3 Steps in Calculating Your Faith

Step 1: Re-Evaluate Your Life & Faith

Life’s storms prompt you to think about the end of your life and what comes after death. You experience many different emotions about the change that storms bring, imagine your new future, and do what you can to influence this imagined future. Storms provide tremendous possibilities for assessing and altering how you love God. Are you living a Christian life through your attitudes, beliefs, and choices? For Christians, storms offer an opportunity to assess spiritual life and develop or enhance your relationship with God. Therefore, these collisions with the future prompt thoughts about death and force you to take spiritual inventory. 

It’s easy to worship God when everything is going well. When you have a great job and make much money, have supportive friends and family members, and live in a lovely house in a great community, you probably take time out of your day to thank God for all the blessings heaped upon you. However, when the storm comes, you begin to have doubts and question God’s intentions for you:

•You Clash With An Unknown Future

•You Think About Death

•You Have Doubts About Your Christian Life

You will notice significant life changes when you encounter storms and become consciously or unconsciously aware of your mortality. Because you fear death, you look for ways to manage it. Like any other fear, you rely on coping mechanisms that provide a sense of meaning, significance, understanding, and permanency. Nonbelievers often turn to sex, substances like drugs and alcohol, technology, or food as coping mechanisms. For people of faith, you will experience one or more of these reactions: 

• You might lose faith in God’s promises to help you in good and bad times and feel like God has abandoned you.
• You may become extra committed to your faith, religious leaders, and spiritual community. 
• You may experience additional interest in religious teachings as a way to protect yourself from the existential threat of death.
• You may focus on religion for guidance, insight, comfort, meaning, and security. 
• You may seek to understand the afterlife for the hope of continued existence beyond earthly death.
• You may become more faithful by praying more often, serving others, attending religious services, and volunteering in your spiritual community. 

Regardless of which of these reactions you are currently having, storms often prompt you to evaluate or re-evaluate how you live your Christian life.

You think you live by revering God in all you do. You trust that you honor God in your decisions, demeanor, behavior, motivations, and mindset. You believe everything you do represents God's Word, not societal expectations. You love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. But how do you know for sure? How long has it been since you took inventory of your heavenly attitudes, beliefs, and actions? Have you recently taken an opportunity to examine, explore, or evaluate your life and progress toward eternal life in Heaven? When storms inevitably arise, God asks you to determine the depth of your trust and faith in Him. 

My book Calculating the Essentials of Christian Life uses a new method for helping people calculate their faith and make sense of their findings. 

Although many claim faith cannot be assessed, I'm afraid I have to disagree. People can and should take steps to evaluate their daily Christian attitudes, beliefs, and choices. Otherwise, how can you know the strength of your faith, areas where you need to enhance the weaker aspects of your spirituality, and how well you live a Christian life? In Romans 12:3 (ESV), God suggests that you assess your faith. 

“For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.”

You engage in a process for assessing your faith by exploring how much you currently love, trust, and have faith in God:

Seek God - God wants you to pursue Him through your attitudes, beliefs, and choices. While attending church is one way of seeking Him, you can do so in many ways throughout your day. In Acts 17:27 (NIV), the Bible reminds us that “God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.”

Fear God - God wants you to maintain a certain amount of fear of Him as you build your attitudes, beliefs, and choices. Because God hates sin, there is a way that you can fear God in a good way. In Deuteronomy 8:6 (NLV), the Bible says, “Keep the Laws of the Lord your God. Walk in His ways and fear Him.”

Love God - God wants you to live your life devoted to him by always keeping your eyes set on eternal life in Heaven with him after you die. Because God wants you to prioritize him above worldly desires, he ensures that the devil's evil intentions do not seduce you. In 1 Corinthians 10:31 (ESV), the Bible says, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

Trust God - All people face temptations in life. God encourages you to trust and have faith in Him, but simultaneously, be on constant guard for the devil’s seductions. In 1 Corinthians 10:13 (ESV), the Bible says, “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man.”

Follow God - The Word of God contains examples of love, service, and faithfulness. However, the Bible also suggests that people are imperfect and live in an imperfect world. So, the Bible provides warnings and instructions for living in a collaborative relationship with God. In James 4:4 (NIV), the Bible says, “Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.”

Serve God - All people have the knowledge, skills, and abilities to serve others and thus serve God. Although you may not believe it yet, God has provided you with numerous skills that you can use to help others. In 1 Corinthians 12 4:6 (NIV), the Bible says, “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and everyone it is the same God at work.”

Worship God - Most people find it easy to worship during good times. However, worship when you are suffering becomes a more significant challenge. When you are suffering and believe God has forgotten you, that's precisely when you should return to God. In Matthew 11:28 (NIV), the Bible says, " Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”  

You can access these 7 Self-Exploration Activities by going to the Free Materials Page.

Reflective Journaling is one of the oldest forms of information gathering and self-help. It is a form of expressive therapy that uses the art of responding in writing and processing the written word to transform chaos into wisdom. Reflective Journaling is a potent tool for helping people learn more about their faith-based strengths and weaknesses, identify Christian attitudes and behaviors, and learn more effective ways to live Christian lives based on the word of God. 

Through the Reflective Journaling Process, God prompts you to write about your thoughts and feelings about your Christian faith. You will be encouraged to write in your journal about questions designed to help you explore your Christian attitudes, beliefs, and choices. 

Some thoughts to remember about journaling include:

· Use a journal for self-exploration. The type of journal you would like to use is up to you. You can use a plain tablet, purchase a journal, or create one. You can use a notebook or computer or buy a blank journaling book at your local bookstore.

· Commit yourself to setting aside time for writing. Remember, the biggest hurdle is not the act of journaling itself but finding the time to write. You are essential, and your self-reflection time is valuable. Consider blocking off several minutes a day for this purpose and honoring this commitment to yourself.

· Remember, your journal is a safe space for self-exploration. While you will be prompted about topics you could write about, don’t feel you must address only the prompt. Journals are for self-exploration of any issues you would like to write about. There's no judgment here, only a comfortable space to express yourself.

· When you begin writing, don’t consider editing and trying to be perfect. It often helps to start writing, and the words will come.

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