As this year quickly comes to an end, the calendar provides an opportunity to take inventory of our lives. The subject of the inventory varies for each individual person. Possibly you may consider your health, vocation, relationships, education, or finances, among many other things. As a follower of Christ, do not neglect to assess your spiritual condition.
Wise people learn to ask key questions regarding their own walk with God. As with any journey, progress does not always follow a straight path. Although the shortest and quickest route between point A and point B may be a straight line, experience tells us that most of the time the path is not so simple. Furthermore, usually every trip takes a bit longer than merely the projected time anticipated by distance alone.
What is true in general about progress along a particular path, also is true in regard to our spiritual growth. Considering your own walk with God, possibly your experience demonstrates that as well. With this in mind, although the end of the calendar year is simply that, a wise person allows it to provide a good excuse to do spiritual inventory. This inventory begins with two key questions.
What does God want to change in my life?
This is a general diagnostic question that opens the door to many other questions. Basically, at this point, you are taking a broad look at the various places in your life that either bring or do not bring God glory in your affections, thoughts, and behavior. The initial goal here is to identify general areas where more work is needed to better honor the Lord.
As you consider the various ways you love, think, and act, the Bible functions as the standard. Peter reminds each of us as obedient children of God, that our goal in life is to be holy as God is holy (1 Pet 1:14-15). One possible temptation for any peron is to allow personal thoughts, experience, or culture to provide the boundaries for holiness; however, the Bible sets the parameters for what is or is not holy.
Once you have a general list of those categories where God would have you change, then begin to work through them in greater detail. Take the time to identify the specifics of what you love, think and act at the individual scenario level. This step would be akin to transitioning from a general assessment at a doctor’s office to a more specific search. Instead of general health, this is focusing on a specific number, organ, or bodily function. In other words, you increase the scrutiny, moving from a system analysis to the organic or cellular level.
Everything you have discovered to this point falls under the category of insight. This is the first step. Many people confuse insight with change. Although you have a good list started, and now your attention can be focused in a particular area, or set of areas, this is not change. Change does not take place until a change takes place. Therefore, we must ask a second question.
What are you doing about it?
This is the question of change. Now it is necessary to do something. What steps can be taken to see progress or change? What is first? Then, what is next? As a new year dawns, you will want to make the necessary plans that will produce change.
Let me suggest a general way forward for you to consider.
Often in spiritual growth, the first step forward is repentance. Essentially in repentance, one is accepting what God says about something and forsaking the way he or she thinks or believes about that same thing. It is a turning from my way to God’s way. Here, you want to confess those areas before God in prayer and seek forgiveness for the past.
The second step is making a commitment to loving, thinking, and acting God’s way. Whatever God desires, this becomes your desire. You commit in the specific area of consideration to God’s will and way. Whatever God wants is what you want. Here it is helpful to write these commitments down. Then, review your list before God in prayer.
The third step is to determine what the steps of change looks like, then do it. What do you need to put off? What do you love, think, or do that you no longer need to do so? With what do you need to replace those things? Essentially, whatever you determined needs to be put off needs a corresponding item to be put on in replacement.
Critical to the third step is the specifics. Change does not take place in the non-specific, the generic, the fuzzy, or generally. Change is not undefined or vague. Instead, change is specific, defined, intentional, and concrete.
Consider this example: if I need to love my wife better, a general commitment to do so won’t create change. Instead, I will need to determine in what ways I should love her better. Possibly the answer is to put off laying my dirty laundry on the floor and put on placing my dirty clothes in the hamper.
Making Change More Possible
Many people desire change but then do a poor job ever changing. Often this is a result of a combination of things. Let me suggest four decisions you can make that will make change more possible.
First, choose one thing at a time upon which to work. This will help you focus and not become overwhelmed. Therefore, you will need to determine where to start and why.
Second, get help. Ask one or two godly friends to help you. Determine to meet or at least talk regularly to keep you accountable to your goal.
Third, make a plan. Often the best intentions go undone because no plan is ever made. Instead, make a plan and begin it. The first step to life change is key. Then the next. It takes over step at a time.
Four, do not forget the Gospel. God provides you the hope and real possibility to change through Christ. You both have the possibility to change and the power to change in Christ (Phil 3-4).
Questions For Reflection
Where does God want you to change? What would actual change look like? Are you willing?