Spiritual Constipation

This past Sunday at Hope we started a series on "Spiritual Gifts." Instead of offering 2 classes as we usually do, we tried to get everyone at Hope involved in this particular class; we were about half-successful. Anyway, we believe that the use of our spiritual gifts is of paramount importance to the health of any church. Not to mention that the use of them is a command, not an option.

Randy used the illustration of a pond to portray the importance of both feeding yourself and feeding others. A pond that has no source of water flowing into it will dry up. You can't feed others (serving others) without being fed (being ministered to) yourself. The reverse is also true. A pond with water coming in, and no water going out, is not a healthy pond either.

Here's another illustration for you. What do you call a person who takes food in, but doesn't let any food go out? Constipated. It is equally as dangerous for someone to feed all the time (fellowship, worship, teaching) but never serve others with their spiritual gifts. Look at Old Testament Israel. God is not a fan to say the least! We are being fed so that we can feed others. We are blessed so that we can bless others (Gen 12:1-3 ESV). We are served so that we can serve others.

Spiritual constipation is rampant in the church. Stuff comes in, but never goes out. The result is people who aren't healthy. Spiritually they look like the dude in the picture above. We might think we are healthy because we know stuff. But very often we aren't joyful. And we wonder why? Sometimes lack of joy is a result of sin, sometimes it is just a dry time spiritually which we all go through (look at most any Psalm), but other times it is because we aren't using our gifts to serve the Church. We are uncomfortable and don't realize that nothing has "come out of us" in a month, or a year or two.

I don't apologize for using such a crass example of constipation. The bible is rife with imagery far more grotesque than constipation. Check out Ezekiel 23, Isaiah 64:6, Phil 3:8 if you don't believe me. The latter references two have been "pleasantly" translated, even though in the original language they refer to things far grosser.

This is a serious issue for all churches today. The larger the church is, the number of people serving the church statistically gets smaller. But smaller churches still have large percentages of people not using their spiritual gifts. The result has a communal effect: a joyless church or at least a church which is not as joyful as it could and should be. Ultimately the call to serve the church with our gifts is a fight for joy; not just personal joy, but communal joy. On the flip side, lack of service will lead to personal and communal spiritual constipation.