How to cultivate your Spiritual health

3 Ways to Cultivate Spiritual Health

by Clint Archer 

In his peculiar short story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, F. Scott Fitzgerald supplies a disturbingly fresh look at maturity and social development. What is so curious about Benjamin is that he is born old and, with time, becomes young. The novella is a fascinating take on how people mature, love, and grow up and the ironic infantile state of the infirm elderly.

Sometimes, we encounter the curious case of the well-churched immature believer in the church. Often we find that when a person is a baby believer, freshly saved from their sins, their formerly lacklustre life suddenly morphs into an Incredible Hulk of natural enthusiasm. They evangelize zealously, pray constantly, read their Bible devotedly, and enjoy serving in the church.

But sadly, it is not uncommon to witness that this verve is a fleeting sugar rush of novelty. The preciousness of salvation begins to grow commonplace, the church becomes a routine, Bible reading a chore, and prayer incidental. Sermons they used to relish are now a flat plate of brussel sprouts. As the years grind on, they dutifully trudge through the motions of spirituality, but the light flickered out years ago.

I have met folks in the church who would say they have been saved for decades but are petty, grumbling, selfish, and pessimistic. They are spiritually grumpy old men.

How about you? Have you grown immature with age? Have you let the furnace of passion from your conversion grow cold? Or have you steadily grown in your knowledge, wisdom, and, most importantly, application of God’s word?

If not, here are three actions to take to pursue spiritual growth…

1. Swallow Your Food

A toddler submissively being spoon-fed his peas by a diligent mom will grow to be healthy. But if the kid stores those peas in his bulging cheeks instead of swallowing or surreptitiously hands the mush to his canine accomplice under the table, the nutrition can’t take effect. In the same way, people sitting attentively in pews may look like they are being fed a healthy mouthful of expository spinach and beans, but if there is no application to their lives, they will lose vibrancy in their walk with the Lord, and slowly waste away into chronic spiritual anorexia.

How often have you heard a person boast, “I read my Bible every day,” but have obviously neglected to apply any of the verses to boasting about it? This is how pastors fall into the same sin they preach against. It is how parents devolve into what Synge called plaster saints, hollow and fake. And it is why children who were cherubs in the church become ogres in college. They are all hearers of the word, but not doers (James 1:22). They are like a dishevelled bride who looked in the mirror before walking up the aisle but then forgot what she looked like and did nothing about her crooked veil and smudged mascara.

If you want to grow spiritually, apply what you hear. Take notes from the sermon, take one point, and write it in your day planner on each day’s page. Make an appointment with Godliness. And resolve to pray, put off wrong behaviour, and put on right behaviour by God’s grace.

2. Avoid Junk Meals

It doesn’t matter how much wheat grass you consume or how much you juice; if you keep stuffing your face with Cinnabon, you will never slim down.

Don’t just avail yourself of good content through sermons, Bible reading, and study; you need to make a concerted drive to ingest, avoiding spiritual lard. Heb 12: let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run.

For you, this may be abstaining from your steady diet of soap operas, making you think it’s normal to live a life of gossip, drama, revenge, and comas. Perhaps for you, it’s an obsession with sports which keeps you away from family time. Maybe it’s social media, overeating, smoking, or toxic relationships. You know what the cancer is that you need to cut out. Get amputative, a la Matthew 5:29.

3. Exercise Your Soul

Malcolm Gladwell writes about the 10,000-hour rule to become an expert. Bill Gates and his programming, the Beatles and their German jam sessions, Yo-Yo Ma and his cello, and even Gladwell himself and his writing; no one expects to get good at anything without time, effort, and persistence. And lots of it. Why do some Christians feel like they will attain steady growth in Christlikeness if they just “let go and let God”?

Every Christian's goal is to become an expert in glorifying God. We ought to expect to lose some sweat in the process. I’m not talking about hardcore synergistic sanctification; I just mean let’s apply Phil 2:12 “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

Employ the spiritual disciplines. Donald Whitney defines spiritual discipline as placing you in the path of grace.

I.e. it’s not your Bible reading plan that will sanctify you; it’s the Holy Spirit who does that. But your discipline places you in the path of direct blessing, just like the sycamore tree put Zacchaeus in the way of his Savior.

Remember 1 Tim 4:7, “Train yourself for godliness”? You’ve heard enough preachers wax eloquent about gymnadzō to know this was a sweaty word. Godliness takes time, effort, and persistence. How’s that going for you? Or are you a couch potato Christian?

These are not the only three tools in God’s extensive tool belt of sanctification, but they are three you can be intentional about.

[Footnote: The prominent and most influential of implements are trials, but are best used by a Professional. Self-inflicted trials can be counterproductive, as the monastic movement demonstrates.]

Applying the word, avoiding encumbrances, and employing the spiritual disciplines, are a great start to a spiritual wellness journey.