Spiritual Health Habits

October 10 2011Not everybody is blessed with great physical health, or even mental health. My children seem to have inherited vastly different immune systems. One has diabetes, another has scoliosis, and several battle with allergies. My own family background is loaded with heart disease and mental illness, and these too seem to have been randomly distributed among my brothers and me.Now I certainly did not have anything to do with what I did or did not inherit as to my physical constitution and health, nor do I know what illnesses and accidents the future holds. But I do know that I can chose to live as healthy as I can with what I have been given and what is available to me ( I wonder how health care costs would be affected if the vast majority of us would embrace healthy habits?). For instance I could take up smoking and vastly increase my already high chances for heart problems, as well as a plethora of other ailments such as cancer and emphysema. I also could quit exercising, or stop taking an aspirin a day. I coulddecide to guzzle more soft-drinks, chew, overdo alcohol, and surrender myself to a chunk food diet. Doing any or all of these will affect my health guaranteed, and whatever negatives I have inherited as to my health will be magnified. Conversely I can decide to make healthy choices, be disciplined as to what I put into my body and as to what I do and don’t do and thus improve my health, besides increasing the chances that Susie, besides being my wife, won’t have to be nurse as well. And since God has given you and me both just one body we can serve him more effectively if we take care of it. Of course we can become so obsessed with our health that we worship at the altar of health and youth. God’s Word (the Bible) reminds us that, “Physical training is good, but training for godliness is much better, promising benefits in this life and in the life to come” 1 Timothy 4:8 (NLT). In other words, physical/mental health is important, but never as much as spiritual health.Spiritual health is as impacted as physical health by good habits and taking advantage of what is available. Jesus said a regular intake of God’s Word is as important as food from the refrigerator (Matthew 4:4), without it we will be weak and wide open to spiritual infection. We need the fellowship of, the regular getting together with other believers (Hebrews 10:24-25) to ward of discouragement and inactivity. We need God’s wisdom to fight diseases of the mouth as well as the demonic (James 3). We need to be engaged in doing God’s work together, like a body, if we want to be useful and spiritually vital (1 Corinthians 12). We need to pray if we want to know and do God’s will, not worry, stay humble, have endurance, and be focused on what counts (Matthew 6:9-13). My hope and prayer is that you will commit yourself with me to the habits and practices that restore, improve, and maintain spiritual health/godliness.To God be all glory, love you Pastor Hans1