The apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 13:5, “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves!…” We should constantly be looking at our life and by it we can tell if our faith in God is true or not. If we have no desire to follow Christ, no desire to spend time with Him in prayer and fellowship, and no desire to please Him in everything we do – we need to seriously consider whether we truly have placed our faith entirely in Jesus Christ. Obviously as humans, we will make wrong choices and slip up, but when we do – do we eagerly seek to get our lives back in fellowship with Him or do we simply say, “Oh well…life happens!”?
In the 1600’s an English Presbyterian minister named Matthew Henry took a serious self-examination of his life and I wanted to share with you part of what he wrote:
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“Q. What have I done?
This is a needful question, that searching and examining what hath been amiss, I may repent of it, and make even reckonings in the blood of Christ, that I may not come loaded with old guilt to put on a new character, especially such a character as this. Aaron and his sons must offer a sin-offering to make atonement before they were consecrated, Lev. 8:34. For he that comes near to God under guilt of sin unrepented of, comes at his peril, and the nearer the more dangerous. And therefore, O my soul, what have I done? My soul cannot but answer, I have sinned, I have perverted that which is right, and it hath not profited me. And in a serious reflection I cannot but observe,
l. What a great deal of precious time I have trifled away and misspent in folly and vanity, and things that do not profit. Time is a precious talent which my Master hath entrusted me with, and yet how long hath it been buried, and how much hath it run waste?
How many precious opportunities (which are the cream of time) have I lost and not improved through my own carelessness. Golden seasons of grace which I have enjoyed, but have let them slip, and been little bettered by them; sabbaths, sermons, sacraments that have come and gone, and left me as they found me. My fruit hath not been answerable to the soil I have been planted in. How often have I been ignorant under enlightening means; hard and cold under softening and warming ordinances, trifling and careless when I have been dealing with God about the concerns of my soul and eternity?
3. How often have I broken my covenants with God, my engagements, promises, and resolutions of new and better obedience, resolved against this and that sin, and yet fallen into it again; many a time returning to folly, after God hath spoken peace to me, and after I have spoken promises to God. Presently after a sacrament, how have I returned to former vanity, folly, sensuality, frothiness, to former pride, passion, and worldliness; so soon have I forgot the vows of God!
4. How unprofitable have I been in my converse with others; how few have been the better for me; how many the worse for me; how little good have I done; how little light have I cast in the sphere wherein God hath placed me; how little have I been concerned for the souls of others; and how little useful have I been to them. How vain and light have I been many times in my words and carriage, going down the stream of folly with others, when my seriousness might have stemmed the tide. How seldom hath my speech been with grace, and how often with corruption; not seasoned with salt
5. In the general, how forgetful have I been of God and his word, and of myself and my duty, and of the great concernments of my soul and eternity, living too much, as if I had no God to serve, and never a soul to save!
I might mention many particular miscarriages which I have been guilty of in heart and life, and which are known to God and my own heart; and yet after all—‘Who can understand his errors’? Cleanse thou me, O God, from my secret sins; have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving-kindness, and according to the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out all my transgressions, for the sake of the Lord my righteousness.”
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The Christian life is not a part-time club to join. It is a SERIOUS life-changing consecration of ourselves to Jesus Christ. And if we TRULY love Him and want to KNOW Him, we should SERIOUSLY consider all that may be preventing that daily fellowship with Him in our lives.
I’ve been doing a lot of self-examination of my own life lately, because more than ANYTHING else in this world – I want to KNOW JESUS CHRIST and watch Him work in my life on a daily basis. It’s not always easy doing a self-examination, because we don’t want to admit even to ourselves sometimes what we know is wrong in our lives. But if the end result is a life fully consecrated to Him it is well worth the close examination.
In another part of his self-examination, Matthew Henry talked about losing all to follow Jesus and wrote, “Though I should lose all my worldly comforts by it, I shall reckon myself to have made a good bargain.” And at the end of his life, he proved that statement true when as he lay on his death bed, his last words were: “A life spent in the service of God and communion with Him is the most pleasant life that anyone can life in this world”.