How to Assess Your Spiritual Health
Living a life fully engaged . . . is something most people plan to do, but along the way they just kind of forget.
Bob Goff
The eyes of the LORD search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.
2 Chronicles 16:9
Okay, so you know you need to eat healthier and get your body moving—and you have tried. You got psyched up to make healthy changes, you jumped in with both feet, and then bam. Before you knew it, you had ordered french fries and skipped two morning walks. You ended up frustrated, wallowed in the discouragement for a while, and then gritted your teeth and tried again. Wash, rinse, repeat. Just thinking about how many times you have started a new healthy eating or exercise plan only to crash and burn before noon of day three is probably pretty discouraging, right? We can relate.
Health cannot be compartmentalized. If you want to get healthy, you can’t focus on just your physical body. You are so much more than that. You can’t focus on just your mind or emotions either. Every part of your being is intertwined with every other part. Complete health will remain elusive until you take a holistic approach and address your entire self—body, mind, emotions, and spirit—as a whole.
That said, one aspect of the four towers above the others and ties them all together. Can you guess what it is? If you said spiritual health, go reward yourself with a green smoothie. Your spiritual health is the foundation on which a life of wholeness is built. If you aren’t spiritually healthy, you will always struggle with your body, your mind, and your emotions. To get from where you are to where you want to be in any and every area of your well-being, you have to engage with God and take responsibility for your spiritual health. Doing so is the key to becoming the new you.
Engaging with God
Are you ready for some life-altering news? God is already fully engaged with you, and he is constantly inviting you to be fully engaged with him. When you take him up on the offer, he makes his strength available to you. Take a look at this Scripture passage: “The eyes of the LORD search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him” (2 Chron. 16:9). God is looking for people who are ready to be fully committed to him. When he finds these people, he strengthens them.
What would your life look like if it were infused with God’s strength? His strength would empower you to face the day with enthusiasm, to interact with other people joyfully, and to feel a sense of peace in the depths of your soul. His strength would energize you and give you the stamina you need to take care of your body well. His strength would help you face stressful situations with assurance. His strength would give you the courage to face emotional wounds that may be holding you back. God’s strength is the linchpin to living a life that is full, happy, and healthy. Without it, you will always be searching, struggling, and faltering as you search for short-term fixes and temporary highs. Without him, you will never be fully healthy and whole.
God wants to give you his strength. In fact, he is eager to give it to you. He is already engaging with you, and he is inviting you to engage with him. God’s level of engagement in your life is consistent. He doesn’t waver. Take a look at these promises:
You go before me and follow me.
You place your hand of blessing on my head.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too great for me to understand!
I can never escape from your Spirit!
I can never get away from your presence!
If I go up to heaven, you are there;
if I go down to the grave, you are there.
If I ride the wings of the morning,
if I dwell by the farthest oceans,
even there your hand will guide me,
and your strength will support me. (Ps. 139:5–10)
Did you catch that? There is nowhere you can go where God is not engaged with you. He is both ahead of you and behind you. You can go to the highest mountaintop or the depths of the sea, and he will be there with you, with his hand of blessing on your head. Let that sink in. That is full engagement at its highest level.
The psalmist goes on to say that God knew you before you were born. As we have seen, you are intricately and wonderfully made. God knows your strengths and your weaknesses. He knows the good parts of your personality, and he knows your bad habits and quirks (see Ps. 139). He loves you anyway. He wants a relationship with you. He wants to be intimately involved in your life. He wants to do more in you, through you, and for you than you could ever ask or imagine.
This passage ends with, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life” (Ps. 139:23–24). In other words, “Okay, yes, God, I know you are engaged with me. Test me and show me where I am not engaged with you. Am I fully committed? Am I taking responsibility for my walk with you?”
Those are the questions we all have to answer as we set out on the path toward all-encompassing health. Why? Because at its core, the all-encompassing health we are striving for is nothing more and nothing less than complete health in Christ.
The Ultimate Demonstration of Engagement
Jesus is the ultimate demonstration of God’s engagement in our lives. He is the visible representation of God’s engagement. God sent Jesus to live a perfect life, to die on a cross for our offenses, and then to be raised from the dead—all so that we could be in relationship with him and have new life, both here and in eternity. John 3:16, the most popular verse in the Bible, illustrates this: “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”
If you want to know how far God is willing to go to demonstrate his love for you, look at Jesus. If you want to know how much God wants to be involved in your life, look at Jesus. If you don’t believe the Bible can be trusted, I challenge you to consider all the other supporting evidence concerning Jesus and choose to look at him. He can stand up to all your doubts and questions.
