re-evaluating

i wish i could take credit for this, but it's rich nathan from the columbus vineyard (again). for a bit of background, go grab your bible & read genesis 26:12-18. this is kind of what led me to be so convicted about "lent" this year. i'm usually a total slacker, and who knows how faithful i'll be this year, but there's something to those spiritual disciplines.


There are always enemies, always Philistines, filling up the wells of our lives. Left to themselves, of course, the natural direction of wells is to fill up so that we can no longer draw out water. And spiritually, the direction of fallen humanity is always towards regression, not progress, towards devolution (a downward spiral), not evolution (an upward spiral). We are always in a war. When we stop fighting, when we stop drawing near to Christ, the enemy of our soul always fills up our wells with earth.

What I mean by the filling up of the well, is the overall experience of the loss of intimacy with God. It is the experience where we say to ourselves, “I used to feel God’s presence. It has been such a long time since I felt truly alive in God. I used to be excited by the prospect of meeting with God. My love for God and my desire for God used to burn white hot. I used to treasure Jesus above everything else. But now I find that I am dull to his voice and dull to his correction. I am less concerned about grieving the Holy Spirit. There are a growing number of things that I treasure above friendship with Christ.”

What are the signs in your life that your spiritual well has been clogged up? Let me share with you some of the signs of the clogging up of my own spiritual well. When I see the following occurring in my life, I know that I have given ground to the Philistines (the world, the flesh, and the devil). Perhaps you can identify with some of these signs:

1. I find myself wasting more time escaping into entertainment. I watch more TV, and more movies. I’m online more checking box scores and reading the opinions of sports pundits.

2. I lose my zeal in sharing my faith and looking for divine appointments. Evangelism always flows from an overflow of spiritual life. When my passion for Jesus flags, so does my passion for evangelism. I stop being sensitive to divinely given opportunities to share my faith.

3. I waste money on unnecessary purchases. I stop caring about the fact that I am to show the same concern for the health, comfort, and feeding of other people as I show myself (that is, after all, a part of what it means to love your neighbor as yourself). Instead, I wildly over-balance the comfort, care and feeding of myself compared to what I share with others.

4. I lose self-control in my appetites, in my speech, and in my temper.

5. My conversation drifts towards the utterly secular and away from a focus upon Jesus and the thing that are close to the heart of Jesus. In fact, those subjects begin to carry with them a slight degree of boredom.

6. Old habits start reappearing in my life, especially speech problems such as gossip, slander, sarcasm and bending the truth.

7. Maritally, there is a loss of warmth and relational connection with my spouse. We begin to experience more friction between us. We find ourselves just functioning together, not encouraging one another or praying for one another.

8. I find an unwillingness in my life to sacrifice, to really tighten the belt so that it pinches my flesh. When the well of my life is filled up by the Philistines, I find myself unwilling to “give financially until it changes my lifestyle.” And I find myself unwilling to be really inconvenienced in service. In other words, I become less willing to go out of my way to help someone in need, or to show up at a meeting that doesn’t particularly interest me.

9. All of these things are rooted in my agreement with the lie that I can stay in the same spiritual position with God whether or not I fight or wrestle or discipline my flesh, or deny myself, or repent.


Let me ask you a personal question. Do you see any of my nine indicators of the filling up of my spiritual wells in your life? Can you add to my list?