Its a common question. Well meaning church people ask it all the time. I've asked it, or some variant of it this week. All that being said, its kind of a bad question.
What exactly do I mean, by asking How's your spiritual life going? When someone asks me that I routinely respond with something like. (in a hang-dog voice) ...I'm not spending as much time with God as I should or as I want to...I need to pray more etc.
I like what John Ortberb said:
"Are you becoming more loving toward God and toward people? this...is the supreme spiritual diagnostic for Christ-followers who want to please him."
How am I changing? How are you changing? Are you changing? Without changing I'm just going through the motions, I'm just tying Bible verses to my head, and sitting on a cloth folding myself in half and facing east.
The question "How's your spiritual life going?" also compartmentalizes life more than I think God intends. Col 3:17 "Whatever you do whether in word or deed do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus."
I like what Brother Lawrence said:
"...(W)hat makes you think that God is absent from the maintenance shop but present in the chapel?...Holiness doesn't depend on changing our jobs, but in doing for God's sake what we have been used to doing for our own."
I want to be like that.
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This post was inspired and adapted from Fully Devoted by John Ortberg et. al.
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- Josh
- I'm in love with my wife, enchanted by my children, and amazed by the world around me.
4 comments:
I get what you're saying.
And yes, your "spiritual life" (or "disciplines") can be going quite poorly, while your "spiritual life" ("sanctification") is going quite well.
The question is usually a very short-sighted one.
I was just asking a friend how is career was going. Turns out that his workaday world stinks rotten. I asked him what he planned to do about it, and he said, "Just waiting it out."
The career can be fine, even when the course is rocky. God fixes us by breaking us--and people who are never broken give me the willies.
cap- I hear what you're saying about the unbroken willy givers. I agree.
johnny - did you make up the whole "prayer is a vessel I travel in", phrase cause if you did you need to write a book around that phrase immediately!
"prayer is a vessel I travel in" man that thing could grow legs..
Not only is it going, but also to or from? Direction is important.
I'm personally a big fan of Donald Miller. One reason is that my spirtual life doesn't take "disiplines" very well. I CANNOT get myself to read scripture daily. But I can easily think about it. But, further, I believe that the journey of the heart is more important than that of the mind. What good is having all the right doctrine and perfect disipline, if you don't care about people? God loves people, not sacrifices. We should be the same. The sacrifice is meaningless without the person. Really, the death of Christ is meaningless without his life of passion and compassion. All of us need to work on our heart for the downtrodden and forgotten in the world, everywhere. Belief requires action.
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