Conducting a Spiritual Audit
Twelve questions to keep your personal accounts in order.
by Fred Smith
When I was teaching an adult Sunday school class, one member, the
CEOof a major firm, asked me to lunch. He started the conversation
by saying, "I have a CPA to keep me liquid, a lawyer to keep me
legal, and a doctor to keep me healthy. But I have no one to help
assess my spiritual condition. Can you give me a 'spiritual
audit'?"
I had never thought about such a thing. I thrashed around, trying
to be helpful, but felt completely lost in doing what he
wanted.
This led me to think about a "spiritual audit," first for myself
and then possibly for others. In the two or three years since, I
have accumulated twelve questions I ask myself. I hope you will be
encouraged to develop your own audit if you feel it helpful.
1. Am I content with who I am becoming?
Every day I get one day closer to who I will ultimately be. Am I
satisfied with who this will be?
Our son, Fred, Jr., helped me with this question. He asked me about
the important people in my life and after hearing each story,
unerringly asked, "Did he finish well?" Some did, some didn't, and
a few were disasters.
We must be sure our profession does not consume our person. It's
important that we be more than we do or have. Too often I have seen
executives leave their title and power and have nothing to fill the
vacuum. They are shells, like the large beetles you find on pine
trees in east Texas that look completely alive but have all their
insides gone. They are as hollow as a drum.
Also, as we grow older, we must move from power to wisdom. Those
who try to hold power too long are resented. Even parents who try
to hold power over their children lose the love of their children.
However, when we are able to give up power at the right time and
become a wisdom figure, then we are useful, honored, and kept in
the mainstream.
Of course, in power, we hold the offensive, while in wisdom we are
the consultantthose who want our help come to us; we don't go to
them. So I ask myself: Am I moving from power and becoming a person
of wisdom?
2. Am I becoming less religious and more spiritual?
The Pharisees were religious; Christ is spiritual. Much tradition
is religious, while relation in Christ is spiritual.
The difference between religion and spirituality is basically a
matter of control. I define religion as an experience I can
control, while spirituality is an experience that controls me. I
confess that after many years of involvement in organized religion,
I often feel the shallowness of the experience, the restriction of
the rules, and reach out with a hungry soul for something truly
spiritual in a relation with Christ.
Recently a friend near the end of his life came from another
country just to visit. He had been well-recognized in business and
religious circles. He'd had audiences with the Pope and enjoyed
many honors in evangelical society. Yet he was spiritually hungry.
As he drew near the end of his life, he wanted the warmth of
spirituality rather than the formalism of religion. He wanted to do
something significant, impressive, with his large fortune before
his death.
I kept wishing he could, like a child, feel the love of God in a
warm, personal way, which would relieve him of feeling responsible
to impress God.
3. Does my family recognize the authenticity of my
spirituality?
They see me whole. I would like to believeand must believethat if
I am growing spiritually, my family will recognize it.
The late Ray Stedman, pastor of Peninsula Bible Church in Palo
Alto, California, called together the first advisers for the
Council on Biblical Exposition. There were seventeen or so
well-known ministers and me, there as Ray's friend. During lunch,
Stephen Olford said, "My brothers, I am weary of celebrity
religion. I have had my share of honors, but when I die, unless my
family can say, 'There is something of God in the man,' then I will
have failed."
There came that holy hush of self-examination for each of us.
4. Do I have a flow-through philosophy?
Scripture says, "He that believeth in me, out of his innermost
parts will flow rivers of living water." The freshness is in the
flow. The mountain stream is fresh; the Everglades are
stagnant.
Some of us want to be a lake, not a river. We want to accumulate
before we let too much flow through. However, as a Christian, I am
to let the blessings flow through me.
Certainly this involves more than money per se. When Christ praised
the widow who gave a mite, was he not praising her sacrifice rather
than her gift?
Could it be that God appreciates only what we give as a sacrifice?
Didn't David say, "I will not give God that which costs me
nothing"?
If I have been blessed with leadership, that blessing should flow
out. An entrepreneurial friend in Colorado has developed a program,
"Counsel and Capital," to help ministries in trouble. He analyzes
their problem and makes a list of things, in order, that they need
to do. Normally the first ten of the twenty things do not cost
money; they cost organizational readjustment. When they have done
the things that cost no money, then he helps them get the capital
for doing things beyond that. My friend has a flow-through
philosophy with his gift of leadership.
