Pastor Bell's Words To Live By

Each and every individual has needs and for us to act as truly altruistic people it is important that all our real and perceived needs are met. The needs at the lower level must be satisfied before you can progress to the higher more complex levels. This means that our desire for clothing, food, shelter and security must be met before we can sit and think about the varied philosophical stand points that there are. Once our basic needs are met, we are no longer motivated by them and hence we progress to higher-level motivators. At all times all our needs are present. However, like Jesus did, we can withdraw for a period of time to condition ourselves to face the rigors that lie ahead of us, see Luke 4 for Jesus’ example. Once we are self-actuated, we learn to balance our emotional and spiritual life by being practical. So we learn to accept other people for what they are and where they are. We learn to become spontaneous in our thinking, in our emotions, and in our behaviour. We become problem-centred rather than self-centred, I.e. we seek to solve the problems of others rather than focus on our own problems, pressing though they may be. This will mean that ‘you’ may spend regular times away on your own processing your thought processes, reviewing your mission and re-establishing your vision. You will know when you are spiritually intelligent when you are autonomous but still accountable, independent but dependent on others, and are able to remain true to yourself even in the face of rejection or unpopularity.

A real spiritually intelligent person will have a continuous freshness of appreciation and will learn from their experiences so that they are able to identify and empathise with those going through particular problems. This person will not condemn, but will provide a solution to the problem and encourage that individual not to travel along the same road again.

Finally, a practical spiritually intelligent person will be democratic in their thinking and have a highly developed ethical framework. And so like Jesus did we will deal with the sin and set the sinner free and by so doing resist the propensity to conform to the prevailing culture. Read Joshua 10 and see what God can do!