Spiritual Health
Grow Better • Sermon • Submitted
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On a scale from one to ten, how close do you feel God is to you right now? One that same scale, place how close you feel to God? You may ask, “logically, wouldn’t be the same number?” Well, not necessarily. Let me explain. You and God are in a relationship. God has a closeness to all of His creation. We are His creation, and we have our own thoughts, feelings, and attitudes towards our Creator.
When you are in a relationship with someone, whether it is a spouse or someone you are dating, a friend or even a family member, you work on that relationship and draw close to that person in that particular way. Therefore, when we start a relationship with our Creator, we draw close to God by working on that relationship.
The thing is, God is all knowing, always present, and IS love. God cannot be any closer than His creation than He is, unless we dictate so through our own free will. We decide who close we want to be to God. However, sometimes trials and troubles will pull us away from God, God is still always there with us. To be healthy spiritually speaking, is to be drawing ever closer to God constantly and consistently.
Pray and Read 2 Peter 1:3-11
His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants of the divine nature. For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love. For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For anyone who lacks these things is nearsighted and blind, and is forgetful of the cleansing of past sins. Therefore, brothers and sisters, be all the more eager to confirm your call and election, for if you do this, you will never stumble. For in this way, entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be richly provided for you.
His divine power has given us everything needed for lifeand godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness.
This is God’s part in the relationship we have with Him. Through Him, and because we know Him, He has given us all we need in this life and in the next, as in our eternity.
Since God has given us all we need spiritually speaking, we are able to escape, as Simon Peter puts it, the brokenness of this world. We know, we have already discussed that this world is broken and corrupt. Sin is easy, heartbreak and brokenness is all around us. Yet, through the power of God’s own goodness and power, we are able to overcome. That is, if we know Him. If we know God, therefore make every effort to know about our loving Creator, through the conversation known as prayer and reading about how He has had relationships with other through the Holy Scriptures, then we know His divine nature and are an active part of His divine nature.
When you strive to know someone you love and care about, you make every effort to be a part of their life. You are there for them in the events and situations that matter to them. You want to support them and be there for them in the good times and in the bad times. In the same way, we should strive to know God. We read and study scripture that tells God’s story from the very beginning. We talk to God, praising God for the good things in life, and asking for God to be with us in the bad times.
Prayer and reading Scripture is just the basics of how to build a relationship with God. There are steps we take as we build up in closeness to God. The first step is “goodness”. To be good is to be the opposite of bad, right? So that means that to be good means that we make the choice to do what is morally and ethically right. Our morals and our ethics as Christians is dictated by God’s word and convicting power of the Holy Spirit. So goodness is choosing to follow God’s law and doing what God says is right.
Once we have taken this step to chose to be good, we must know what being good means. So we study God’s law and ask God to convict us of our sins. This is us knowing our God and what God asks of us. So we chose to be good, and we learn, or gain knowledge in what is good, then we have to work to maintain that behavior consistently. To be able to consistently control our human impulses to chose goodness means that we have “self-control.”
But even if we are good at maintaining our goodness and we have excellent self-control, temptations are still going to come our way. We live in a broken world, and even though we are redeemed, we are not perfect. Therefore, we have to have “endurance.” To endure is to have the strength to overcome challenges even when we are tired and broken down. The best way to endure is through consistency. We will stumble and fall, but we must get back up and try again. That is the true test of endurance.
So now we have taken these steps: first, we have chosen to be good. Second, we know God and what He calls being good. Third, we are able to control our earthy nature and strive for this goodness, having self-control. Fourth, we endure and are able to move past temptations and failures. So now, the next step is that we can confidently say that we are living as godly life. We know God, God knows us, and we are consistently living the life that God wants us to live. In Peter’s first letter, back a few pages in our Bible, he writes that we are to be “holy as our heavenly Father is Holy.” We cannot be perfect, but we can strive for “Holiness”, be as close as Christ’s example as humanly possible. Over time this becomes easier.
The last two steps are types of love that we feel as we reach what John Wesley has called Entire Sanctification. Because of these previous steps, we are growing in deep divine love and away from the hate and evil that permeates this world. The sixth step is called “Philo” or brotherly love as in love for others. The final step is “Agape” which what I like to call God-sized love. This is true holiness when we can love as God loves. This truly experiencing the greatest commandment of loving God will all that we have and loving others as we love ourselves.
I hope you understand that these are steps that we take one at a time in our spiritual journey. Our goal should be to have agape love therefore to be living out the greatest commandment. However, we can not just say we love God and love others without fully understanding what that means. We have to have all of this. Making the choice to live for God, then knowing God, knowing God’s laws, being consistent in choosing to live according to God’s laws, enduring temptations and making it a lifestyle to live as holy as God is holy therefore giving His love to others and knowing His love deeply is what we are to do with our live to achieve good spiritual health. You can not skip steps or not take a step if you want optimum spiritual health.
How is your relationship with God?Where are you on your spiritual journey? Do you believe that being a good person is the best way to live? But more than that, do you believe in God who makes all things good? If so, do you know God and know what He commands? Even when you fail him, which we all have, to you come back to Him in sorrow realizing what you have done wrong? Do you work consistently in the power of the Holy Spirit to live as righteous as you can? To you live holiness by loving God with all that you are and loving others as you love yourself?
We are on a journey towards spiritual maturity. We can not get there overnight. Just like every relationship, it takes time. So, how close are you to God? How much closer are you today then you were years ago? How much closer can you grow in your relationship with Christ?
In the name of God the Father, Jesus our Savior, and the Holy Spirit. Amen