This season we’ve been talking about some considerations that we can borrow from what we understand about training in every other aspect of our life, and then apply that to our spiritual development. Just like increasing our physical strength and endurance, increasing my spiritual fitness is going to require actual focus and attention – I don’t accidentally grow stronger in my faith any more than I would magically wake up and find that my bench press has increased by 50 pounds, or that I don’t get tired after climbing 10 flights of stairs anymore!
The parallels between the two concepts are numerous, but this week I wanted to focus on a specific key to success that I suspect we can all relate to. Because if you’re not someone who is incredibly disciplined and motivated, or someone who just loves to exercise for the sake of exercise, you’ve probably seen a lot of your plans go by the wayside because you woke up one day and just didn’t feel like doing the work, and you knew nobody would care if you just stayed in. And that day turned into a week, and at some point you looked back and realized that you’d pretty well abandoned your routine.
And no one during that time ever pushed you to get back to work!
Staying accountable for our growth
Sometimes that’s what we need to get us over the hump – someone that holds us accountable for doing what we need to do, preferably someone who’s going through it with us and has the same level of commitment (or better), who is going to encourage us by word and by example to keep going, and in fact to work even harder.
Sometimes it’s the competitive drive that makes those relationships work, but in many cases it’s just the motivation of not wanting to let someone down who’s counting on you to help them as well. And in some cases, it’s as simple as not wanting to admit to someone that you didn’t do what you committed to do. It’s a lot harder to skip your exercise plan when you know someone’s going to ask you about it, and they’re going to want to know why you didn’t follow through!
As it happens, accountability is also one of the most powerful tools we have in building ourselves up spiritually, and not surprisingly, the Bible talks a LOT about the concept. It’s so foundational to our nature that God immediately points it out in Genesis 2 – “It is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him.”
Finding a “suitable help”
That term “helper” has been misused a lot, and some have interpreted it as meaning someone of secondary importance, almost like an assistant. But the idea here is of someone who can do for you what you cannot do for yourself. It’s the same word used to describe what God does for us in passages like Psalm 33:20, which tells us that God is “our help, and our shield.”
And while Genesis 2 is talking specifically about the wife’s role in relation to her husband, the truth is that the principle applies to men and women equally. None of us can do everything on our own – we need help. And we need help that as Genesis 2:18 says “is suitable” for what we’re trying to accomplish. You don’t want to partner up with someone who is going to be a hindrance, or someone who has completely different goals and interest in life. You don’t need that person’s life goals to center around you, but they should at least align so that you’re each pointed in the same direction and focusing on the same priorities.
Finding a suitable spouse is an amazing tool for spiritual growth – but it’s also one of the most destructive things we can do when the other person doesn’t care about spiritual things, or even worse, when that person is actually opposed to you being more godly. Maybe they LIKE when you engage in sinful activities. Or maybe they’ve elevated harmless secular activities to become more important than their spiritual walk with God, and they expect you to join them in that. Or maybe they want your focus to be first and foremost on them, and not on God.
As helpful as the right partner can be, the wrong partner can be devastating to our faith.
Keeping each other on track in the church
At this point, the single people are saying “I’m single and doing fine – I don’t need to get married in order to go to Heaven.” And that’s right! Which brings us to the second way in which God emphasizes the concept of help – spiritual community.
I may not need a spouse, but I still need that accountability in my life from someone. And God has supplied that through the church, which should serve as our ultimate support group for all things related to our spiritual health. While our tendency is to turn to bloggers, self-help books, and life coaches, God intended that we maintain and foster relationships among our brothers and sisters in Christ, designed specifically for mutual encouragement and accountability in our respective walks in Christ.
The problem is that sometimes we don’t treat our spiritual community as a support group, as much as a book club. We come together for an hour, share some ideas about the Bible, and then we go home and go about our lives. That’s not how God designed the church, because for us to receive the kind of support we need every day – whether we’re married or single – it actually DOES take a village.
There has been a lot of talk this past month about the importance of “not forsaking the assembling” and what that means in relation to our current trials related to the various shelter-at-home ordinances. But I wonder sometimes whether we’ve missed the real point here. Because just being in the same place at the same time with other Christians is not going to accomplish true growth.
Seeing the Lord’s church as source of support
The church is my family, it is the group of people to whom I am committed to encourage, and sometimes correct. We need people who are working toward the same goal checking in on us to find out how we’re doing – do we need help? Are we struggling? Do we need prayers? What can we do for each other?
Hebrews 10:24 talks about the purpose of assembling with Christians, which is to stir each other to love and good works. If we’re not doing that, then what’s the point of assembling? At that point, we just become enablers, helping each other feel good about missing our spiritual workouts, and stagnating or even digressing in our spiritual strength and commitment.
Paul talks about “bearing each other’s burdens” in Galatians 6, and in it’s in the context of someone who is struggling spiritually and needs to be restored. Sometimes encouraging each other is just about reminding each other of our common faith, of what God has done for us, and what He has waiting for us. Sometimes it’s also about turning each other back from destructive behavior, spurring each other on to create good spiritual habits and get rid of the baggage that distracts us from our true goal. But we all need that encouragement, and we’re all called to offer it as well.
We don’t want to be that plant that Jesus talks about in Matthew 13:6 – the one that settled into its soil, surrounded by weeds and thorns and slowly stopped producing any fruit because gradually, day by day, all those bad habits, side interests, and distractions kept adding up and we never noticed that one day we just weren’t focused anymore on the things of God.
Sometimes you have to have someone be honest with you and say “you need to take a step back and look at your life!” Not in a judgmental, harsh way, but as Paul says in Galatians “in the spirit of gentleness.”
It is absolutely essential that we foster those types of relationships. So as we’re separated geographically this month, let’s make sure we’re staying connected with our brothers and sisters, and find ways to keep each other accountable and on track spiritually, as we continue training for godliness.
