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Most of us have a long weekend ahead, which may give us some time to relax, but also to do things we should have done before, but keep putting off.
Author and pastor Tim Challies reviewed Donald Whitney’s Ten Questions To Diagnose Your Spiritual Health, a book that was first published in 2001, but updated and re-released for its 20th anniversary.
“My purpose in writing these pages is to act as a physician of the soul, asking questions and suggesting spiritual tests that can, by the help of the Holy Spirit, enable you to self-diagnose your spiritual health,” Whitney writes in his book.
The Bible commands us in 1 Corinthians 11:28 to examine ourselves before taking communion. However, I think it’s a good idea to periodically evaluate our faith in greater detail than a few seconds before partaking of the bread and wine.
Whitney offers 10 major questions to ask ourselves. They are:
- Do you thirst for God?
- Are you governed increasingly by God’s Word?
- Are you more loving?
- Are you more sensitive to God’s presence?
- Do you have a growing concern for the spiritual and temporal needs of others?
- Do you delight in the bride of Christ?
- Are the spiritual disciplines increasingly important to you?
- Do you still grieve over sin?
- Are you a quicker forgiver?
- Do you yearn for heaven and to be with Jesus?
These are questions that cannot be answered quickly and derive any type of personal value. Nor can the answers be tracked over time to see where we are growing and where we may slipping or coming up short of Christ’s ideal.
Challies said he read the book when it was first released and re-read it again last month.
“I can see where I have grown, but also see where I need to grow. I can see spiritual health, but also spiritual immaturity. I can see where I have applied the wisdom of this book as I read it more than a decade ago and can see where I failed to apply it,” he wrote.
To read Tim Challies review of Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health, visit www.challies.com.
The book is available at bookstores as well as on Amazon.com.
