Inside-Out Soul Care / Guest Post by Josh Sherley

For most of my life I thought living a healthy “Christian” life was centered around how well I could adhere to spiritual disciplines: praying, reading the bible, going to bible studies, attending church, tithe-giving…etc. While these disciplines are healthy and good for my soul, I continually found my soul feeling fatigued, discouraged and convicted. Why? Because, little did I know, my focus on soul health was an “OUTSIDE-IN” approach!

I was relying on my physical strength and discipline to maintain a healthy relationship with God. I found that this approach produced a “religious” lifestyle that was dependent upon my obedience! As you already can guess, my strength was never strong enough to keep temptations away or sustain the spiritual disciplines for long periods of time!

So you might be asking the question, “What changed?”

Well, I experienced God’s grace in a way that forever changed my life! 

God, in the fall of 2019 finally got a hold of my heart! He captured my heart when I surrendered to His love and accepted it! Suddenly, in a moment, I realized that my love and devotion came from a deep place of gratitude for the reality of what He saved me from! I was overwhelmed by the love of God and I was now willing to do whatever He asked of me!

My new identity became that of a “bondservant”. A bondservant in Scripture was one who “willfully” surrendered his life to serve his master for the rest of his life! God had my heart, and along with my heart, He got every aspect of me!

Ever since,  my desire every day is to live an “INSIDE-OUT” life with Jesus! One of the primary ways that I do this is by praying Psalm 139: 23-24 almost every morning. “Search me, God, and know my heart, test me, and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

I have found that the number one way for me to monitor the condition of my soul is to constantly check my desires and motives. This goes for bad desires and motives  like lust, pride, anger, gossip, envy, jealousy, etc. and for good desires and motives like spending time in God’s Word, praying, spending quality time with my family, eating healthier, working out, etc.

The more I spend time asking God to search my heart, the more God shows me where the root cause of my sin stems from! A healthy Christian life requires living an “INSIDE-OUT” life with God! 

As we fight to keep God our delight, He will give us the desires of our heart! (Psalm 37:4)