Spiritual pathways (1)

A spiritual pathway has to do with the way you most naturally sense God’s presence and experience spiritual growth. We all have at least one pathway that comes most easily to us. And there’s enormous freedom in identifying and embracing your spiritual pathway. It means you can focus on relating to God in that way. For the next few days, let’s look at some different spiritual pathways and see which one is yours. First let’s examine the intellectual pathway. When you are on this pathway, you draw closer to God as you learn more about Him. You love to study scripture. When you go to church, you often find yourself marking time during the musical worship until the sermon starts. When you are faced with a crisis or a spiritual challenge, you tend to go into analytic, problem-solving mode. You identify with the words of Jesus when He said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your…mind” (Luke 10:27 NKJV). The danger of this pathway lies in becoming all head and no heart. Dallas Willard once observed that it is extremely difficult to be right and not to hurt everybody with it. That’s why Paul wrote, “Knowledge puffs up while love builds up” (1 Corinthians 8:1 NIV). The New Living Translation says, “While knowledge makes us feel important, it is love that strengthens the church. Anyone who claims to know all the answers doesn’t really know very much. But the person who loves God is the one whom God recognizes” (1 Corinthians 8:1-3 NLT). So be sure your growth in knowledge is balanced with growth in humility and love.