ZA MAGAZINE // seek truth.

The check-up

When was the last time you visited your doctor for your ‘physical?’ Were you deemed healthy, or was there an issue with one aspect of your body? Any potential problems that the physician felt should be addressed?

Maybe your latest check-up was a good experience and you were given a clean bill of health, yet it is quite common to find at least one possible issue at each check-up. Perhaps your eyes appear abnormally red, or you’ve had some lower back pain lately, or the doctor notices something amiss in your breathing pattern.

Maybe still, you passed the latest physical without problem, but the doctor is reminded by your medical documents that a heart condition runs in your family, so the physician stresses the importance of a balanced, healthy diet that would combat the negative tendencies of your genes.

Either way, physical issues are common.

The physical and the spiritual

I’d like to use our physical condition as a metaphor for our spiritual condition.

Just as physical issues are to be expected because they are common, so are spiritual issues. We are flesh - mere mortals with tendencies to err. Paul said:

Romans 7:23-24 CEV
23 But in every part of me I discover something fighting against my mind, and it makes me a prisoner of sin that controls everything I do.
24 What a miserable person I am. Who will rescue me from this body that is doomed to die?

We are naturally given to immorality, whether that is shown in the form of hate, envy, thievery, fornication, lust, pride, dishonesty, or anything else. We are not naturally good people that do good things.

Genesis 6:5 CEV
The Lord saw how bad the people on earth were and that everything they thought and planned was evil.

Sin separates a person from God, because God cannot interact with them in their unholiness. I discussed this previously in another article.

From my experience, I have found that sins compound upon themselves, weighing a person down with each occurrence. I can verify this from my own salvation experience, when I felt a weight lifted off of my shoulders and I felt much lighter and more pleasant. It was euphoria! The weight that sins carry have a detriment to our spiritual condition, and we may not even realize that our spiritual health is being affected.

Time to get a ’spiritual’

Just like you and I get a ‘physical’ from our doctor, so should we get a ’spiritual’ from the Great Physician, God. We each need a check-up to assess our spiritual status, determine our points of growth, pinpoint our potential weaknesses and necessary areas of focus, and obtain a prescription or remedy to overcome what is found to be harmful.  Though this check-up is a necessity to the Christian life, I am afraid that few of us have had one of these performed lately!

I’m talking about a serious examination of your spirit:

• What are you harboring inside of you that is tearing you down?
• What have you said lately that has harmed your tongue?
• Where have you thoughts been recently? Have they traveled down the wrong path and been contaminated?
• What has taken your time in the last month? Are they things that are beneficial to your spiritual condition, or actions that are harming your inner man and separating you from Jesus?

We each need the Holy Spirit to come and bring to light those harmful, hidden things that we may not have thought were affecting our health! As the Bible says:

John 17:17 KJV
Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.

The Bible and God Himself will sanctify (clean, purify, refine) us and rectify our poor health, yet we need to have the guts to step onto the doctor’s table and be examined. But first, one must want to be shown all the poor points of deformity in his spirit before change can occur. One must desire change, greater intimacy with God, and holiness, which all translate to better spiritual health. But this is easier for some than it is for others.

Different strokes for different folks

See, there are different types of people. Some people pay great attention to their physical health by keeping a strict diet or exercising often, while some pay no mind to what they eat, what they drink, and generally how they live. There are those who are naturally driven to be healthy and those who are lazy and unmotivated. It is no different in regards to spirituality. I have met people who are so focused on holiness, righteousness, and friendship with God that they will fight day by day to keep their health intact, never letting anything into their spiritual diet that would harm them in the slightest. On the flipside, I have come across those who struggle to maintain good spiritual health, who are overcome by laziness and fatigue, and who succumb to any temptation that is thrown their way.

I do not wish to demean the latter person, I simply wish to highlight that it appears to be easier for some than it is for others. Paul confirms that we each have been set-up a different way by God’s design:

1 Corinthians 7:7b CEV
But God has given different gifts to each of us.

Better your health

Yet, all of that is to say this:

We must all strive to better our spiritual health.

It must be a priority to have our condition improved by the Holy Ghost continuously. We must change and continue to grow.

Whether it comes more naturally for one or it is a rigorous uphill battle for another, we each must fight to maintain our spiritual condition and always improve upon it, refining it as we continue to grow in Christ, ever-becoming more like Him - the one who is holy, perfect, and without any blemish or stain in His health!

Get your check-up today, and then keep scheduling ‘spirituals’ with the Lord so that you might always be made new in Him!