Self Examination

Happy Sunday. Today we're going to wrap up our series on spiritual disciplines. Over the last several weeks, we have looked at the spiritual disciplines of Bible study, prayer, service, gratitude, silence, fasting, fellowship, and confession. How have you done with these?

Hopefully, each of us have found areas to improve in our lives, in our spiritual discipline. Today, we wrap up the study with the discipline of self-examination. Truthfully, it's easier to look at others and see their failures and their faults as opposed to looking inward. Many skate through life refusing to look inward to see what needs to be corrected.

Self-examination is an awesome spiritual discipline that if practiced will lead us to being the men and women that God wants us to become. Self-examination is a diagnostic for our souls. Hopefully in weeks past you've thought, you know, I need to read my Bible more. I need to pray more.

I need to be more thankful. These disciplines have certainly challenged me. Listen to these words of Jesus from Na Matthew chapter 7. Do not judge so that you may not be judged.

For with the judgment you make, you will be judged and the measure you give will be the measure that you get. Why do you seek the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, "Let me take that speck out of your eye while the log is in your own eye?" You hypocrite, Jesus said, "First take the log out of your own eye, and then you'll see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye."

That section of scripture is an awful lot about self-examination before we tell others to work on ourselves. Let me tell you one way that I applied this. It might be a little trivial. It was 36 plus years ago and I remember it vividly.

We lived in the small town of Henryville, Indiana. Our son Taylor was a toddler. He and I were outside and I took my eyes off him for just a second. When I looked back, he was sitting right in the middle of a mud puddle, covered in mud, dirty as he could be, and happy to be there.

I was about to scold him, and it was in that moment that it was as if God put a muzzle on me. It suddenly occurred to me that when I was that age, I too love to be in puddles of mud. So that moment, I kept my mouth shut. Very often we can see the dirt on others and fail to apply it to our own lives and fail to see it in our own lives.

We judge others and let ourselves go unchecked. Listen to these words that Paul wrote to the people of Corenth in 2 Corinthians chapter 13. He said this, "Examine yourselves to see whether you are living in the faith. Test yourselves.

Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you unless indeed you fail to meet the test? The importance of self-examination. Just think of all the tests that you have taken in your lives. School test, driving test, medical test, occupational test.

While likely not very fun, each of them had value. Self-examination in the spiritual realm is the most valuable. Can you think of self-examination examples of it in scripture? The story of the prodigal son found in Luke 15 is a great example.

I'll begin at verse 11. Jesus said, "There was a man who had two sons." The younger of them said to his father, "Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me." So he divided his property between them.

A few days later, the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country. And there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he spent all that he had, a severe famine took place throughout the country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to the one of the citizens of that country who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs.

It was so bad, we told he would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating, and no one gave him anything. It's a bleak situation. He goes from his father's house to living with the pigs and starving. But we're told this, "But when he came to himself, he said, "How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare?

But here I am dying of hunger." I love those words found in verse 17. but when he came to himself. Self-examination.

As you likely know, some people never wake up. Self-examination is ignored and they choose to live situations far from ideal. Today, I encourage you to practice self-examination. It's a spiritual discipline that encourages growth.

I'll close with a couple of verses from Psalms 139 that should help us on our journey. There the psalmist wrote, "Search me, oh God, and know my heart. Test me, know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."

Pray with me. Lord, point out to us, each of us, individually, how it is we need to change. Help us not to settle, but to look to grow in Christ in all areas of our lives. Thank you for being with us and giving us the Holy Spirit to enable us to be who you want us to be.

It's in the name of Jesus I pray. Amen. God bless. Thanks for joining me today.