New Year’s Spiritual Evaluation
Photo courtesy of Freepik
When another year begins, it’s typical for church people to make the resolution to get back to reading their Bible every day or praying more, the general Christian vernacular of “doing devotions.” I’ll be the first to say that rhythms of faith practice do make a difference in one’s spiritual life, that scripture reading, prayer, and time in silence are all good and powerful things. But sometimes when we go to evaluate our spiritual health we essentially look only at those external practices—or we read through the Ten Commandments—as though they were a checklist. We then follow the train of thought that “well, I haven’t murdered anyone this week. I’m good.” But keeping a checklist so you can prove you never did anything wrong isn’t the point of faith and religion. Keeping a checklist is not relationship. And relationship IS the point.
My husband (a pastor) likes to use this analogy: a kid walks up to his parents and says, “I did all my chores. Do you love me now?” The wrongness of this hits us immediately. The parents would be thinking, “You’re our son. We love you just because.” But we treat our relationship with God like this all the time.
Why Not Use Checklists?
Part of the issue with checklists is that you feel amazing when you can check all the boxes but you feel utterly wrecked when you can’t. If your resolution was to read your Bible every day this year and you’ve already failed to do it because you got extra busy one morning or you stumbled upon a particularly wacky piece of scripture that frustrated you, now what? Is God mad at you? Are you still good? Should you just quit since you’ve proven, once again, that you can’t do all the things on the list? This is how we think when external practices are the focus of our faith, but it doesn’t have to be that way. God doesn’t go anywhere just because we skip prayer for a week.
Questions To Ask
So, if we aren’t to use checklists and external practices as markers, how do we assess our spiritual health? How do we assess our relationship with God? When people asked Jesus about the Old Testament checklists, he said that the most important thing was to love God and love your neighbor, and later he explained that even those are one and the same. With that in mind, here are some questions to ponder:
What is your experience with God’s love?
If you simply sit, with the understanding that God is present all around you, what emotions (or even physical sensations) do you feel? Are you calm and at peace, knowing that God knows everything about you and feeling like God radiates love and joy toward you? Are you afraid or ashamed, feeling like God radiates anger and judgment toward you? (If emotions are hard for you to notice, start with physical sensations instead. How’s your heartrate? Is there tension in your shoulders or in your gut? When you think of God as very near, does that ease those sensations or make them worse?)Inside relationships, there should always be room to admit mistakes or failures and seek forgiveness, but if you generally feel/think/assume that God is only ever angry and critical of you no matter what you do, I would encourage you to seek out someone who radiates love and can walk through those thoughts with you for a time. They can help you feel God’s love tangibly until you learn to recognize it on your own. This matters because seeking to love God can become guilt-based, obligatory, and non-relational if you’ve never experienced God’s love toward you, if you’ve never known that God loved you first and always will.
Where have you seen God show up in the world (and yourself)?
The Apostle Paul’s letter to the church in Galatia says that the evidence of God’s Spirit at work is when you see instances of love, joy, peacemaking, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, goodness, and self-control. If you really want a checklist, how are you doing on those things? When you interact with other drivers in traffic, do you typically act out of a wellspring of patience and self-control? When you read things on social media, do you typically comment with the goal of gentleness and peacemaking? Each of us will struggle with some evidences of the Spirit more than others, so it is good to take notice of which ones come least naturally to you. When you are aware of them, over time, you can watch as God works to make change and you can celebrate it as you experience the change in yourself.
Faith & Practice
Let me be clear, I’m not saying skip the faith practices. Prayer and scripture reading really are good for you (like exercising and eating healthy food). Just don’t look at them as though they’re earning you points with God. You’re already good. God loves you. Those practices are there simply to help you learn deep in your bones and muscle memory to be those other things: how to love God back and love your neighbor as yourself. Because if the evidences of God’s Spirit aren’t growing in you, then all your scripture reading and worship singing and church attending are meaningless.
As we are still early into 2026, take some time to reflect on those questions above. May you find God smiling at you from deep within your soul and looking out from the eyes of every neighbor you pass. May you thoroughly enter into the love of God this year.
Further Resources:
Sermon by Dutch priest, Henri Nouwen: “Being The Beloved”
Susan Alloway, M.A.
Susan is the Director of Worship & Media at Redemption Church in Bristol, PA. She is a professional artist, musician, and writer and feels privileged to also use her skills to shepherd the content production of CCCRD.
