Question to measure your faith journey

Evaluation is always good. Every program and activity needs to have a means by which it determines its progress. Usually in the church the two major criteria are money and members. Did the giving increase and did you have more members seem to be the easiest and most common criteria for measuring the faithful journey of a church.

But I would like to suggest five other questions which I think are more appropriate to ask about our life together in faith.

a. Has your attendance at church, has the worship where you go, have the materials you have been using for your devotional life, pushed you deeper into the mystery, the wonder and the majesty of God? Has that journey into the deeper wonder, amazement and holiness of God created as many questions for you as it has given you answers. God is the one in the Scripture that so often asks tough questions instead of giving simple answers. In Genesis God asks,"Where is your brother?" He asks Job, " Where were you when I created Leviathan?" The deeper we move into the love, forgiveness and mercy of God, the more our categories of justice and fairness disappear, leaving only questions.

b. Has you faithfulness in religious devotion given you a new freedom from all the petty little rules that life keeps trying to make us follow. "A man's indifference to minor matter is the measure of his real faith in Jesus Christ as the Savior." The more you find your life sustained and rooted in the wonder of Jesus Christ the less concerned and bound you are to all the little gods of life, like race, family, country, economics, and power. Jesus had a remarkable freedom from all of the laws the Sadducees and Pharisees kept want to bind him with. He met with a Samaritan woman at mid-day, he enjoyed children, he ate lunch with Zaccheus; he ate with sinners, he let a prostitute bath his feet with perfume. Our growth in Christ ought to be moving us more and more into a freedom from all other little petty gods and their rules

c. Has your participation in worship and your own devotional life expanded the circle of your compassion? If you are more and more coming closer and closer to God, are you sharing more and more of his love for all creation? Are you praying now for more people than you prayed for five years ago? If the love of God is moving through you more and more, are you sharing his love for more and more of his creation?

d. As that love of God for all creation begins to dominate your life and your vision of life, do you find yourself a little more able to consider the possibility that some of those "other people" just may be able to be forgiven by God? As you get carried along by the power of the Holy Spirit are you finding more tolerance for other people? more able to think of excuses and explanations for their sins in the same way you think of them for you own sins?

e. The last is a money question, but it is not whether your church has more, but whether or not you have discovered that you are more generous with what you have now that you were four years ago? Do you trust more that God's blessings will continue and that you can be more responsive and more generous with what you have? As we become rooted in the greatness of God, we become confident that God will bring fresh blessings new every morning and we don't have to hoard or grab more blessings than we need. There is no dying with the most toys in the Kingdom of God. A living and vibrant faith should be helping to make us more generous towards those who need our help.

These are some questions I would use to tell if the places I have been going and then things I have been doing as a disciple are really helping me move in the direction of God's love.