Craig Groeschel is Senior Pastor at LifeChurch.tv, a multi-campus church known for innovation and creative technology. He’s also the author of several books. You can follow him on Twitter and enjoy this preview of Soul Detox, Craig’s newest title releasing next week.

Soul Detox

I was raised in a house filled with smoke. Both my parents smoked, and I was never bothered by the smell. I found it strangely comforting because it was what made home smell like home. While the health risks of smoking were well known, it was a few years before the American Medical Association came out with its findings on the dangers of secondhand smoke, especially for children. No one’s parents were trying to poison their family and cause health problems. Nonetheless, they unknowingly put all the people they loved—including themselves—at risk.

It seems funny to me now in a sad, ironic kind of way. Parents lovingly warned their children: “Look both ways before you cross the street.” “Put on your coat so you don’t catch a cold.” “Wash your hands so you don’t get sick.” “Don’t get in the water until thirty minutes after you’ve eaten.” (I still don’t get that one.) Though they did everything within their power to keep us safe, many parents were unknowingly poisoning their kids with secondhand smoke.

For the first eighteen years of my life, I lived in a cloud of secondhand smoke. I didn’t blame my parents; they didn’t know secondhand smoke is practically as dangerous as inhaling it firsthand. But their ignorance didn’t change the reality of the situation.
I’m convinced many of us are living in this same kind of dangerous trap with our spiritual health. We know something doesn’t feel quite right, that we’re not growing closer to God and following Christ the way we would like, but we can’t put our finger on it. Even though we believe in God and want to please Him, we find it hard to serve him passionately and consistently. We want to move forward spiritually but we feel like we’re running against the wind. We want more—we know there’s more—but we just can’t seem to find it.

Why do so many well-meaning Christians take one spiritual step forward, then slide back two? Why do we long for more of God in our lives and yet feel farther and farther away from him? What’s holding us back from growing in this relationship that we claim is our main priority?

While many factors go into answering these questions, ultimately I believe our spiritual enemy blinds us with a smoke screen of poisonous distractions. Just like I lived unaware of the smoke in my home, many people aren’t fully aware of the forces stunting their spiritual growth. Without realizing the impact of their faith, people embrace harmful relationships, consume toxic media, live with addictive habits, and remain oblivious to the long-term effects. We think the way we live is perfectly fine, normal, harmless, or even positive. Some people don’t want to take an honest look at the way they live, claiming, “What you don’t know won’t hurt you.”

Unfortunately, this just isn’t true. Many who inhaled secondhand smoke—not to mention all the millions of smokers—have suffered permanent and painful physical effects. The truth is this. What many people don’t know is not just hurting them but killing them spiritually.

Everything we allow into our minds, hearts, and lives—everything we spend our time and money on—has an impact on how we grow, or don’t grow, spiritually. As the old computer adage reminds us: garbage in, garbage out. Just as we are what we eat physically, we are also what we consume spiritually. If we don’t monitor and adjust our diet accordingly, our souls are in danger of absorbing more and more lethal poison.

The Bible consistently reminds us to check our spiritual diet for toxins. Proverbs 25:26 says, “Like a muddied spring or a polluted well are the righteous who give way to the wicked.” How muddy is your water right now? Is your well polluted by all the cultural toxins seeping in? Or does your spiritual well draw on Living Water as its pure, thirst-quenching source? Maybe you’re a Christian—you’ve been made righteous by Christ—yet you’ve become a muddied spring or a polluted well, and you don’t even know it.

You might believe, “My thoughts don’t matter. As long as they stay tucked away inside my head, they’re not hurting anyone. We all think about things that we’d never do, right?” All the while your negative thoughts are silently poisoning your soul, pouring lies into your spiritual water supply. Unfortunately, our thoughts don’t just stay in our head, disconnected from our words and our actions. Unhealthy thoughts often lead to unhealthy words. Without even knowing it, you might be talking yourself, and others, out of God’s best.

If you’re tired of the stain of sinful habits discoloring your life, if you long to breathe the fresh, clean, life-giving air of God’s holiness, if you would love to detoxify your soul from guilt, fear, regret, and all the impurities that pollute your relationship with God, it’s time to come clean.

Examine the various pollutants that often corrupt your spiritual desire to know and serve God. Some can be avoided as you become more discerning and remove them from your surroundings. Deep down, you know there’s truer way to live, a deeper, purer way to love, and a larger impact to make on the world around you. Open your eyes, your heart, and your mind to the cleansing power of God’s truth.

His Word is filled with stories of men and women who needed to come clean, who longed for more. One of my favorites is David, who’s described as “a man after God’s own heart” but, as you may know, was far from perfect. Shortly after he committed adultery and murder, David experienced a soul sickness that affected him on every level—physical, emotional, and spiritual. He knew his sins of lust, entitlement, and deception were killing his heart. He knew the only way to be restored and experience a joyful, fulfilling life again was to come clean before God. In his prayer of repentance, he wrote:

Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.

Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.

Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

–Psalm 51: 2,7,10,12

Wouldn’t you like to come clean? To feel your Father’s love wash over you like the cool, crystal waters of a spring-fed stream? To leave the smoke-filled room where you’ve been hiding and come into his life-giving light? To breathe in fresh spiritual air?

It’s not too late.

Adapted from Soul Detox by Craig Groeschel, founding and senior pastor of Lifechurch.tv. Soul Detox, published by Zondervan, releases May 1, 2012.