The spiritual life is often spoken of with
little understanding of precisely what is meant by it. In many circles, its use
remains vague and may have various applications. A person may be admired for
civic devotion yet be said as lacking any evidence of spiritual depth. A coach
may be ineffective but spoken of having a spiritual impact upon the team. A
church may be involved in many ministries of outreach in the community but have
a reputation for having little spiritually among the membership. Is it
surprising that there exists a lack of clarity of what is meant by the
spiritual life?
An answer to this perplexing question may
be located by a careful look at any number of persons in the Old and New Testament.
For the sake of this brief discussion, let us limit our attention to the
Apostle Paul. From a careful examination of what the Bible tells us about Paul,
I suggest that the spiritual life is marked by two irreducible qualities.
First, consecration. Paul took his
gift for deep thought and ability to communicate complex ideas simply and with
clarity and dedicated it to the cause of God. Paul’s intellectual capacity was
not in itself spiritual. History is replete with women and men of enormous
intellectual gifts who did not believe in God. Paul’s intellectual gifts became
spiritual when devoted to the divine purpose of God’s work in the world. The
spiritual life, then, may be said as that life that is given a new direction or
given to the new purpose of serving God.
The second irreducible quality of the
spiritual life is inspiration. Paul
was aware of the Divine Presence. There was something more about Paul than his own natural talent and gifts. This “more”
was the indwelling and active God. Paul spoke of this “more” often and in
various ways particularly when he spoke of the evidence of God’s strength in
his own weakness. When a person presents their life to the purposes of God,
what we earlier identified as “consecration”, the Holy Spirit is released and
works God’s work through them. Consecration
and inspiration are the
individual-directed and God-directed aspects of the spiritual life.
Joy,
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