What is the Key to Spiritual Success?

How do people become spiritual? What practice or discipline is required for us to be close to God? Is there a secret to getting the "shotgun" position?

John 14:23  Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

Lots of teachers and leaders have some ritual that is supposed to make you more obedient and give you that special trick to become spiritual and blessed by God. Don't put too much stock in those gimmicks. There are reading programs that prescribe how many chapter you should read a day or how many verses. It may give you a program that will keep you on track to read the Bible in 90 days or a year, but that's all it will do unless you add something to the mix. You will be able to brag that you have read the Bible all the way through; You may glean some facts you didn't know before, but to become spiritual is more than facts and bragging rights.

Jesus was sensitive to this problem. In the Upper Room teaching he gave the Disciples before he was taken into custody by the officials, he gave them a way to evaluate their own progress in the spiritual realm. He said the mark of love is obedience to his word. It's not a slavish, nit-picking, subservient obedience, but one in which we rejoice to read his word and immerse ourselves in its truths. Our obedience comes as a continuation of the reading. Reading the words of Jesus and acting on them seals the meaning in the deepest core of our being, and that's where Jesus comes with his Father to live with us and in us and to make us like him.

Read the words of Jesus and the words that tell what he did and where he went. Read the Old Testament prophesies that tell what he would do when he came and those in Revelations that tell what he will do at the throne of God. Shape your behavior and your life to fit with his words, and you will begin to experience his nearness and his Father's presence, and you will know that he lives in you and his peace will settle on your life. Circumstances are not the key to a life of peace and joy and fulfillment, but being in love with God and obedient to his word is.