Taking a Spiritual Inventory

A big part of a spiritual inventory involves taking stock of your friendships, specifically your friendship with the world versus your friendship with God. Asking the following questions helps evaluate if you are a friend of God or His enemy.

  • What do your values reveal about you?
  • What do your passions say about what’s important to you?
  • What do your investments say about your focus?

God’s Enemy

Being a friend of the world means you are an enemy of God (James 4:4). Evaluate your friendship with the world by asking the following questions.

  • Are you investing all your energy, effort, choices, and gifts into things without eternal value?
  • Are you willing to do anything to get what you want?
  • Are you a Sunday morning only Christian?
  • Are you more fervent with things like sports and television shows than you are with God?
  • Are you letting your values be determined by the world rather than Scripture?

God’s Friend

Being a friend of God, like Moses and Abraham were, means having an exclusive relationship with God. Being God’s friend requires being all in with Him. Ask yourself the following questions to help determine the status of your friendship with God.

  • Have you gone beyond making Jesus your Savior to making Him your Lord?
  • Do you trust everything in this life to Him?
  • Do you make excuses for why you can’t live for Jesus, or have you moved beyond blaming others and taken responsibility for your friendship with God?

Become God’s Friend

James does not sugar coat anything, and his instructions for becoming a friend of God are crystal clear (James 4:7-10) Let’s look at these instructions in the form of questions to fit with our spiritual inventory mindset.

  • Have you humbled yourself before God?
  • Do you deliberately resist the devil?
  • Do you intentionally draw close to God?
  • Are you Staying Pure?
  • Have you shown repentance?
  • When was the last time you bowed down before God?
  • Do you regularly admit your dependence on Him?

Worth it?

Let’s turn again to James 4:7-10 to determine whether friendship with God is worth giving up our friendship with the world.

  • Resist the devil, and he will flee.
  • Draw close to God, and He will draw close to you.
  • Bow down before God, admit dependence on Him, and He will lift you up and give you honor.

A spiritual inventory like this can be uncomfortable. Depending on where you are in your life, it might be downright painful. The discomfort and pain pale in comparison to the benefits, however, and I encourage you to push through. Let the Holy Spirit speak to you through these questions.