At a weekend retreat outside Fresno, I spent three days with a
couple hundred laymen. To my surprise, they had not invited another
speaker, so I had to hold forth from Friday noon until Sunday noon.
(I accused them of running a cheap program with only one speaker
who came free.) Late Sunday afternoon, I was flying back to Dallas
when I realized, I am totally relaxed. This didn't make sense.
After that much effort, I should have been either high as a kite or
lower than a snake's belt buckle.
It suddenly occurred to me: There had been a real presence of the
Holy Spirit in the sessions. I had been the pipe, not the pump. The
pipe never gets tired. God had been the pump. How tired I would
have been had I tried to be both the pump and the pipe.
Oswald Chambers warns that when we dam the blessings in our life,
we become stagnant, cynical, mean-spirited. We must break the dam
and let blessings flow like a river, for the freshness is in the
flow. Do I really have a flow-through way of Christian
living?
5. Do I have a quiet center to my life?
My mentor, Francois Fenelon, who walked with God three hundred
years ago, said, "Peace is what God wants for you no matter what is
happening."
I press this point to myself for it is important in my life. Our
mutual friend Oswald Chambers says, "In our Lord's life there was
none of the press and rush of tremendous activity that we regard so
highly, and the disciple is to be as his master."
There is an important difference between the fast track and the
frantic track. It is not God's will for me that I be frantic.
When I was heading the operations of a manufacturing corporation we
had an excitable manager who, whenever he got confused, called a
supervisors' meeting to display it. After one of these fruitless
meetings, I gave him my favorite little verse: "When in trouble,
when in doubt, run in circles, scream, and shout."
This harriedness is epidemic in our society. Unless we are running
on empty, we don't feel we are normal. The other day I heard a
prominent minister say that this next week he had a breakfast
meeting every morning. I wanted to say to him, "This is not the way
to live. This is not the way to have a family. This, to me, is not
the way to be a man of God."
Often I, too, need to hear the command, "Be still, and know that I
am God."
The late Senate chaplain Dick Halverson was helpful to me by
suggesting that Jesus didn't have a day planner; he simply "went
about doing good." When he was on his way to raise a dead child, he
stopped to help a woman with an issue of blood. He didn't
prioritize raising the dead over helping the sick. He simply went
about doing the good that came his way.
Jesus had that quiet center. Do I have it too? Peace is the
evidence of God.
6. Have I defined my unique ministry?
Do I know what I can do effectively? The need is always bigger than
any person can satisfy, and so my call is simply to handle the part
of the need that is mine to do.
In business I subscribed to the wisdom, "Opportunity is never
mandate." Just because I had the opportunity to do something didn't
mean I had to do it.
Fortunately I was able to define my unique ministry early in life,
so I have not gone through midlife change. When young, I sat on a
tombstone and decided what I wanted on mine: HE STRETCHED OTHERS. I
have never changed it.
Defining my unique ministry is important because so many requests
are made that take time and energy. Unless you know the things you
can do uniquely well, you end up doing many mediocre things just to
please others. Definition and discipline are essential.
7. Is my prayer life improving?
I have been reading and re-reading Oswald Chambers's little book,
Prayer, the Holy Occupation. In this he defines the essence of
prayer as "finding the mind of Christ."
Years ago, when Torrey Johnson was starting Youth for Christ, he
invited me to his hotel room in Memphis for some conversation. At
the close he said, "Let's pray." Then he prayed as I had never
heard anyone pray before. I was accustomed to formal prayer, but
Torrey started out, "Thank you, Lord. You know we're just a couple
of young men who have been chewing the rag together
"
I opened one eye and looked around the room, for I was sure another
presence was there. I didn't see anyone, but that prayer made an
impression on me. Occasionally now I hear someone pray the prayer
of reality. A few of these prayers have been so earthy that I can't
repeat them in print, yet I am sure they reached the throne.
I do not know when I am fully a man of prayer, but I can perceive
progress if I am making it. Progress, not perfection, is all I can
hope for in my spiritual growth.
One test of my prayer life is this: Do my decisions have prayer as
an integral part, or do I make decisions out of my desires and then
immerse them in a sanctimonious sauce I call prayer?
8. Have I maintained a genuine awe of God?
I've never felt I could express my awe of the Almighty on an
automobile bumper. Awe inspires, it overwhelms, it intimidates my
humanness, it inspires worship. Awe isn't learned; it is
realized.
