In this blog, we will explore the many facets of spiritual health. Spiritual life is not just a subset of the thing that we call life. It is the whole of life. It includes our physical and emotional health as well as the things that we typically consider spiritual, such as prayer, worship, and acts of love.

The best way to examine our spiritual health is through our relationships with God, self, and others. God created us for relationship, and more specifically, to love God and our neighbors as ourselves. But if you are like every other human being that I know, it is a struggle to love. Perhaps you recognize that God loves you and wants you to share that love with others, but something always seems to get in the way.

Imagine a pipe connected to a water source, but you turn the spigot and nothing comes out or maybe just a few drips. There is either a clog somewhere in the pipe or a crack . The same goes for our hearts. Christ has given us access to the source of unlimited love in our relationship with God, but the love isn’t flowing out of our lives the way it should. Perhaps you have a spiritual clog, or maybe your heart has been broken and cracked. You need to call a spiritual plumber!

We all know that we are supposed to love our neighbors as ourselves. But what if you don’t love yourself very well? It usually means we don’t love our neighbors very well, or in unhealthy ways. We have to face ourselves, which means we have to examine our interior life. We have to dig deep into ourselves and discover the things that are clogging God’s love like hurts, brokenness, fear, and resentment. These things keep us from having more profound loving relationships with people and with God. We have to learn to love ourselves enough to tend to the conditions of our souls!

I created the GPS (God-Personal-Social) Spiritual Inventory to bring about greater awareness of our spiritual lives; to be a mirror for our souls so that we can see what is stopping God’s love from flowing through us.

It is essential to have experienced partners in navigating the waters of our spiritual worlds, and that is why I founded Soul Metrics. Soul Metrics provides spiritual coaching for Christian leaders and for anyone who seeks to deepen their relationship with God, to gain a healthier sense of identity, and to develop a greater level of empathy for their fellow human beings.

I invite you to join me in this exploration of the soul. I hope that it leads you to become a flowing source for God’s love for others.

Love is what the world needs! In the immortal words of songsmith Burt Bacharach:

What the world needs now is love, sweet love.

It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.

Rev. Dr. Paul Burns

Executive Director and Founder of Soul Metrics