An article by this name recently caught my eye. It is an excerpt from a book, Garden City: Work, Rest, and the Art of Being Human by John Mark Comer. It is about making everyday life a spiritual walk with God.
The author talks about how unglamorous and mundane our everyday lives are. Sure, some exciting, spiritual things happen along the way but most is routine. We’re just doing never-ending laundry, bathing kids or answering emails. This contributes to us creating a difference between the secular and the spiritual. Comer says this is not only untrue, but also dangerous.
The dictionary defines spiritual as “relating to the spirit, soul; supernatural”. Secular refers to worldly, nonreligious things. But in the Hebrew language there is no word for spiritual. Because in the Hebrew world, all of life is spiritual. Wow! I want that life view.
Jump to the New Testament. Only the apostle Paul uses the word spiritual. In his writings, it means “animated by the Holy Spirit. He, too, believes every part of our lives should be spiritual.
Comer puts it this way, “If you had asked Jesus about His spiritual life, I think He would have looked at you very confused. My guess is He would have asked, “What do you mean by My spiritual life? You mean My life? All of My life is spiritual.”
To Jesus, all of life was an integrated sacred experience. I personally know that God wants to be involved in every second of my life. But how does that look in the midst of the mundane? The Bible tells us, “Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men” - Colossians 3:23. I put this into practice every time I take the roll of toilet tissue from my kids’ bathroom counter and actually put it on the roll. I say, “I’m doing this for you, Lord.” But, that’s only so I don’t nag at my kids about it…again.
As I ponder how to make everything in my life spiritual, vitalized by the Spirit of God, it becomes tied to my awareness that He is right near me. He is present at all times but I may not have a complete minute-by-minute awareness of that fact. I regularly say prayers for His direction, healing and wisdom throughout my days. However, in the in-between times I probably don’t realize that He’s always near me – on Earth.
In his letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul puts all people into two categories. The spiritual followers of Jesus who have His Spirit and those who don’t follow Jesus. Many Christians don’t know that, at the moment they wholeheartedly chose to follow Jesus, His Holy Spirit came to dwell in them. Everybody else is not spiritual.
I hope you will join me in learning how everything in our lives can become spiritual, because everything should be spiritual to the believer. Everything matters to God.
“We received the Spirit that is from God, not the spirit of the world. We received God’s Spirit so that we can know all that God has given us…But we have been given Christ’s way of thinking.”
-1 Corinthians 2:12, 16
Merry Christmas!
Sylvia Gaston is Family Ministry Pastor at Koinonia Church in Hanford, CA. She can be reached at sylvia@kchanford.com or 559-582-1528.
No comments:
Post a Comment