God’s engagement with us is clear. The question mark is our engagement with him. Scripture teaches that when you commit yourself to Jesus, you actually become a new creation. You become a new you, fully and completely. You are changed from the inside out—and not as a result of anything you have done or can do but because of what Jesus has done. Second Corinthians 5:17 says, “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!”
This is where wholeness begins. Walking in the reality of new life in Christ doesn’t hinge on trying harder or doing better in any area. It is about surrendering to the fullness of your transformed identity in him and doing your part to live out that fullness in every aspect of your daily life.
With Jesus, you can go from struggling through your days to walking in step with the living God. This doesn’t mean your circumstances will change immediately, but your daily decisions that influence them can. This doesn’t mean there won’t still be resistance, but you will have God’s Spirit within you helping you push through. This doesn’t mean the enemy won’t still try to derail you, but you will be operating in the power of Jesus to overcome him.
How do you get there? How do you step into this new creation? How do you become the new you on a foundational level? First by saying yes to God’s invitation to trust in his Son. If you haven’t already done that, you can find out how and get many of your questions answered at NewYouBook.com. Then you make a decision every day to lean into the life God has for you. You can begin by doing the following:
You enter into the life God has for you by first connecting with him through Jesus and then by taking responsibility for your spiritual health. As you do, you will begin to experience the fullness of life as the new you.
Taking Responsibility for Your Spiritual Health
How spiritually healthy are you? If we were able to sit down over a cup of coffee with you and we asked you to tell us about your walk with God, what would you say? Maybe you aren’t sure about the whole God/Jesus/Christianity idea. You are skeptical, but curious, and just trying to figure things out. Or maybe you feel you are living in close connection with God. You are committed to his ways and trying to live a Christlike life every day. Wherever you are on the spectrum, take a step back and examine the areas where you are doing well and the areas where you need some improvement.
You have probably heard of the Gallup research organization. They have an arm that focuses on faith and Christianity. A few years ago, they studied tens of thousands of Jesus followers and determined that the people who are the most spiritually healthy, the most engaged with God, can answer true to the following statements. Think about each statement, and write a T (true) or F (false) next to each one:
| _____ | My faith is involved in every aspect of my life. |
| _____ | Because of my faith, I have meaning and purpose in my life. |
| _____ | My faith gives me an inner peace. |
| _____ | I am a person who is spiritually committed. |
| _____ | I spend time in worship every day. |
| _____ | Because of my faith, I have forgiven people who have hurt me deeply. |
| _____ | My faith has called me to develop my given gifts and talents. |
| _____ | I will take unpopular stands to defend my faith. |
| _____ | I speak words of kindness to those in need of encouragement.1 |
| _____ | I talk about my faith with those who are not yet Christians. |
This list is a helpful gauge of your level of spiritual health. If you were able to answer with mostly Ts, that is great. Now rank each statement 1 to 10, with 1 being sometimes true and 10 being always true. Then you can work on bringing the numbers up on the ones that need the most work.
If you answered with mostly Fs, congratulations. We admire you for being willing to take the test and assess where you are in your spiritual health. Every F on the list is an opportunity to engage more with God. Ask him to go before you as you make a decision to begin taking on the attitudes and characteristics of Jesus and following his actions.
To move from where you are to where you want to be, you have to choose to engage with God and take responsibility for your spiritual health. This is the first step toward achieving overall health and wellness, which makes perfect sense if you think about it. As we have seen:
But the key to melding these truths together is to acknowledge who Jesus is and begin building your life on the foundation of his truth. Any time you sidestep your responsibility in this area, you will fall back into old habits and patterns in every area, and you will distance yourself from God. You can’t live your life partially your way and partially God’s way and hope to experience the benefits of full engagement. Only when you bring everything together under the umbrella of a single focus can you experience the power of a committed life. And that focus is becoming more and more like Jesus.
You can continue to go through life feeling as if you aren’t quite where you want to be. You can continue to worry and to hold on to bitterness. You can continue to fall back when you have an opportunity to take a stand for your faith. You can continue to live tired, overweight, and sick. You can continue to wrestle with mediocrity. Or you can decide to step away from the frustration of a divided life and experience God’s power at the highest level possible in every area, every single day. We say again, as we said in the beginning, the choice is yours. Jesus’s brother James put it well in his letter to early believers: “Come close to God, and God will come close to you” (James 4:8).