Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health by Donald Whitney

Author:Donald Whitney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: RELIGION / Christian Life / Spiritual Growth
Publisher: The Navigators
Published: 2001-05-04T00:00:00+00:00

JESUS THE NEED-MEETER

Jesus Christ, the ultimate need-meeter, reflected the “near-balance” of filling spiritual as well as temporal needs. He laid aside His heavenly privileges and came to earth for the expressed purpose of meeting our greatest need. As He put it, “I have come that they may have life” (John 10:10).

The supreme need of every human is a spiritual one. Because we have all willingly sinned by breaking the laws of God (Romans 3:23) and have done so an infinite number of times, we face physical death (Romans 6:23), judgment (Hebrews 9:27), and the second death of eternal punishment (Revelation 21:8). But “Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many” (Hebrews 9:28). He came to provide the only hope of escape “from the wrath to come” (1 Thessalonians 1:10). Jesus said of Himself, “I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved” (John 10:9). To all who do come to Him in repentance and faith (Mark 1:15) Jesus promised, “I give them eternal life” (John 10:28). Jesus Christ came to offer Himself as the door to life in the next world—an incomprehensibly glorious and joyous life without comparison or end. Life with God Himself.

While His primary purpose was to meet our eternal need, He was not oblivious to people’s temporal needs. His method of accomplishing both aims is perfectly demonstrated in the account recorded in Mark 6:34-44. “And Jesus, when He came out, saw a great multitude and was moved with compassion for them, because they were like sheep not having a shepherd. So He began to teach them many things” (verse 34). His compassion for their hopelessness prompted Him to teach them truth from Heaven. Then, after feeding their souls, He fed their hungry stomachs in what is known as the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand.

If we saw people from Jesus’ perspective, we would begin to see them as “sheep not having a shepherd.” Even though many do not feel themselves to be in such a condition, they are. Even if they appear to have no temporal needs, they certainly have spiritual needs. They may appear as self-sufficient as the hardened atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair once did. But deep within they are often like her when she wrote at least a half-dozen times in her diary the plea, “Somebody, somewhere, love me.”[2] Everyone is needy, no matter how thick his or her veneer of self-sufficiency. The one universal common denominator is that everyone has spiritual needs, chief of which is the need for Jesus, the soul-shepherd.

No one who is indwelled by the Spirit of Jesus can remain unfeeling toward either the temporal or the spiritual needs of others made plain. Growth in Christlikeness involves perceiving those needs sooner than before, and not just when they become obvious to everyone. Increased growth in Christian maturity is revealed by a heartfelt compassion toward people, not a perfunctory, merely external response. There is no Christlikeness in throwing money at a physical need or

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