First of all….what is the spiritual walk? Well to put it simply, it is the day-in and day-out activities we have with God…whether it be us spending altar time with Him (altar time to be discussed later), prayer, fellowship with Him, fellowship in general, or anything we do that we freely allow God’s Order and Standards to penetrate our minds and shape our imagery, and thus, our behavior patterns. So how do you keep a solid spiritual walk? Later units will discuss more rote details of this process, but here are the four basic fundamentals.
1) We must know precisely where we are in our walk. The Word of God is designed to uplift and convict. If it’s only doing one or the other then we must look deeper into ourselves. The purpose of doing this is to know the very nature of our fellowship with God and get the most out of it. We have to freely let this be guided by God based on His Word (for example, the 10 Commandments in Exodus 20, or Christ’s Commandment in Matthew 22:37 [see previous unit about godly love]). Unless we comprehensively know both our strengths and our weaknesses, we cannot truly edify the Body and know our role in the Kingdom. Therefore we must examine ourselves at the time of fellowship, and there is no greater (as in more intimate) fellowship with God than Communion, which gives us the very charge to make this examination. (Ref: 1 Corinthians 11:27-32)
2) Know that whatever we do, it’s not enough. We inherited our default nature and bodies from the 1st Adam. We all know how that piece turned out…he was so focused on what God had given him (Bone of my bone flesh of my flesh anyone?) that he lost sight of what God wanted him to do. Genesis 3 God sets out the first punishment for sin after the first sin has been committed. And taking a closer look at the Bible, EVERY “great figure” fell (but Christ). Abraham (went into his concubine), Moses (lost his faith), David (slept with another man’s wife), Solomon (had a harem)…and the list goes on. Christ walked the ONLY sinless walk in recorded history, which makes sense because he’s God the Son. The rest of us? Well Romans 3:23 says we all have sinned and have fallen short. So no matter what, so long as we inhabit our physical bodies our PRACTICAL RIGHTEOUSNESS says “We a joke and we need Jesus”.
3) Know that it’s “okay”. No God doesn’t want you to sin. But He knows it’s going to happen…probably a lot. Our God is a long suffering God and gave us His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8). Salvation comes by Grace through Faith in Christ (John 3:16-18). We shouldn’t be sinning but even if we do, we have a mechanism of forgiveness to re-establish fellowship (1 John 1:9, to be discussed in several weeks). However, beating ourselves us is just as deceptive as the sin that brought us to that point. Romans 8:1 explains that there is no condemnation for members of the body (those in Christ Jesus). So we shouldn’t sweat that we sinned beyond comprehensively examining the sin and putting it and the cares that brought us to it to God. And thus we shall receive the power to defeat our iniquity by getting empowered by the Spirit (Romans 8, Galatians 5:22-23, Philippians 4:8)
4) Seek out God for everything that we do. Have you ever heard that term “What would Jesus do?” As cliché as it sounds, that should be our default setting. It clears up a lot of our insecurity and gives us a lot of insight. God is a faithful God and He gives grace and knowledge to those who genuinely seek Him out (Psalm 119:1-40). The very charge itself made by Christ is to seek out the Kingdom and its righteousness. (Matthew 6:33). A similar charge is to let our let so shine (Matthew 5:16) As any given Kingdom is a representation of the King, this is how we get close to the King.
Next week I'm going to talk about different power sources. Have a good week, and pardon the late send!
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