“I will cool you insensibly, by degrees, by little and little.”
At the end of one year, on the cusp of another, I remember the words that once haunted the soul of seventeenth-century pastor John Bunyan (1628–1688). He imagined the devil skulking nearby, not as a raging dragon but as a patient and calculating snake, as one who waits “until an opportune time” (Luke 4:13).
“What care I,” the tempter says, “though I be seven years in chilling your heart if I can do it at last? Continual rocking will lull a crying child asleep. I will ply it close, but I will have my end accomplished” (Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, 44).
The devil uses many weapons in his assault against our soul, but one of the most overlooked is simply time. We are changeable creatures in a long war, called to “resist the devil” not for a day or a week or a year but a life (James 4:7). And spiritual health yesterday does not guarantee spiritual health today.
So, at the end of a new year, on the edge of another, let’s stop to take some spiritual vitals. How healthy is your soul?
Six Questions for the Soul
Bunyan is not the only one who would call us to take heed. Strewn throughout Scripture, prophets and apostles, wise men and the God-man all urge us to watch ourselves, pay attention to ourselves, and stay awake “lest we drift away” (Hebrews 2:1). Unless we keep our hearts “with all vigilance” (Proverbs 4:23), they will not be kept.
To get started, we might focus our attention on six of the most important areas of the Christian life: our heart, our habits, our hope, our enemies, our friends, and our neighbors.
1. Your heart: Do you desire God?
Proverbs exhorts us to keep our heart with all vigilance because “from it flow the streams of life” (Proverbs 4:23). If this fountain is polluted, all is polluted. If the heart is lost, all is lost. And at the center of a healthy heart — its strong beat and lifeblood — is deep desire for God. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart” (Deuteronomy 6:5).
What, then, does your desire for God look like right now? With David, has “the beauty of the Lord” become your “one thing,” the chief of your prayers and the cream of your pleasures (Psalm 27:4)? Would you say with Asaph that God himself is your heaven and that earth holds no rival to him (Psalm 73:25)? Can your heart sing with Paul of “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8)?
God made us to hunger and thirst for him (Psalm 42:2), to faint and yearn for him (Psalm 63:1), to feel his absence like death and his presence like resurrection morning. He made us to desire him.
Of course, our delight in God rises and falls throughout this fallen life. Not even the most mature saint lives with a continual sense of God’s nearness. But as Don Whitney writes, “It’s one thing to long for a sense of God’s presence while not experiencing it, and another to live routinely with no awareness of his absence” (Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health, 61).
So, do you desire him — either with joy over his nearness or with grief over his seeming distance? Or has your heart grown cold to the one whose steadfast love is better than life (Psalm 63:3)?
2. Your habits: Do you draw near to God?
Typically, the health of our heart today reflects the health of our habits in recent weeks and months. A cold heart often betrays a closed Bible. A numb heart often tells of a neglected prayer life. And so our habits today prophesy the future state of our heart.
Public habits (like regular fellowship and corporate worship) are crucial for keeping the heart. But private habits may call for even closer attention because of how easily we can omit them without others noticing. No one sees whether we meditate on Scripture or visit the prayer closet or fast, and therefore no one sees whether we don’t. But so often, these private habits, these secret resolves, build the walls that keep our hearts.
Consider, then, the last month or two. How often (and with how much pleasure) have you prayed to “your Father who sees in secret” (Matthew 6:6)? How regularly (and with how much delight) have you meditated on his life-giving instruction (Psalm 1:2–3)? How familiar or foreign is the testimony of Robert Murray M‘Cheyne (1813–1843), who once journaled, “Rose early to seek God, and found him whom my soul loveth. Who would not rise early to meet such company?” (Memoir and Remains, 23).
3. Your hope: Do you live heavenly minded?
Near the heart of our faith lies the hope that one day soon, we will live with God in a world without end. We will shed this mortal body for one immortal, these tears for songs of joy, this thorn-cursed land for “a better country” (Hebrews 11:16). We will awake to the face our souls were made to see, whose gaze will slay our remnant sin and fill our hearts to breaking with happiness (1 Corinthians 13:12; 1 John 3:2).
Such we declare by faith. Do we also declare it by life? Would anyone, catching a smile on our face, ask the reason for our joy and hear the answer “heaven”? Does the weight of coming glory put our pain into perspective, such that we groan without grumbling and lament without losing hope (2 Corinthians 4:16–5:2)? Do we marry and buy and sell and laugh and mourn as if “the present form of this world is passing away” (1 Corinthians 7:31), as if the life we know now will soon crash upon the shores of eternity?
The heavenly minded are known by their stubborn joy in sorrow, their modest expectations for this world, their stability in societal chaos, and their willingness to risk and sacrifice like heaven will make up for every lost comfort here.
