I’ve talked to various of us lately who’ve skilled an MRI. In keeping with AI, “MRI stands for Magnetic Resonance Imaging. It’s a medical imaging method that makes use of a robust magnetic subject and radio waves to create detailed photographs of the physique’s inside constructions, comparable to organs, muscle tissues, and bones.” Most individuals simply understand it as being shoved in a tin can headfirst and having to stay fully nonetheless when you’re panicking that you simply’ll by no means get out.
An MRI makes use of an exterior instrument to look at potential inside issues. On a non secular stage, that’s one vital approach the Bible works for us. It’s an exterior instrument that, underneath the illuminating and convicting energy of the Holy Spirit, reveals the “inside constructions” of our souls. The author of Hebrews makes that clear:
For the phrase of God resides and energetic. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the ideas and attitudes of the guts (Heb. 4:12).
Our personal self-diagnosis tends to give attention to what’s going on round us because the locus of our issues. We spend a big period of time and vitality attempting to handle exterior issues. And the therapies we apply to these issues—management, fear, anger, escape, denial, self-medication, and so forth.—do little lasting good. As many people have realized, however usually fail to remember, our actual issues should not actually within the realm of circumstances or reactions. They’re within the realm of our hearts.
Like a non secular MRI, God’s Phrase is supposed to assist us see past signs and circumstances, to the causes of our poor non secular well being. There are some vital “markers” a biblical MRI is calibrated to search for in clarifying the issues in our hearts. Listed here are three markers to search for.
1. The Bloating Illness of Delight
Do you discover that you concentrate on your self quite a bit, evaluate your self with others, belief your opinions, or fear about your repute? In that case, you could discover you’re being “overrated” with satisfaction. The Scriptures communicate in a number of locations about how satisfaction puffs us up (1 Cor. 5:6; 1 Cor. 8:1; Rom. 11:12; Col. 2:18). Delight makes us larger in our personal eyes—larger than others, even larger than God in our minds. Delight facilities life in us, not in God. John Flavel offers us the analysis on satisfaction: “There’s not a higher show of satisfaction on this planet than within the contests of our wills with the desire of God.”[1]
We’ll by no means conquer satisfaction this facet of heaven. However that’s no motive to let it fester and infect our lives as we go on the lookout for different treatments.
2. The Hardening Plaque of Unbelief
We don’t usually see unbelief as an issue in our lives. However in keeping with the Bible, any lack of belief in God can result in a posture of unbelief. And like plaque in our bodily arteries, unbelief can harden our hearts, which may have disastrous penalties we could not see till it’s too late. That’s the warning of Hebrews 3:12: “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving coronary heart, main you to fall away from the dwelling God.” The nameless writer of the prayer, “Humiliation” within the Valley of Imaginative and prescient, rightly diagnoses unbelief as “the wound of secret godlessness.”[2] The hardening of unbelief occurs once we cease actively believing within the good character and highly effective guarantees of God. It’s a silent non secular killer.
3. The Congestive Coronary heart Failure of Idolatry
On the finish of his first epistle, the Apostle John prescribes a necessary way of life correction for a wholesome coronary heart: “Little kids, hold yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21). John is aware of that loads of good outward Christianity doesn’t imply a wholesome non secular coronary heart. As sound biblical counselors will remind us, we don’t must go on the lookout for all of the idols we could also be vulnerable to worshiping. Naming an idol isn’t the identical as toppling it. To cope with idolatry, we simply ask one easy diagnostic query: What tends to inspire me once I’m not motivated by obedience to Christ? No matter that’s, it features in that second as a false God, and that false god, that idol, will at all times oppose the great work God is doing in you. As A. W. Tozer stated,
Grace will save a person however is not going to save him and his idol. The blood of Christ will protect the penitent sinner alone, however by no means the sinner and his idol. Religion will justify the sinner, however it’ll by no means justify the sinner and his sin.[3]
A Self-Administered Religious MRI
The excellent news is that we don’t should be shoved right into a tube to get a non secular MRI. We are able to look at ourselves in keeping with God’s Phrase and deal with ourselves with biblical repentance and religion. This isn’t a painful or claustrophobic expertise. It’s meant to be liberating and wholesome. As David Powlison reminds us,
The lifetime of self-examination and joyful discontent shouldn’t be confused with a lifetime of paralyzing self-condemnation. God doesn’t name us to self-loathing, however to a willingness to look at our response to life whereas holding onto our hope as new creatures in Christ. That hope is just not primarily based solely on the promise of forgiveness, but in addition on His promise of private deliverance and restoration as nicely. That very same God that has forgiven us is now within the technique of radically altering us. We should not be glad till that work is full.[4]
Questions for Reflection
- Are you a kind of individuals who can be a self-diagnoser?
- In the case of your non secular well being, do you belief your personal private treatments for all times’s struggles?
- Do you enable God’s Phrase preached and skim for use as a diagnostic imaging instrument by the Holy Spirit in your life?
[1] John Flavel, The Thriller of Windfall, (Banner of Reality, 2022), 216.
[2] From “Humiliation” in The Valley of Imaginative and prescient, ed. Arthur Bennett (Banner of Reality Belief, 1988), 142.
[3] A. W. Tozer, The Quotable Tozer, ed. James Snyder, (Grand Rapids: Bethany Home, 2018), 114.
[4] David Powlison, “How God Modifications Us by His Grace”, JBC Spring 2005, 20-21.
