A Well Balanced Spiritual Life

What makes up the Christian life? Well at its very core the Christian life is nothing more than a right standing living relationship with God. What practices and habits (what ‘disciplines’ as they’ve historically been called) should we engage in to promote and maintain the health of this relationship? We should fast, take communion, give time and resources to others, we should have regular fellowship with other believers, worship and pray, and study the word of God. This list could go on, but I want to focus on the last three: fellowship, prayer, and study.

Of course these things are not necessary for salvation, for we are not saved by our works, but they are necessary to have an intimate relationship with God. In the same way spending time together and being thoughtful and kind to one’s spouse is not necessary in order for one to have a legally binding marriage, but if one desires to have healthy, successful marriage they will do these things. And one must do all three things. One may not simply spend time, but in that time fail to be thoughtful and kind, what good would that time be? And one cannot be kind without being thoughtful? It does no good to make your spouse dinner if you haven’t thought enough to make a dish that they enjoy.

In the same way one must have regular prayer and worship of God, fellowship with other followers, and study and read the Word of God. If one only has one of these, they will encounter many problems.

But this does not seem right? How can one spend too much time reading the Bible or how can one pray too much? One cannot pray or study the Bible too much, but without prayer one’s study will suffer and without study of the Bible one’s prayer life will go off track.

To begin with, consider fellowship. Fellowship with other believers is very important, but if one only does this they become a hippy in the worst sense of the word. I have friends who are very relationship orientated, this is good. But some of them almost desire to hang out full time. They don’t want to work (who does!), but consider their non-work a job in itself.

The problem their witness to Christ is undercut by their way of life. How do they stand out when they look no different than other slacker twenty somethings who don’t want to work and spend all their waking hours hanging out? Paul tells us to work hard so that we may be a witness to our employers and those around us (I Thessalonians 4:11). He lived his teaching, working full time as a tent maker while he spread the Gospel.

Further, the only unity we have in Christ is in the Truth. But if we do not study the Word of God, how are we to know the truth? If we just get our theology from our friends and those around us at church, we may be getting bad theology. Paul says we must test everything that we hear against the Word of God. In order to do this we must know the Word of God and we may only know it by reading it!

Next, there are many people who think that prayer is all we need. Now prayer is a beautiful thing, and we surely need it, but without the anchor of God’s Word we can drift to some dangerous places. Christ told the woman at the well that we are to worship God in spirit and in truth (John 4:24). Worship alone is not enough; it must be anchored in God’s Truth.

Now some say that the whole of God’s Truth can be found in worship. They are mystics who are led by feelings and emotions. The problem is the Dark One can imitate any feeling or emotion. He can produce a false peace or sense of belonging. I can’t say how many times I knew of someone who got divorced or slept around because they felt like it was ok. These are clear sins and the Word of God must trump all our emotions.

Without the Word of God we may find ourselves chirping like birds or barking like dogs and criss-crossing the country to find the next place where we may recreate some feeling we once had. As we do this our focus moves from God, to feelings that we think God produces. We get obsessed with chasing after the presence of God and forget to chase after God Himself. God warns us about this. He tells us in the last day people will be sensual (led by their senses). All these spiritual feelings are recreated in false religions all over the world. This is not to say God doesn’t touch our feelings and emotions in times of prayer and worship, for I believe that He does, it is only to say that we must not run after all these things and that we must be sure we are grounded in the Word of God so that we do not fall prey to false movements. After all, we would all recognize the Wolf if he presented himself to us as such, but he always comes clothed as an angel of light.

Finally, let us consider the study of the Word of God. Promoting this value at the expense of all others is the weakness I am most vulnerable to. In study one can treat the text as any other text and try to understand the God of the Bible like an equation. Instead of reading the Bible to know God, one can find themselves reading the Bible to know things about God. Their spiritual life can become dry and dull without prayer and they can misinterpret verses if they are not in dialogue with others in the community of believers.

I have had professors who knew the Bible better than my pastors, but they didn’t believe in it. It didn’t change how they viewed the world or how they lived their lives. It was a very interesting book, but no more than a book.

But the Bible is far more than a book. It was written to teach and train us so that we may be ready for every act of righteousness (II Timothy 3:16). We need it to inform our prayers, so that we don’t fall into falsehood and so that we may pray God’s will. And we need prayer and daily interaction with God because salvation is a relationship, not a multiple choice test. And we need fellowship to keep us humble, to encourage us, and to keep us accountable.