WHAT SPIRITUALITY MEANS TO ME
‘My journey of learning to love God’
By SEE PING EIK
CHRISTIAN spirituality is, to me, the process and outcome of growing in my relationship with God which begins when I accept Him as my personal Lord and Saviour.
It is a process in that it is ongoing – a “daily” taking up of my cross which is only completed when my life on earth is ended. It is also the final outcome of my relationship with God – the goal of becoming like Him, Who is spirit [John 4:24], and having my character transformed to His likeness.
In other words, Christian spirituality is my life-long journey of learning to love God and obeying Him until I become like my Saviour and Lord in loving God with all my heart, soul and mind and loving others like myself.
This journey will not be possible without the work of the Holy Spirit who “lives in me and will be in me”. [John 14:17] On my own, I will tend not to desire what God desires. In my redeemed but still fallen state, my natural inclination is to choose the way of comfort and ease. But it is the Spirit of truth dwelling in me who will convict me “of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment”[John 16:8], who will remind me of what God says to me in His word and prompt me to obey Him.
At the same time, spirituality is also a choice I make. I have to decide to choose to “know and grow” in my daily relationship with Christ by giving priority to reading His word, understanding it and applying it to the “messiness of human relationships”.
I have to make a conscious decision to keep my communication with the Holy Spirit clear through confessing my sins, and my union with Him close by regular thanksgiving and petitions. It is also up to me to choose to surrender my will to the Holy Spirit’s will.
This ongoing process of choosing to know God and obeying Him is not easy. The journey of growing in my relationship with Him involves “quantities of sweat and weariness”. But, as Gary Thomas puts it so candidly in his latest book, Holy Available, [p. 199]:
“I’ve come to realise that when I refuse to face the pain of transformation, eventually I must endure the misery of my immaturity.”
So, my fellow Methodists, Christian spirituality inevitably involves tough choices to obey God rather than self. However, “the pain is a good pain, the difficult journey is a good journey, and the beautiful fight is still a beautiful fight” [ibid, p. 209], because God is using this wonderful, costly process to mould us into the perfect persons He created us to be.
The Rev See Ping Eik is the Pastor-in-Charge of