The Spiritual Self Assessment Interview

By John Wesley Knight III

The purpose of The Spiritual Self-Assessment Interview is for individuals to take a deeper look at their spiritual relationship with God and evaluate themselves on how well they are living out what they profess.

This first-of-its-kind book will encourage you and provide you with a tool to help measure areas that can be improved upon. It will also give you a sense of accomplishment as you will vividly see areas where you have done well.

This is a fresh perspective to challenge the way we think in our current culture. We are evaluated at our place of work and given a ninety-day review, a midyear review, and an annual review. We then strive to do our very best to improve in areas where we fall short for our employer. If we are willing to challenge ourselves to do better due to the critique of man, how much more should we be willing to do whatever it takes to improve ourselves for our God?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886442168

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Study Questions

Bibliography

About the Author

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The Spiritual Self Assessment Interview

John Wesley Knight III

ISBN 979-8-88644-215-1 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88644-216-8 (Digital)

Copyright © 2023 John Wesley Knight III

All rights reserved

Second Edition

Note: All Scripture references are taken from the King James Version of the Holy Bible unless otherwise stated.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

Acknowledgments

This book is dedicated to my loving wife, Tonya, and our four children: Trinite, Natae, Alex, and Jayda. Thank you for your inspiration and prayers. You encourage me every day to continue doing the Lord's work. Tonya, thank you for your unwavering support and for motivating me to live up to the nickname you gave me of Superman. Love you.

I would also like to thank my mother, Gladys Knight, for being a praying mother and for wanting to see me succeed in the things of God. Keep singing, for your voice penetrates the hearts of everyone.

I would like to thank my father for helping to shape my character. Your approach in teaching me the natural and spiritual aspects of life has proven to be invaluable.

I would like to thank my siblings: Lisa, Zenia, and Kenyae. Thank you for all of your support and prayers; I could not accomplish any of my goals without you.

To my church family (Prominence Ministries), thank you for allowing me to walk with you; it is truly an honor that you allow me to see behind the curtains of your life.

My sincere gratitude to the men of God who support me in all of my endeavors: Charles Summers, Rick Frazier, Pastor Kelvin Smith, Minister Mark Gilewicz, Brother Richard DePrima, Brother Paul Holmes, Brother Reginald Tolbert, and Minister Jamie Brown.

Last but not least, this book is dedicated to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, without whom I am nothing. It is in You that I live, move, and have my being. Thank You for loving me and encouraging me to embrace the person You created me to be.

DO YOU KNOW YOUR SPIRITUAL I.Q.?

I.Q. E.Q. S.Q

Spiritual quotient (SQ) is a measure that looks at a person's spiritual acumen; it is as important as intelligence quotient (IQ) and emotional quotient (EQ). While IQ looks at cognitive intelligence, EQ looks at emotional power of a person and spiritual quotient (SQ) looks at spiritual power of a person.

If I were to ask you to explain your understanding of the letters I.Q. I am confident that you would be able to give me the correct answer or at least have an idea of its meaning. And if I asked you to share your thoughts and understanding of the letters E.Q. You might stall for a moment however, I do believe you would answer this question correctly as well. The reason being is our society has placed emphasis on the letters I.Q. which is your intelligence quotient or that which represents your intelligence level. In basic terms your I.Q. is derived from several standardized test that is designed to assess human intelligence based on the total score. So then, E.Q. which represents emotional quotient or emotional intelligence helps you to understand your own emotional capability and how this can be utilized in dealing with various situations and people. So we have I.Q. and E.Q. But what about S.Q.?

S.Q. which is a person's spiritual quotient is not as commonly known. However is one of the most important quotients to measure? Spiritual quotient or Spiritual Intelligence looks at a person's spiritual acumen or spiritual aptitude. Unlike the I.Q. which looks at cognitive intelligence or E.Q. which looks at emotional power.

Once you delve into spiritual intelligence your life will never be the same. Your outlook on life will forever change and you will become aware of the spiritual realm in ways you did not think possible.

So I am inviting you to explore the spiritual aspect of life in a way that you might not have in the past. And actually revisit your own spiritual thoughts as it relates to spiritual intelligence in your own private space.

