Led by the Word

Pastor Gary Oser

Regular checkups are important to both physical and spiritual health. One way to diagnose our health is by asking ourselves some questions. I am sharing some questions found in a book entitled, Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health by Donald Whitney.

Last month we looked at Whitney’s first question. This month we look to the second: “Are you governed increasingly by the Word of God?”

To ask the question in another way, we might ask, “From where do you get your ‘marching orders’ for what you do? Do they come from what you want? Do they come from what the majority of people are all doing? Do they come from the culture of which you are a part?” I would suggest that for the spiritually healthy Christian, our “marching orders” come from the Word of God (the Bible).

I appreciate what the Constitution of the Missionary Church says about the Bible. It says, “The Bible today remains the unchanging authority in matters of faith and practice.” The Bible is God’s instruction manual for living the Christian life.

There are two important questions we need to ask ourselves about the Word of God. First, what kind of a priority does it have in our lives? Is it a book we seldom pick up but leave on the nightstand by the bed or on the coffee table? Or is it a book we read daily? When we read it, do we endure through just a few brief minutes of reading or do we look forward to (delight in) spend time in it?

The second question is, “Do we do what it says?”

It is one thing to read the Bible, it is quite another to do what it tells us to do. What we read in the Bible should help us to see where we are not measuring up to what God expects of us. What we read in the Bible should reveal sins we need to confess and repent of, as well as attitudes which we need to change.

According to Romans 8:29, God’s will for every Christian is to be more conformed to the image of Jesus, that we regularly take on more of His likeness in our lives.

Is your life governed more by what you want or by what God wants as revealed in His Word? As Donald Whitney suggests in his book, as we read and study our Bibles, we should not close them until we have identified at least one thing God would have us do in response to our reading and study. A good indicator of your spiritual health is how much influence the Word of God has in how you live.