Spiritual Sobriety

It is lunch time here in my office. I have spent the morning breaking my brain. I had to make decisions about which operating parameters are critical for one of the processes I completing a Process Hazard Analysis for.

I’ve been listening through the wall to my co-worker; who was on the phone several times this morning. He gets very heated when someone doesn’t agree with him.

As I finish my lunch (a couple of pieces of bread and hot tea), I decide to stop and think for a moment; reflect as it were, listening to the inner voice. What are the critical operating parameters for my life? What life process are they parameters for?

One critical operating parameter is spiritual sobriety. I thought about this a lot during my 90 minute run this morning. I don’t drink alcohol for spiritual reasons. One of the critical operating parameters for my spiritual life is physical sobriety. The decision to drink is an act of spiritual death. The presence of alcohol, subsequent to taking a drink, is actually a post-mortem on the spiritual death.

The decision to drink is not the only decision which causes spiritual death. I need to look within my own thought /belief system and see what thoughts are killing me spiritually. I look for thoughts which God would not have thought or placed in my mind. The non-God thoughts are mine. I am responsible for putting them there. They are killing me.

In 8 days, I will drive to Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and participate in a 24 hour running event. I’m terribly curious to see what this experience will be like. How far I go and how long I stick with it are big question marks. Distance and time, symbolizing perseverance or enduring desire, have their parallels in the program of spiritual sobriety. The question for spiritual sobriety is “How bad do you want God?” Spiritual sobriety is a lonely business because hardly anybody wants to go to any lengths to know God intimately.

Selah!