Spiritual Refueling – Sunday, February 26, 1984
Just as the machines of our motorized age come to a halt when they run out of gas, so our spiritual motors shut down when they run out of spiritual fuel. In our troubled world we need to think about refueling ourselves spiritually to make sure we don’t run out of this precious energy source.
There is a kind of joy that comes with increased spirituality, and those who have grown most spiritually are those who have become experts in living. Spiritual power brings a capacity to make decisions with greater and greater awareness. It also brings true exhilaration, the incomparable antidote to weariness. Without it, life may seem routine…pedestrian…and purposeless. This, in turn, brings physical and mental weariness—all of it the result of spiritual slackness.
Research has shown a strong relationship between certain spiritual values—such as the feeling that life has meaning and direction—and happiness. People who lack meaning in their lives tend to be less happy with almost every aspect of life. They are less happy with their financial situations, their homes, jobs, marriages, friends, where they live, even their own physical attractiveness.
Life really becomes better only when we become better, and life unfolds only as we unfold spiritually—like flowers unfolding in the sunshine. Things may seem dark at times, but we should never lose our appetite for the true sweetness and light of spirituality.
To increase it, we must do as the Savior said: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For…whomsoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul.”1
The Savior didn’t mean that we should give up our lives in the literal sense, but that we should lose them in a greater cause, in the cause of spirituality.
We can refuel our spiritual motors by growing closer to the Lord, by reaching out to touch our neighbors, and by coming in daily contact with the principles of spiritual living. As Thomas A Kempis pointed out, “There is no peace in the heart of a worldly man, who is entirely given to outward affairs, but only in a fervent, spiritual man.”2
1 New Testament, Matthew 16:24-26.
2 Thomas A Kempis, “Counsels on the Spiritual Life,” The Imitation of Christ, Penguin Books, 1975, p 34
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February 26, 1984
Broadcast Number 2,845