Everyone is aware of the concept of banking. But what about our spiritual bank?
While not such a good investment now, it was common practice to put money into the bank and to let it mature. Through interest, one would receive even more money back. Over my past four years of getting to know Christ, I’ve realized that this same idea applies to our relationship with God. That is, that we can accumulate, spend, and mature spiritual currency. In this blog post, I will explain to you a concept known as spiritual banking that you can apply to your own life. Hopefully, you will see the same awesome growth that I have seen.
What is Spiritual Currency?
Short and simple, spiritual currency is our relationship with God. Being rich in the spirit means we communicate with God daily. We are practitioners of the word of God and uphold the Bible as our moral code. In essence, we are children of God. If we are poor in this area of our lives, it might be because:
- We don’t know Him to be our Savior yet
- We reject Him completely
- Our faith in Him isn’t complete yet, only showing our faces every so often in church like on holidays such as Easter and Christmas.
Just like stocks and bonds accumulates interest the more we invest, so does our spiritual currency. When we understand that all things come from Him and we dedicate ourselves wholeheartedly to His ways, our lives change. Thus, we accumulate spiritual currency, and our faith grows. Moreover, we can invest these things into our spiritual bank for even greater rewards later on.
Let me give you an anecdotal experience of this. As I mentioned before, I have been following God’s path for four years now. However, even on this path, I wasn’t the best of Christians. Early on, I still fornicated, drunk in excess, swore, etc. I was still me before I found God. The only difference was now I went to church more often. As God manifested in my life more frequently, I felt more compelled to be better. I wanted to not live in the ways of sin any longer. The Holy Spirit was working through me to help me overcome my vices.
Eventually, after years of His guidance, I decided to be a true Child of God in July of 2021. For me, this meant tackling the largest elephant in the room first—fornication. I dedicated myself to being abstinent. In my heart of hearts, I knew it wasn’t good, so I didn’t allow myself to give into temptations anymore. True Children of God wouldn’t do that.
Also, for years before this, I prayed to the Lord every night to bless with me a wife. I wanted that sentimental blessing—that perfect soulmate for me. In the past, I fooled around with others because it was fun. I knew that God hadn’t put that person into my life yet. But this radical shift in my way of thinking, meant that I could no longer fool around. Not if I truly wanted to be in a place where I was ready to meet her. And this also meant keeping myself clean from those bad places on the internet, if you catch my drift.
At the time, I was a 31-year-old male, in his prime, and beyond lonely. I expected it to be hard. But it wasn’t. God saw my sincerity and took away those urges from me. He knew I didn’t want to suffer through the dating process anymore. I was over that. I didn’t need that drama anymore in my life. Afterall, it was that drama that had caused me to find God in the first place.
While in this period of abstinence, I continued praying to God to put that perfect person into my life so that I could build a family with her. A family that feared and respected the Lord, and a family that loved Him. For seven or eight months I focused on building my relationship with Him, nothing else. After this time, I had the sudden idea of writing down my dreams. It was through a series of dreams and revelations that I finally ended up understanding who I was meant to be with. God revealed her to me in May of 2022 through five different signs, which is a completely different blog post. Needless to say, what I prayed about came true. Not only did it come true, but it was the accumulated interest in investing into my spiritual bank.
You see, in prophecy, before this, God had told me he would put a relationship into my life. He just never told me when. I took that leap of faith and committed myself to following Him, knowing that He would fulfill His promise. Six months later, I was married to this woman. In and of itself, this was an act of God considering the situation we had to go through. That will be another blog post.
This confused my friends. I had literally just met this woman and then got engaged to her three months later. After another three months we were married. To them, it didn’t fit their timeline–the timeline of the world. Usually, this dictates that people must date for a year at least and then get engaged. Then perhaps they wait another year before getting married.
For me, that timeline didn’t matter.
And this is the great thing about investing in your spiritual bank. About following God’s path instead of the path the world thinks you should follow. When you can know something 100% comes from God, then what else is there to question? Nothing. If you have true faith in Him, you go ahead, just like Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son. Romans 12: 2 reflects this idea the best.
