I have found a way to lose over 50% of my body weight immediately.  I don’t have to eat a special diet or engage in grueling exercise.  I don’t have to take pills, spend $500 on extremely small portioned meals mailed directly to my home, or spend hours in front of my TV working out to the latest exercise DVD.

All I have to do to reduce my body weight by 50% immediately is to stop weighing myself in pounds and instead weigh myself in kilograms.  There are 2.2 pounds in a kilogram.   A 200 lbs man weighs 90.7 kg.  No, I haven’t lost my mind, I know that 90.7 kg = 200 lbs, and I know that my weight in kg = my weight in lbs. Changing the standard of measurement does not change the reality of the weight.

How many times, however, do we think we are so much leaner spiritually because we measure ourselves with the wrong standard, when the reality is that we are spiritually out of shape?  We look around and see that we act better than most folks around us and think we are in good shape.  The problem with that measurement is that others are not the standard by which we are to measure ourselves, God’s Word is.

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.  – 2 Timothy 3:16-17

The devil has won a tremendous battle in believers’ lives by keeping us from the Bible.  Do you treat worship as though it is optional and escape the penetrating preaching of the Word.  Do you neglect small group Bible study and avoid the tenacious teaching of the Word.  Do you rarely pick up your Bible lest you stumble upon some convicting truth that forces you to deal with your unhealthy spiritual condition?

We are in desperate spiritual condition because we have grown comfortable with the comparison of ourselves to others who are not as “spiritual” as we think we are, when an honest look into God’s Word will perform spiritual surgery even in the heart of the best among us.  We easily and loudly lament our culture’s abandonment of the Biblical principles upon which our founders established our country, yet we are reluctant to let the Word of Christ pierce into the inner chambers of our heart.

What are you doing to measure yourself by God’s standard? Do you regularly read, study, and meditate on the Bible? Do you let God’s truth, revealed in the Bible provide both the framework and fabric for your life? All other standards of measurement leave us sorely lacking.