A friend recently went out into the night on his ranch and looking
up at the stars with awe, repeated with Ziggy, "Go, God, go!" I
have felt this same response on clear nights in the Colorado
mountains or the piney woods of east Texas. It's generally come
when I am alone with nature or when I have seen his salvation work
in a changed life.
Once, after speaking in Anaheim, I was walking down the exit
corridor of the convention center when I met Dr. Gerhard Dirks, the
great German computer scientist. It had been years since we'd seen
each other, so we hugged, and I asked him, "Gerhard, what are you
excited about?"
With moist eyes he said, "The awe of God." He said, "Fred, can you
imagine a mind so great as to conceive the DNA?"
I can't. The awe of Godis it growing within me?
9. Is my humility genuine?
To me, nothing is so arrogant as false humility. Once I was asked
to speak to a group, and before I spoke, a talented, young lady
sang. I turned to her and quietly said, "You have a lovely
voice."
It shocked her. She wrapped her arms around her torso and bent all
the way forward, saying in a hysterical voice, "Don't praise me.
Give God the glory!"
I wanted to shake her out of this false humility, so I said, "He
didn't do the singing; you did." Then I said, "I didn't say it was
divine. I said it was lovely."
How I would like to have spent some time talking to her about
accepting her gift, her strength, with gratitude. Wouldn't it have
been so releasing for her if she could have said, "Thank you very
much. I thoroughly enjoy my gift. I appreciate the opportunity of
singing for God's glory." Then she would not have been denying her
gift nor the compliment I gave her (remembering that Fenelon said,
"Accept the compliment from a worthy person as a comfort of
God").
There are two definitions of humility I like. The first was given
me by our son: "Humility is accepting your strength with
gratitude." The other I have used since my teen years: "Humility is
not denying the power that you have but admitting that the power
comes through you, not from you."
We are not to pray to be given humility; that prayer would have to
be answered with tribulation. We are told to humble ourselves. Am I
doing it?
10. Is my "spiritual feeding" the right diet for me?
I've stopped calling my spiritual reading time "a devotion" but
rather, "a feeding time," for it is when my soul gets fed. It took
me many years to finally come to what I believe to be a healthy
menu uniquely fitted to my needs.
We can't all wear the same glasses, nor can we take the same
medicine. Just so, we have different personality and character
traits that need developing or dwarfing. That means we must find
the spiritual feeding that is right for us.
Currently I'm reading from seven or so different sources. To me,
it's like eating seven-grain bread. Each source is contributing
something I need, either in prevention, maintenance, or
development. This includes the Bible, various writings of the
saints, and short sermons by great preachers of the past. I find I
feed best on those things that have lasted and that have produced
the people I admire most.
11. Is obedience in small matters built into my reflexes?
Do I try to bargain with God or rationalize with him? Obedience
largely determines my relation with Christ following new birth. He
says I am his friend if I obey him. Therefore I must check my
obedience. My good intentions count for little.
I can obey God out of fear or from love. Both he and I prefer
love.
Also, how do I handle disobediences? Do I give excuses or
confessions? Do I foolishly either carry guilt or try to punish
myself for what God alone can forgiveand will?
12. Do I have joy?
Joy is promised to me. Do I have it? If the relationship with
Christ is right, I do.
To me, joy is perfected in the full belief in the total sovereignty
of God. Doubt dilutes joy.
For five years I left my normal fellowship and attended a church
that gave me one great blessinga firm belief in the sovereignty of
God. I now totally believe that God doesn't need me, he loves me;
and I don't work for him to earn his love, I work for him as a
result of his love. He lets me work in order to mature me. That
brings joy.
Does my joy extend into my suffering? My suffering is my
maturation. Even my dry periods produce perseverance, which is
pleasing to God. Therefore, I can be joyful in the adequacy of
God.
My motive
The most important element in my spiritual audit is my motive for
wanting one. Am I working for progress or for pride? Too often,
some of each. My life is a mixed bag.
I cannot put a number on my audit. When I worked in a manufacturing
plant, I actually tried to put a weekly figure on employees'
morale, but this was a guess. Now I want only to know that I'm
progressing. Coming to maturity is such a slow progress.
An audit is more than a statement of condition. It is also an
indication of my spiritual potential.
Fred Smith is a business executive in Dallas and a contributing
editor of Leadership.
Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today
International/Leadership Journal.
Click here for reprint information onLeadership Journal.
Winter 1998, Vol. XIX, No. 1, Page 30
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