A New Criteria

My wife and I host and lead a home group on Sunday nights.

We love our group. We got single people. We got married people. We laugh together. We cry together. We share the joys and pains of life together. We try to help each other walk in the way of Jesus.

This past Sunday night we were looking at Psalm 16 and talking about what it means to stay centered on God. Toward the end of the study I asked a question relating to how centered on God each person currently felt on a scale from one to ten (1 being I am so far from centered it is scary; 10 being I am so centered it is ridiculous!)

What happened immediately after I asked that question was interesting.

People began to answer how centered they felt based on how their devotional life was going--namely, how often they set aside time to read the Bible and pray. Most people felt guilty and expressed that they need to be making that a greater priority in their lives. Some asked to be held accountable for the following week. Now I am not opposed to reading the Bible and praying. I think both of those activities can bring about spiritual growth. But I sensed, and I think most people in my home group did as well, that a new and different kind of criteria needs to be used to assess spiritual vitality.

I think most followers of Jesus sense that they ought to be growing spiritually. This is the whole idea of progressive sanctification. We are not supposed to coast or become stagnant. We are to be continually growing. But most people think the key to growth is to just try harder. And the way to try harder is to get more committed to their devotional times. The problem is, and I have even experienced this in my own life, that after a couple weeks of committed devotional times, we lose momentum, get tired, and ending up stopping the routine. Then we get convicted or feel guilty about our laziness and so we start the cycle all over again. So the pattern is conviction, effort, and then failure--over and over and over again. The real problem, of course, (besides excessive guilt) is that you can read your Bible and pray every day and still be a jerk!

So we need a new criteria to measure spiritual vitality and progress. And I would suggest that instead of allowing a few devotional practices to be the determining criteria, we ought to consider the sum total of a person's life. Is this person keeping the commands of Jesus--that is, growing in love for God and others? Is this person walking in the Spirit on a moment-by-moment basis? Is this person cooperating with the power of the Spirit to advance the kingdom of God?

Now to the degree that reading the Bible and praying helps a person do those things--great! But we must recognize that our religious devotion to a couple disciplines is a reflection of ancient Pharasaism. So lets adopt a new criteria. Lets let our entire lives be a reflection of our devotion. And may all of our lives be defined by outrageous love and complete cooperation with the Spirit of God.