Remember his strength – Day 19

If you are into gym exercise, you will know that you are repeatedly told to strengthen your core muscles i.e. back, side, hips, abdominal muscles and so on.

According to Harvard Medical School, exercise holds all sorts of advantages for your body, health and sense of well-being.

I think the same is true for us as Christians. We continually need to go back to basic spiritual truths, so that we can remain strong, assured and growing spiritually. Hence, Paul advises his friends in Corinth to examine themselves. We should do the same, but how do we examine ourselves?

We all know what it means to keep a check on ourselves in other areas of life. Diets are a great example. We usually start with great enthusiasm, then we begin to cheat a little and then, we begin to cheat a lot. Eventually we abandon our diet, but it is not as if we did not know we were doing it.

It is similar with our spiritual lives. We need to keep examining ourselves and the examination should probe our inner lives. We know very well when we begin cheating spiritually. We should ask ourselves certain questions. Do we still believe what we said we believed when we became Christians? Are we still unashamed of Christ? Do we still maintain our devotion to him? Are we faithful to him when the going gets tough?

Paul says, “Test yourselves.” If Christ is in you, you cannot help being a Christian and doing the right thing, even though it is sometimes very difficult. Is your spiritual core strong?

It would help us immensely if we kept up a regular Bible reading programme, accompanied by times of meditation on what we read. We should also be in church regularly, with other believers, to worship God.

These and a whole host of things, which are common sense, can help us to examine ourselves and our devotion to Christ. In this way, we assure that our spiritual core remains strong.