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It is always good to do a regular check up on our spiritual health. It is easy to go weeks, months and even years without a spiritual heart check. It is not until we go through a trial or even face some difficult situation where we are jolted from our apathy and spiritual complacency.
I read an article by Joe McKeever not too long ago titled, “10 Ways to Tell You’re Slipping.” He addresses how effortless it is to fall away from our intimacy with God and how we slip into the hardness of our hearts. McKeever gives 10 tests to see spot signs of slippage. The signs and symptoms are usually there (sometimes for a long time) but we fail to catch them.
I thought it was a good and quick way to check our own hearts. The 10 signs are:
2) You know you’re slipping when reading the Bible no longer excites you, angers you, or challenges you.
3) You know you’re slipping when you finally get up off the couch and get involved in some ministry the Lord has been laying on your heart and the first thing you do is start criticizing all the other couch potatoes who are only doing the same thing you have been doing all this time.
4) You know you’re slipping when, after slacking off in your tithing over the past year, instead of feeling guilty, you find yourself criticizing the regular tithers for their self-righteous and legalistic attitudes.
5) You know you’re slipping when you can read the Ten Commandments and give yourself a passing grade on all of them.
6) You know you’re slipping when you can go a whole day without praying and it not bother you one bit.
7) You know you’re slipping when you can have a dirty thought and justify it as ‘what normal humans do.’
8) You know you’re slipping when you feel a nudging from the Holy Spirit to speak to that person or give to this one or make a phone call to another and you squelch it.
9) You know you’re slipping when you decide to reward yourself for doing well by skipping your Bible reading and prayer for that day.
10) You know you’re really, really slipping when the problem of slipping doesn’t cause you great concern.