Moreover, this investment in my spiritual bank helped me with the second biggest decision of my life—who am I going to spend the rest of my life with. (The first biggest question we should be asking ourselves is whether we want to call God our God or not.) I knew after the failed relationships that I had that this was something that I wanted His help in. I wanted Him to tell me who I should marry. So I decided to build that relationship with Him first. I put Him first. And because of that faith that I had in Him, it all paid off.
Since putting him first in my life, my spiritual bank has never felt fuller. He takes care of me so well, and I owe Him all the honor and glory and praise. I hope that you also can experience such magnificence in your life, too. And so for the next part of the blog post, I want to discuss some ways in how to grow your own spiritual bank.
5 Ways to Grow Your Spiritual Bank
(1) Read the Bible Daily
Constant communication with God is a must for this investment. After all, if you only checked your investment every so often, how bad could that turn out? By constantly realigning our path with God’s, we can be certain that we are being the Christian filled with the knowledge of his perfect word. After all, “…man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matthew 4: 4). Moreover, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2nd Timothy 3:16)
(2) Pray Daily
Set aside time each morning and every night to pray to the Lord. Give him thanks for everything in your life. Ask him for what you want in life. Anything. It doesn’t matter how big or how small. Yes, God knows our hearts, yes, but he still wants to hear your voice. The most important thing is that the prayer is sincere and that is aligns with God’s will. If you pray for a new Lamborghini because you want to be cool driving to work, God isn’t probably going to listen to your prayer because materialism is a sin. However, if you need a new car because your car is broken then that is a different story. God is much more likely to hear that prayer and respond in kind.
Furthermore, don’t get discouraged if God doesn’t act immediately. Remember, we cannot expedite God’s timing, but we can continue praying and if it aligns with His will, then it will be done. Have faith in Him and take comfort in these words: “Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us” (1 John 5: 14) and “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1st Thessalonians 5:16-18). This last point is especially crucial for those lukewarm believers who don’t have complete faith in God.
(3) Talk to God Daily
Different than praying, communicate with God daily as well. Talk to him as you would a friend. Despite the horrible things David did, God showed him mercy because of the constant interaction David had with him. No matter what David was going through, he talked with God and constantly repented for his sins. Most likely, David had this in mind when when he wrote Psalm 145:18. “The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.” Again, the idea is sincerity. Don’t see talking to God as a chore but something that you enjoy doing.
(4) Abide in his word
After you grow your spiritual bank with the first three of these points, God will start to change you. This happens through the Spirit. Bible verses will stick out to you in the most opportune of moments, almost as if you had been searching for that particular verse the entire time. Your life will undergo a momentous change, and you will start to want to practice what you preach. That is abiding in his word. Following the doctrine in the Bible. That means you should turn away from all sin and approach others with love.
Paul gives a pretty detailed list of what individuals won’t inherit the kingdom of God in 1st Corinthians 6: 9-10. “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor [c]sodomites, 10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.”
(5) Bear Good fruits
It isn’t just enough to know God personally and better our lives. God also wants us to bear good fruits. This means we have a good testimony for others. It means helping friends in need, loving our neighbor like we would ourselves. Or it could mean we must shoulder responsibilities that aren’t necessarily in our job description. God has a plan for each and everyone one of us and it is to see us grow and to succeed. Nothing is greater to God than seeing one of his sons or daughters grow up to be true practitioners of the word and bear good fruits.
In his sermon on the mount, Jesus delivered the Beatitudes and in Matthew 5: 14-16 it goes, “14 You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. 16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” All of this means that we shouldn’t keep the awesomeness of God for ourselves. We must share it with others. Evangelize. He wants us to bring Him sheep into His flock.
In Conclusion
Doing these five things once isn’t enough. They must be done consistently if you want to accumulate that interest in the spiritual bank. That is why the first three of them I included the word daily. If you truly want to reap the rewards of a fellowship with God, you will need to dedicate yourself to him. After all, if you wanted a promotion at work, who would your boss give it to? The man who does the bare minimum or the man who puts in extra hours and does more than necessary. I’m guessing the latter.
If you commit yourself to growing that relationship with God; if you commit yourself to investing in your spiritual bank, the rewards you will reap are endless. You will be the seeds planted on the good soil. You will hear and abide and understand his word. And you will be those who bear fruit and produce: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. (Matthew 13)
