Assessing Your Spiritual Life
! 1 COR. 4:1-7
Assessing Your Spiritual Life
I. Intro: want 2 go back to court
A. Lots of courts, lots of judges in Scripture today.
· Who should judge us on Spirituality? Who is fit to say how close to God I am? How faithful I have been to follow Him?
· In assessing our spirituality, there may be various assessors, but there is only one ultimate judge. (others, self, God)
II.Scripture: 1Co 4:1-7 <<READ>>
III. Basis of judgement: faithful/real
· We saw last week we are all builders of the Kingdom, God’s temple, and we are that temple ourselves.
· If we have been entrusted to build the kingdom/temple, we must ask ourselves, have we been, and will we be, trustworthy.
· Mystery in NT is that hidden, that can only be seen through revelation.
· Mystery is not like skull & bones fraternity, or the Masons secrets. It is not some secret knowledge only gotten from someone on the top of a mountain in Tibet.
· The “secret things” refer to the good news of forgiveness and entering an eternal relationship w/J, which was not sufficiently revealed by God to be understood until Jesus.
· Stewards must first take care of what they have. An owner may entrust a steward without enough smarts to run the business a significant piece for which he is capable. He need not be smarter or cleverer than he is. He simply needs to do what he was entrusted to do. We are not more spiritual knowing more or reflecting more, but living out what we have been given to do. Talk is cheap even in God’s economy.
IV. Court of public opinion:
· The court of public opinion is always in session.
· A billion flies can’t be wrong; the lemmings game where they all follow one another.
· Not primarily others. They can’t see into my heart. They can’t know how God has specifically asked me to work out loving others, and they don’t know exactly how much He has asked of me.
· Imperfect judgments of our spirituality are not necessarily worthless. Just less than final.
· They can legitimately challenge me about whether I am following some commands that God gave everybody, but they can’t ultimately judge my faithfulness to apply those commands to the specifics of my life. They can’t see enough, and they can’t see my heart, my motives.
· Since only God really knows the heart, take care not to judge another’s walk or another’s ministry in areas where we can’t really do so since we can’t see the heart.
· This does not preclude accountability on things that are not “hidden.” You can call me on it if you see me drunk, or cheating on my wife. I can call you on it if I see you breaking the law.
· More difficult would be a pattern of relationships that look like they lack love. I cannot judge you as I can’t see your heart and your motives, and love’s actions vary with the giver and receiver. However, I can’t say nothing forever because of the requirement to build one another up, and exhort one another. I just must be humble and careful and loving as I try to come alongside you to help you discover how your love relationships might improve.
· “Don’t go beyond what is written.” Wow! That is so short for something so important. Don’t make rules God didn’t make. Whatever is lovely and pure, think on these things, God said. He did not say don’t go to R movies. Is it possible that going to R movies could violate that command? Yes. So can we make that a rule. NO!!! Did you see The Passion? I did. It was R rated.
V. Self-talk:
· Are you bothered by mere talkers, like I am sometimes? Do you ever feel like saying, held back by mercy only, “Shut up and show me?” Are you like me in that you sometimes feel the same way about yourself? We talk, to ourselves and others, a better game than we play. It makes me feel empty when I do that. How about you?
· In fact, I can’t even judge myself ultimately. I know much more about my motives than any other human being, but even when my conscience is clear, I still could be in the wrong, living less than completely faithful. I could be rationalizing. I could be in denial. I could be confused. I could be ignorant of the facts.
· Paul seems to imply that if his conscience was not clear, he would know he was guilty. Most of the time that is so. In some sense it is always so, as our motives must have been wrong if we knowingly violated our conscience. Sometimes, though, we just are never good enough for ourselves and beat ourselves for not being better than we could expect to be at this point in our lives with our level of gifts, training and experience.
VI. god’s-talk:
· If I am truly spiritual then the only opinion of real importance is God’s. Everyone else’s is secondary, including my own.
· Only God really knows fully. Only He can see clearly the depths of each heart.
· Bruce Almighty (2003), The Big Idea: You cannot hide from God.
· DVD Chapter: 7 Start Time: 0:28:08 End Time: 0:30:26
· We are spiritual when we do all things for the glory of God, 1 Co.10:31, and not to teach well, or save souls, serve others. Those things should flow out of love and true devotion for God, true spirituality.