4. Your enemies: Do you let nothing dominate you?
Christians may have human enemies (Matthew 5:44), and we certainly have demonic enemies (Ephesians 6:12), but our most dangerous enemies are neither human nor demonic, but fleshly (1 Peter 2:11). We wage a war within, with armies of “deceitful desires” attacking territory that Christ has reclaimed (Ephesians 4:22).
As we study these enemies, Paul’s response to the Corinthians may focus our eyes where we don’t think to look:
“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. (1 Corinthians 6:12)
Often, the enemies that cost us most dearly appear lawful, at least at first. They aren’t black-and-white evil, but dangerously gray. Christian freedom assures us that we can venture here without guilt; our conscience becomes accustomed to the arrangement. We can watch these videos, follow these influencers, have this many drinks, notice this person’s beauty, post these thoughts online, spend this much time scrolling, or indulge these fantasies of a different life.
Each of these may be lawful and innocent — and each may eventually dominate us, leading either to a painful fall or a lukewarm life. If we wonder whether any activity, pleasure, or line of thought holds undue sway over us, we might ask ourselves, Could I give this up for the next year? If the answer is no, or if the answer is yes in our head but no in our heart, then we are no longer dealing with something lawful. We are dealing with a dominator, an enemy dressed in innocence.
5. Your friends: Do you practice the one-another commands?
In Christ, we are no longer by ourselves — no longer independent or autonomous or unattached. We are members of a body (1 Corinthians 12:12), stones in a holy structure (1 Peter 2:5), siblings in a family (Ephesians 2:19). We are our brother’s keeper, and our brother is ours.
The one-another commands in the New Testament sketch our familial callings; they are the code of God’s household. As we obey them, we not only live out our identity in Christ but also become channels of God’s grace to each other. The one-anothers are one of the primary ways God matures his children and keeps them till glory.
We might capture the thrust of these commands under five heads:
- Have Christ’s humble mind (Philippians 2:3; 1 Peter 5:5).
- Offer Christ’s impartial welcome (Romans 12:16; 15:7; 1 Peter 4:9).
- Speak Christ’s tough and tender words (Colossians 3:16; 1 Thessalonians 5:11; Hebrews 3:13).
- Show Christ’s practical love (1 Thessalonians 5:15; 1 Peter 4:10; Galatians 6:2).
- Give Christ’s forgiving grace (Ephesians 4:2, 32).
As you remember the last year in your local church, can you think of specific Christians who are more holy, more Christlike, because of your presence in their life? Have you given your pastors reason to lead “with joy and not with groaning” because of the ways you have cheerfully followed their lead (Hebrews 13:17)? Have you spoken any words bracing enough to bring back a wandering soul?
6. Your neighbors: Do you make Christ known?
Finally, consider the world outside yourself and the church. Survey your neighborhood, your city, your campus or workplace, and the nations where Christ has not yet been named. The last command Jesus gave us was to “make disciples” (Matthew 28:19). Do we?
No doubt, rhythms of evangelism and disciple-making will vary across our life stages. Personally, I can testify that making Jesus known looks different as a father of young children than it did as a college student. But no life stage exempts us from the grand adventure of the Great Commission. Nor can a genuinely Christian heart rest satisfied on the sidelines of God’s kingdom advance.
So, has your Christian life run into the predictable ruts of churchly activity, or do you still know the thrill of following Jesus to people and places you would never approach otherwise? Do you still look strange to a world estranged from God — speaking strange words, hosting strange neighbors, taking strange risks for the sake of his name? And even in the midst of a busy life — with little kids or elderly parents or heavy work demands — do you nevertheless yearn to somehow make Jesus known?
Toward a Warmer Heart
The more tender among us might finish these questions feeling freshly discouraged or even condemned. The accuser of God’s children knows how to turn self-examination into an exercise in self-damnation. But the point of searching questions is not to dig ourselves into a pit of misery — not for those who belong to Jesus.
Richard Sibbes writes, “If we have this for a foundation truth, that there is more mercy in Christ than sin in us, there can be no danger in thorough dealing” (The Bruised Reed, 12). We can dare to deal honestly with our sins because Jesus has already dealt mercifully with us. And so he always will.
So no, the purpose of these questions is not to condemn, but rather to expose any area where we have cooled insensibly, by degrees, by little and little. And therefore the purpose of these questions is to draw us nearer to the Lord who has warmth enough to melt our coldness, if only we bring ourselves close to him.
Where, then, have you grown cold? In heart, in habits, in hope? Toward your enemies, your friends, your neighbors? Take that coldness to Jesus Christ. Receive “the abundance of grace” he has to offer (Romans 5:17). And then consider how you might recover a warmer spirit and walk more closely with him this year.
