Spiritual Health Is Similar In Some Respects to Physical Health

A few years ago I had a life-changing experience. I was an average middle aged man, not exercising or eating well. I had gained weight and lost muscle. Then I met Brian, a friend from church who was trained and educated in health and fitness. I was trying to lose weight and get healthy but without success. Brian patiently explained what I needed to do based upon scientific study and experience. I listened and read up on what he told me. I decided to follow his advice and am grateful every day that I did. Although he has a unique approach, there was no mystery in what Brian taught me. I had two options. I could continue to live ignoring exercise and healthy eating or change. My change in thinking and behavior enabled me to get and now stay healthy for ten years. What happened to me physically is similar to what can happen to us spiritually. Unless we’re careful, over time it’s easy to become spiritually unhealthy. We fill our minds with an unhealthy diet of worldliness from TV, movies, social media and the internet. Our spiritual diets don’t include the milk or meat of God’s Word. Also, we don’t exercise our spiritual muscles and they get weak.

Spiritual Health Check-up

So how is your spiritual health? Let’s do a spiritual health check-up on ourselves and see how we’re doing.

• How’s your spiritual temperature? Are you spiritually hot, lukewarm or cold? Are you interested in spiritual matters, don’t care or not interested? Revelation 3:14-17
• How is your spiritual appetite? Do you crave spending time with God and hearing from Him? 1 Peter 2:2-3
• How are your spiritual muscles? Are you spiritually weak and surprised that trials knock you down and discourage you? 1 Peter 4:12
• How strong is your faith? Are you tossed around like a wave of the sea when your faith is challenged? James 1:6
• How well can you defend yourself from spiritual attacks? Do you stand firm or give up and give in? Ephesians 6:13
• Are you exercising your faith in God regularly? When was the last time you trusted God for something? 2 Peter 3:18

Two Options For Spiritual Health

1. We can pretend it doesn’t matter that we’re filling our souls with junk and not growing in faith.
2. We can decide our spiritual health is important and we can do something about it.

It’s clear what we need to do. No one can do it for you. It begins with changing how you think. In the next few posts we’ll be talking about what it means to be spiritually healthy. Begin today by taking in some spiritual food by reading the Word. [Tweet "We have only two options for spiritual health, ignore it or make it a priority."] I’d love to hear from you. Please leave comments and questions below.