Your Spiritual Condition

This post has to do with the recent poll I took on the blog (you can see it to the right) where I asked "Which would best describe your present spiritual condition?" The results were as follows: 1 selected "reached Christian perfection;" 3 selected "steady spiritual growth;" 10 selected "average spiritual growth;" 3 selected "minimal spiritual growth;" and 0 selected "no spiritual growth," "going backwards spiritually," "rebelling against God," and "not a Christian."

The crazy thing is that I know that many of those who read this blog are not Christians at all (or at least they don't strive to know Christ). For those of you who fall into this category: don't be afraid to vote! Your vote will be anonymous--I don't even know who votes and how they voted.

I was not surprised by the outcome of the poll. For those of you who are wondering who selected "reached Christian perfection:" I hope you don't envy me, but that was my pastor who chose that. He is so humble that he couldn't help but tell me (with a chuckle) that he was the one who chose "reached Christian perfection"--he just couldn't help but let the good news of his superlative spiritual state out of the bag. Moe is pretty much about as holy John the Baptist. He has finally reached a place where he no longer needs our prayers. Ok, so I am just kidding. Oh, by the way, Moe just started a new website. Check it out at www.moebergeron.com. Also, you can listen to his sermons on our church website--he is an excellent preacher/pastor. Anyway, now that Moe is officially vindicated and christened on my blog--let us get onto something less important.

I do not want to write a dissertation on the result of the poll, but I do want to ask a question to those who participated? Why did you choose the answer you chose? How did the Scriptures play a part in helping you decide how well you are doing spiritually? Personally, I chose "average spiritual growth" because I have no clue how much I am presently growing. Those of you who chose "steady spiritual growth:" how do you know that you are not just being motivated out of the flesh? Maybe your great spiritual growth is motivated out of a heart seeking the praise of men. Those of you who chose "minimal spiritual growth:" what made you choose that? Maybe you are being worked on more than anyone right now. Maybe you chose "minimal spiritual growth" because you are more aware of your sin than those who chose "steady spiritual growth."

To be honest, I think our modern day methods of gauging spirituality need some fixing. I am not so sure that any of us know for sure how we are presently doing spiritually. I know myself too well to get excited when I feel like I am doing well spiritually. I am know myself too well to get down when I feel like I am doing bad spiritually. Maybe the best way to gauge how you are doing spiritually is to see how happy, safe, and hopeful you are even in the midst of great spiritual failure. This is not to say that true spirituality is undetectable. However, I do not think that true spirituality is always as detectable as we think it is. This is what Jesus slammed the Pharisees for: they were confident about what true spirituality looked like and they did everything to model it. We do the same thing on many fronts.

Please, anyone who participated, explain (from the Scriptures) why you chose what you chose.