Happy New Year!
Those words bring about feelings of hope and resolve at the beginning of each new year. Many of us resolve to make better decisions, eat better (and less) food, to exercise more, to spend our time doing more meaningful things, to love more deeply, and to work more efficiently. Interestingly, many of us who profess the name of Christ do not spend a great deal of time even thinking about our deepest need for real, quantifiable spiritual growth. This brief post hopes to relate some thoughts on that very important piece to our wholeness and wellness for 2018.
First, let me clearly state that I am talking about Spiritual renewal with a capital S. While our inner personal spirit is certainly renewed through the following exercises, this post seeks to address our personal spirit being renewed by the Holy Spirit. If you are truly a follower of Christ who embraces him as Savior and Lord, this is uniquely for you because you have been given a new life and new orientation for life by this life-giving Holy Spirit. Given our new life in Christ applied by the Holy Spirit, let’s take a brief spiritual check-up so we might then offer a brief spiritual prescription for the new year.
Spiritual Check-up (Examine yourself in these areas)
- Attitudes—would my attitude toward people or circumstances be observed as…
- Grateful or Ungrateful
- Loving or Unloving
- Forgiving or Vengeful
- Self-centered or Other-focused
- Prideful or Humble
- Being about my name, my kingdom, and my will or centrally about God’s?
- Motives—what moves me to act, feel, and do what I do?
- Self-serving motives (all or mostly about me)
- Duty (I do things only because I’m expected to or have some obligation to)
- Love (Am I motivated by love for God and others?)
- Gratitude (So thankful for God’s grace that I respond with gratitude)
- Affections—my general heart orientation and emotion
- My heart orientation is directed from…what?
- My heart orientation in directed toward…what?
- Actions—what do I actually do…what life decisions do I actually make?
- How do I spend my time?—look at your calendar and find our your central value
- How do I spend my money?—look at your checkbook and find your central value
- What relationships do I foster?
- With whom do I communicate (both listening and speaking)?
- What is the nature of my communication?—the content of your language will reveal the content of your heart and mind
- So…how did we do in our brief check-up? We should have found answers to the following questions:
- Whom do I truly serve?
- Whom do I truly love?
- What is my standard for successful Spiritual living?
Prescription for the New Year—
- We want to live rightly, but let’s be honest…we struggle to do so! Most of us probably found that we are wrestling to determine what our standard for successful Spiritual living is to be. We want to be governed by the Holy Spirit, to choose according to the standard of the Holy Spirit, yet we aren’t quite sure what that entails. Let God give you a brief prescription for the New Year for better understanding and growth from the biblical book of Galatians chapter 5.
- Galatians chapter 5
- Verse 17—this states our problem. There is the standard of the flesh (we have always been free to choose according to this standard) and there is the standard of the Spirit (only those who are embracing Jesus as Savior and Lord have been freed to choose according to this standard) and these two standards are contrary (diametrically opposed) the one to the other, so we don’t do what we really want to do as followers of Christ.
- Verse 16—this states the solution. Walk in the Spirit and you won’t fulfill the desires of the flesh (in attitude, motive, affection, and action). GREAT! The only problem is that this sounds like nice religious language that I can’t get a handle on! OK, I agree. So let’s see if the biblical text gives us some handles for understanding and practice.
- PLEASE take the time to do this brief exercise. Take a sheet of paper and on one side, from top to bottom, list the terms that you find in verses 19-21. Verses 19-21 provide a briefly stated Standard of the flesh, so list that as your heading above your list of words on the left of your page. Now, on the right side of the page, list the terms you find in verses 22-23. Verses 22-23 provide a briefly stated Standard of the Spirit, so list that as your heading above your list of words on the right of your page. Now comes an important piece. I want you to clearly think through the reality that each item on the left side (the standard of the flesh) is actually the absence of an item (or multiple items) from the items on the right (the standard of the Spirit). Draw a line from the first item on the left side (standard of the flesh) to each item on the right side (standard of the Spirit) which is completely antithetical to that “flesh” term. For instance, I would be drawing a line from “sexual immorality” to “love” since sexual immorality is the absence of love. I would also be drawing a line from “sexual immorality” to joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control since “sexual immorality” is the absence of all of these things as well. Now go to the next term on the left side and draw lines to those items on the right where the “flesh” term is the absence of the “Spirit” term. Take the time to go through each term. By the time you have completed this exercise, you will probably find a visual display of Galatians 5:17. These two standards are diametrically opposed the one to the other. We are choosing to live a life, at times, that is the very absence of the standard of the Holy Spirit. That is our problem. We must continually and consciously choose to live according to the standard of the Spirit.
- Verse 24—reminds us of our true identity in Christ. We have been crucified with Christ. We are freed from our bondage to the standard of the flesh and we are freed to live according to the standard of the Spirit because of the indwelling of that very Holy Spirit! We have already been given everything that is necessary for spiritual renewal in Christ through the Holy Spirit. So, let’s choose to live according to the Holy Spirit!
- Verse 25—provides the necessary encouragement for the journey. If indeed we have been graced by God with salvation and have made the big decision to receive Christ and be given life in the Spirit, then our individual and ongoing decisions should reflect that new life. We must keep in step with the Spirit—day by day—choice by choice—one decision at a time.
My friends, most of life happens to us one decision at a time.
Don’t get overwhelmed by the large call of the Christian life…just make one good, godly, Spirit-directed decision at a time. That is what we are called to do. And let me offer one warning for those who choose to take this journey with me…we will eventually default to what we know best. We always do. We must study and pray so that the standard of the Spirit becomes that which we know best so it becomes the standard according to which we default and make our life decisions. Perhaps next time, we will consider the actual spiritual disciplines that will help us along this journey of spiritual renewal and growth. Until then, consistently dwell upon and choose according to the Standard of the Spirit for the glory of God and the flourishing of his people.
Dr. Jeffrey D. Halsted-Pastor/Professor
