Suggestions for sharing the faith and the struggle

Invitation to Test your Moral and Spiritual Character

You are invited to look at yourself in a new way, to see how healthy you are as a person, according to the 3000-year-old wisdom of the Bible.  The Character Assessment Scale - mini (CASm) is a free, secure, anonymous online test that measures beliefs and habits relating to moral character as defined in the Bible – fruits of the spirit and fruits of the flesh.  To keep it free and secure, it is published by the 501(c)3 Wellness Education for Living and Loving, WELL Inc.  Your results are sent instantly to the email address you give, and after that, to save your time and anonymity, no more emails will be sent.

Scripture offers several major guides to how we should believe and conduct ourselves, including Abraham’s first covenant in Genesis 12, the ten commandments, the book of Proverbs, Jesus’ sermon on the mount, and Jesus’ two great commandments.  In all these places, the Bible tells us that these guidelines are given for our well-being and for others, so that we’d live long, healthy, and fruitful lives.  Taken together, they provide a model of moral character, a Biblical guide to the good life.

In these passages, the interplay of spirit and flesh portrays the forces of life and death as they act upon human lives and groups.  This dynamic model was given to us when King Solomon asked for and received wisdom (I Kings 3).  Healers, mystics, and leaders from all over the western world visited with Solomon in Jerusalem, and took these teachings back home.  His hospitality and superior wisdom (I Kings 4: 29-34) made Jerusalem the world’s first international learning center, and these same standards for the fruits of the flesh and the spirit are still seen in all three major religions of the Western world.    

Because the CASm is so short (only four items per scale), you 27 scores ranging from 1 through 9 merely give a very rough estimate of how many people out of 10 would likely have less of this trait than you.  The scales measure what the Bible teaches will bring us life over death, wisdom over foolishness in our lives.  The CASm just takes 15 minutes to complete, and immediately gives you two pages of emailed feedback.  If you’re ready to go ahead and take the test without knowing more about it, skip to the last two lines of this page.  But if you want to know a little more, just keep reading this page.  To learn a lot more, you can go to mynewlife.com/about-the-cas.   

Your test will measure nine soul foods we are all made to give, receive, and long for:  TRUTH, PEACE, HONOR, LOVE, GRACE, LOVEMAKING, WEALTH, PURPOSE, and physical HEALTH.  Life-giving fruits of the spirit all come from the indwelling and outpouring spirit of our loving God.  Believing this, we find that the more we give, the more we can give, to others, and also to ourselves as caretakers.  By contrast, life-draining fruits of the flesh all come from human beings, as self-centered habits of draining emptiness.  They include the seven deadly sins, plus fearfulness and dishonesty.  Seeing life this way, the more we try to get, and the more we do get, the more we feel we need to get. 

Now, to take a closer look at yourself along these lines, the CAS feedback will help you

• see the highest scores of your fruits of the spirit and fruits of the flesh, compared to other Christians;
• see how all these fruits are seen as beliefs and habits that be changed by faith and works; 
• examine both what you take in and put out of all nine issues, in private, at home, and out in public; and
• use our 27 Learning Tools, one of each for the nine soul foods:   Devotional Guides each explaining 20+ Bible passages, Life Lessons from psychology, and Parenting Tips for raising healthy children.

For personal growth and healing, take the test at mynewlife.com/cas ,

and get a personal health check-up that is free, anonymous, and emailed to you immediately!

Starting a Good Life Group

Living the Christian life requires love, acceptance, forgiveness, role models, encouragement, and education that come from sharing our lives with others.  You can make all these experiences part of a group that you can start yourself.  Below are some suggestions for putting a group together.  Feel free to add your own ideas to make this group comfortable for those you invite. 

1. Pick a time and place for the group, explaining that those who come to the first meeting will decide where and when the group will meet after that.
2. Describe what refreshments if any will be served.  Think about what might attract the most people, and bother the least.  
3. List which people you want to invite.  Consider if there is anyone on this list you might want to approach as a leader or coleader for the group.
4. Decide on a time frame to suggest for the meetings, usually 75–90 minutes.  For an agenda, outline how you think that time might best be spent.  Open and close with prayer by different people.  The most important part would be each person sharing how they have done since the last meeting relating to the materials assigned for study, or to their own goals. 
5. Choose a curriculum or a format.  Will this be asupport group?  study group?  accountability group?  discussion group?   You could ask everyone to take the CAS between the first and second meetings.  You could use the Learning Tools found at mynewlife.com, or the blog articles and podcasts there, both entitled Brain Food for the Good Life.
6. Guidelines for the sharing:  To keep the discussion respectful and kind yet honest, here are some recommended guidelines:
   1. Give no advice to others, unless it is asked for
   1. Keep your sharing brief, like around 30 seconds usually, and most always less than two or three minutes.
   1. Don’t interrupt, or talk over others when they are sharing.
7.  Select a chairperson or moderator for the group, perhaps a rotating responsibility, to remind group members about these guidelines, and how best to share for the benefit of all concerned.  That person is prepared to stimulate discussion if needed with a few of their own experiences and questions.
8.  Don’t confess juicy specifics in your behavior, or other people’s. Protect the privacy of other people included.  Leave out details like exactly where, when, who was there, etc.   Just say what types of things you saw and heard, what you did and said, what you believe about it, what was in your heart at the time, and what remains in your heart now.  E.g., “I’ve been having some financial insecurity.  I made some foolish and selfish purchases, and then lied about them.  When my partner found out, I felt afraid and ashamed, and I still do.”  If people don’t mention specific things that were said or done, no one will be tempted to gossip, because what was confessed was vague enough it could have been done or experienced by most anyone.
9. It is recommended that at every group, members share with each other one of their growing edges, issues/needs (usually one of the nine) where they sense that their spirit and flesh might avoid communicating, be stuck, or be actively pulling in opposite directions.  They might also want to start with a knowing edge, an issue where their flesh and spirit arecommunicating and cooperating better.
10.   The group’s name should suggest their mission (and how they pursue it in group).  The one who first organizes the group can choose its initial name and mission, or layout a few possible names and missions to be shaped and confirmed by inspired group consensus at the first meeting.  One group calls itself “The Fruit Loop.”
11.   Invite people with a live 2-way personal contact (phone call, meeting, etc.).  If you want the group to reach wider more than deeper, after the first meeting, they can invite their own people.  This allows the group to grow until logistics require dividing in half.  Make sure the group remains open and not closed to newcomers and drop-ins who haven’t been pre-approved.