last year and see how God has called you up higher. We have all been brought to see from a higher standpoint. Never let God give you one point of truth which you do not instantly live up to. Always work it out, keep in the light of it.
Being the "geek" that I am, I immediately wished we had a way we could quantify our spiritual progress and enter it into an Excel spreadsheet or database. Then, we could graph that and determine in an instant if we were growing or not.
One interesting thing about Mr. Chmbers' way to guage is to "…Compare this week in your spiritual history with the same week last year…." He doesn't say compare it to last month or last week: he uses the last year. That is interesting because we all have our ups and downs in the short term, but our long term trend should be to get closer to God. If you need an example, think of the stock market. The market may go up or down in the short-term, but the long term trend is up. In the same way, we may have our short-term ups and downs, but our long-term trend should be up…up towards God.