Spiritually Paralyzed

For the past few Sundays we have been discussing spiritual growth. It started as we talked specifically about what blaspheming the Holy Spirit is. The next Sunday we talked about how the Holy Spirit indwells you. We have looked at how Jesus is the Living Water in our lives and that if we accept the Living Water, we will thirst no more, that is, spiritually. Last Sunday we spoke in detail about spiritual maturity and the three characteristics of spiritual maturity being regular worship, regular study, and regular change.

Well God continues to stir our hearts as we look at our relationship with Him. Today, we are confronted with being spiritually paralyzed. I came across a list of things that are good signs if our spiritual lives are drying up. Let’s start with that and see where we stand.

How to know if you are getting Spiritually dry.

a. When there is no desire for Bible study and prayer. Does that define you?

b. When spiritual conversation embarrasses you. You’re with a group of your close friends and someone says something about Jesus, or the Bible and you shy away.

c. When you rationalize sin. I am so good all the time, this one little sin is not going to set me back.

d. When you quote scripture and attend services, but it doesn’t make a difference in your life. Your life shows no sign of what you claim to be.

e. When money dominates your life. That speaks for itself.

f. When it doesn’t bother you that others are in misery and are spiritually lost. Are you one that says, “I go to church. Being concerned about someone else accepting Christ is not my job. That’s what we pay the preacher for.”

g. When worship and service to God does not excite you because you don’t have blessed assurance. You’re not certain where you will go when you die and it doesn’t seem to matter to you anymore.

These are sure signs that your spiritual life is in jeopardy. That it’s drying up.

So, let’s talk about the warnings that we need to notice to avoid becoming spiritually paralyzed. I am going to use John 5.

Jesus Christ had been going up and down the country preaching, and He spoke with authority, simplicity and urgency. The Bible says, “And all who heard Him were amazed at His understanding and His answers. The rich and the poor alike came to hear Him. He spoke with great authority, unlike the other preachers of that day.

His fame had spread abroad because He had made the blind to see, the deaf to hear and the lame to walk. He had fed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fishes. I wonder, if they had had television in those days, what they would have done with Jesus. How spectacular it would have been! How it would have been written up in the newspapers and what great headlines there would have been.

But after a while, they would have been criticizing Him for all kinds of things. Why? Because people have always criticized Jesus. There’s a hostility toward Jesus in the hearts of millions of people, for no other reason than that He was holy and righteous, and we are so unholy and so unrighteous.

And when the light is penetrating the darkness, the darkness doesn’t like the light. Men love darkness, the Bible says, because their deeds are evil. And Jesus is the Light of the world; people don’t want Him to come into their hearts and tear their lives apart, as He does when He comes in. You have to change your way of living when Jesus Christ comes in. Jesus is not going to reside in a devil infested heart. When He comes in, He cleanses your heart from top to bottom, inside and out.

John 5:1 says that Jesus had come to Jerusalem for this great feast. If you had been in Jerusalem at that time, and you heard that Jesus was there, where would you have looked for Him? Where would you think Jesus would be? Well, we would probably all look for Him in the temple, of course, with all the religious leaders. But that’s not where He went on this occasion. He went to a sheep market, where there was a pool called Bethesda. Sick people came to this pool from all around. John 5:4 says that at a certain time an angel went down and “troubled the water,” and whoever was the first to step into the water was healed.

One man had been there for 38 long years, lying there. And Jesus saw all the misery. There’s misery here, too. In every city and every suburb today, there’s misery. There’s moral misery, there’s spiritual misery, there’s psychological misery and there’s physical misery. And the root cause of the world’s problems is sin. We’ll never get to the root of our problems until we get to the heart.