Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health

“HAVE YOU HAD ANY TROUBLE SLEEPING?

“Have you experienced any shortness of breath?

“Any changes in your eyesight?

“Have you experienced any unusual fatigue?

“Has the technician drawn your blood yet?

“Now for this next test …”

This is the way it goes during my annual physical checkup. The doctor always evaluates my bodily health by two means: questions and tests.

The English Puritans of 1550 to 1700 sometimes referred to ministers as “physicians of the soul.” In our day as in theirs, the timeless process of discerning one’s spiritual health likewise involves questions and tests. My purpose in these pages is to act as a physician of the soul, asking questions and suggesting spiritual tests which can, by the help of the Holy Spirit, enable you to self-diagnose your spiritual health.

For there to be health, of course, there must be life. I wrote this book with the assumption that its readers would possess the eternal life given by grace to those who know God through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ. The night before He was crucified, Jesus prayed, “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). Stressing the necessity of knowing Jesus, the Son of God, in order to have eternal life, the apostle John adds, “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:12).

I realize, however, that many who begin reading this book will do so with a false sense of assurance that you know Jesus and that God has given you eternal life. Nothing in the world is more important than an eternal, life-giving knowledge of God through Jesus, who is the only way to the Father (see John 14:6). I urge you not to take the existence of such a relationship between yourself and God for granted. The Bible itself implores you, “confirm your calling and election” (2 Peter 1:10).

Where eternal life through Christ does exist, there should also be health and growth. That’s what this book is about—evaluating spiritual health and growth. Throughout, remember that as Jesus is the source of spiritual life, so He also is the standard of spiritual health. And regarding spiritual growth, we are to “grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Ephesians 4:15).

Donald S. Whitney, Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health (NavPress; Tyndale House Publishers, 2021), vi–2.