Chapter 1

The Spiritual Self-Assessment Interview

Before you begin reading The Spiritual Self-Assessment Interview, I would like to make a disclaimer: This book was written with the thought of helping you assess where you are as a believer, and then, enable you to take a look at the impact you've had as a believer, and lastly, allow you to assess what you say you believe as a believer.

My hope is that after you read this book and take the spiritual self-assessment interview, you will have clear insight into these areas concerning yourself. I like to call this a time of crystallized insight into your own spiritual life.

Since we are focusing in on the word assessment, I want to make sure we all begin with a uniform understanding of the word, which you will see throughout this book. The word assessment refers to the evaluation or estimation of the nature, quality, or ability of someone or something.

Whenever you are evaluated by someone, their critique of you should never be a surprise. The reason others' evaluation should come as no surprise to you is because after reading this book, you will have thoroughly evaluated yourself, so their words will not be news to you.

The Spiritual Self-Assessment Interview is quite unique as the focus is on spiritual growth and assessing if growth is actually taking place in the life of a believer.

Each of us live by a certain belief system, whether we realize it or not. We have thoughts concerning life, and those thoughts guide us in our thinking. It would be safe to say that how we think is based upon what we believe, and what we believe is manifest in how we live our lives.

So, in essence, everyone believes in something. I like to refer to it as our belief code. When we acknowledge to ourselves that we believe in something, the next step is to evaluate what we say we believe. If we say that we believe in God and have a relationship with Him, how are we evaluating that relationship, and how do we gauge if there has been spiritual growth in our lives?

So whether you are a new believer or someone who has known the Lord for many years, this is a wonderful time to evaluate your spiritual growth.

Have you given real thought to what you believe? How have you measured your growth spiritually? I want to make sure that you are using Jesus and what He has spoken to us through His words as the standard for spiritual growth.

When Jesus was in the wilderness and had fasted forty days and forty nights, He was hungry, and the Bible says, The tempter came and said to him, if thou be the son of God command that these stone be made bread. But He answered and said, It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God (Matthew 4:2–4 KJV).

If we dissect Jesus's response to the devil, He was conveying a very powerful message: Man shall not live by bread alone, which lets us know that we will need natural food as a source of nourishment for our bodies, but that natural food alone will not be enough to nourish our spirit man.

We will also need spiritual food, specifically the word of God, to feed our spirit. It is then important to know every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God since we are living by His words. Now that we understand we are living by the words God has spoken, it would benefit us greatly to study and know His words.

We now have the Bible in many forms. You can choose multiple ways to study the Word of God:

The Bible is available on cassette;

The Bible is available on CD;

The Bible is available on DVD;

The Bible is available on Kindle;

The Bible app is available on our cell phones;

The Bible is on the Internet;

The Bible can be read the ole-fashioned way—reading in print.

Chapter 2

Prerequisite

Whichever way you choose to study the word of God is up to you. But know the most important thing is that you study the Word of God.

Before we go any further, I want us to look at the backdrop story of Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:1–22).

Christianity is unique in that by way of the fall of man (Adam and Eve), we met the preexisting condition for Jesus to come and see about us. He came into the world to save sinners, to call sinners to repentance, and to seek and save the lost. We fit every category as a result of our ancestors. This is why the word prerequisite is an interesting word to me. As you know, a prerequisite is a required prior condition for something else to happen. Well, the required prior condition was that we needed to be sinners in order for something else to happen. Well, we were sinners, and now something else would happen. Jesus, who is the Son of God, would come into the world to save sinners. He would be the only way we could restore our broken relationship with God. One of the many attributes I love about Jesus is that He brings resolution to any problem we have or will ever face. We now have a Savior—Jesus Christ. If there is a required prior condition to becoming a Christian or believer, you have already met that condition: You have to be a sinner.

The Bible says, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16).

God not only loves you, He so loves you that He gave His Son, His only Son, in hopes that you and I would believe and accept Him so that we would not perish but would have everlasting life.

In Luke 7:36–50, Jesus was invited by a Pharisee to eat in his home. A woman who was a sinner heard about this and came to see Jesus with an alabaster box of ointment. She stood at the feet of Jesus weeping, then she began to wash His feet with her tears, wiped them with the hairs of her head, and kissed His feet while anointing them with the ointment.

The Pharisee invited Jesus in to have a meal and seemingly to draw close to Him. However, it's possible that the Pharisee was drawing close to Him to find a flaw, while the woman was drawing close to