How To … Deepen Your Spiritual Life

It wasn’t so long ago that a major mega church surveyed their members about their contentment with their spiritual lives. The results were revealing. The majority … actually quite a majority … were less than thrilled with the state of their spiritual lives.

Over the past years in both the pulpit and as a church consultant, I’ve found that most members in most churches had a yearning for a deeper, more meaningful, spiritual life. And so I thought I’d offer a couple practices that you could engage to help you take your spirituality to the next level.

First, let’s be clear. The church isn’t responsible for your spiritual life. It is of course responsible for providing you tools to have the deepest spiritual life possible, but you have to actively use the tools if you’re going to see any lasting results.

Second, attending a worship service every week isn’t going to do much for your spiritual life. Worship is a good and necessary spiritual practice, but on its own it isn’t enough to take you to spiritual centeredness.

Third, attending and participating in a typical Sunday School Class won’t do it either. Christian education, as it’s generally practiced in the US, will teach you a lot about God, about Jesus, about the Holy Spirit, and about the Bible. But it’s not designed to deepen your spiritual life … education simply can’t do that.

So, with that out of the way, let’s talk about some of the things that will transform your spirit.

1. It’s a personal thing. In other words, no one can “make you” become a spiritually focused person. You have to be intentional in your engagement. Whether you’re attending worship, a small group, reading scripture, etc. nothing transformative will happen if you don’t engage the process with the intention of getting the most out of the experience.
2. Start with scripture. There’s a reason that the first spiritual habit I’ve been asking the leaders to engage in is reading the Bible. I can’t explain it, other than to say it’s a “God Thing,” but when people read the scriptures regularly, they begin to see a spiritual deepening.If you’ve not been a Bible reader in the past, let me suggest you use a translation of the Bible that’s easy to read and understand … and then start in the Gospel of Mark. Mark is short, fast paced, and you’ll get the basics of what Jesus taught. And learning what Jesus said is key … after all, Christianity is named after him!
3. Begin to pray. The vast majority of Americans say they pray, but blessing someone who cut you off in traffic is not the kind of prayers that will help you much. Spending time in prayer is a key to personal spiritual development. HOW you pray is something else again. Today, most “Christians” learned how to pray in one of two ways. Either they memorized prayers as a child “God is good. God is great. Let us thank him for our food. Amen.” or they memorized prayers later in life “Our Father, who art in heaven …” or, most often, they learned to pray by listening to others pray aloud. And often that meant they learned to pray by listening to the “pastoral prayer” on Sunday morning. The only problem with that is often these prayers are pre-composed in the pastor’s study and are often delivered with an air of reverence and holiness. That leaves many beginning prayer-ers thinking, “I couldn’t do that!”
   But prayer is just talking to God, so using everyday language works just fine. “Hi God, it’s me. What a great day! Really. The boss piled on extra responsibilities without so much as a please. My coworker took my idea and turned it into hers and got the promotion I thought I was going to get. And I bounced two checks. What’s up with that? ” (Yes, God understands sarcasm just fine.) I’ve written a couple of books on prayer if you want to learn more (Prayer for People Who Can’t Sit Still and High-Voltage Spirituality) and I’ll be leading a class on prayer later in the fall.The key to a prayer life is to do the Nike thing … Just Do It! Take a few minutes regularly (every day seems like a good idea) and find a quiet place. “God, I’m here. Let’s talk.” And then talk … and then listen. It’ll take a bit to get used to it, but if you’ll practice, you’ll find it starts to work on you from the inside out.
4. Find a mentor. This one’s a bit more “out there,” but there is no better way to deepen your spiritual life than to find a mentor who has what you want and who can help you get it. There are lots of ways to get a mentor, one of which is to simply ask someone: “I want to have a better spiritual life. Would you be willing to help me get that?” Second, you can choose to spend more time with spiritually centered people. Every Sunday there are spiritual focused people who show up here at RCC … hang out with them. Model yourself after their patterns. For instance, I visit a local coffee shop or cafe every day of the week to read scripture, to pray, to journal, and to get spiritually centered for my day. If you’re free in the early morning hours you can join me for prayer time (Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. at the Newz Room; Thursday – Sunday 6:30 a.m. at various other stops – I’m still checking out places, so don’t have a regular stop on the other days yet … you can email me the night before and I’ll let you know where).  Third, you can join a small group … we’ll be launching small groups in the fall – let us know of your interest on the Connection Cards on Sundays and we’ll make a place for you when the time comes.
5. Engage worship with the church. Worship in and of itself won’t deepen your spiritual life, but it’s nearly impossible to be spiritually grounded without joining with the church for worship. But you’ll only get out of it what you put into it. I refuse to “feed” anybody over the age of a year-old. We all must learn to feed ourselves … which is the point of this whole post. And though I’m uninterested in feeding people, I’m very interested in ensuring the table is set with everything you need to have a full spiritual meal. Every Sunday there is uplifting, spiritually-attuned music. There is a message that comes from the Bible and provides real life applications (check out the Count Me In! box on the weekly Connection Cards). The Lord’s Supper invites you to contemplate and participate in the sacrifice Jesus made. And the offering gives you an opportunity to help make a difference in our church and our community. Come with heart that’s hungry and the intention to engage and you’ll be filled.

There’s plenty more I could write, but this is enough to get you started on the path to a deeper spiritual life. Do these regularly and consistently and I promise you’ll begin to see your life transform.