What strategies do you use to maintain your health and well-being?
Health and well being is so much more than physical health of watching what we eat or drink. Or exercisingand sleep are crucial though they are crucial. We tend to forget about our mental and emotional well-being which include stress management and positive thinking as well as social and emotional health.
My strategies include walking, trying to eat healthy as well as managing my stress and using the power of positive thinking, plus making sure I have a supportive relationships with friends and family but also setting boundaries and spending time with people who uplift me instead of bring me down.
All of these things are connected. If one is out of balance our health and well being can be shifted.
Life can be pretty crummy at times. It’s easy the think that we are going to be bomb at going straight to God when we are struggling. Its down downright hard sometimes to let God have control. Sometimes I think “I got this one, God,” when that cannot be further from the truth. When the challanges are not deep or there were not piling on top. I could easily think I’m a pro at this. Then I realize no matter what its easy no matter what its best to go to God.
My day started a little crazy I have been getting migraines again after 4 days I was ready to get back to life after resting up and getting rid of it. I managed to be late for a Bible study, get a nail in my tire, and spill a big cup of iced tea on me all in about 5 minutes. I made an appointment to get my tire fixed which took 2 hours, evidently having an appointment didn’t mean a thing. I was frustrated because of a crappy day. All because I didn’t stop and let God take control.
There is no denying that I didn’t need to rush into things with no guidance. I’ve done this before and it never works out. I wonder when I am going to learn. Proverbs 3:5 is a scripture I need to write on the tablet of my heart and remember, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.” Then maybe my life would be smooth sailing. After all, giving up control to God would be so much easier when He can run my life the way I desire Him to.
Our lives can become a whole lot better when we say, “I’m going to run to you with all my troubles because I know you can sort things out,”
For me, it’s not that I don’t have faith or trust God with my life. It’s because I get in too big of a hurry to stop and ask Him to help me or thinking I have something under control when I clearly don’t.
It’s about recognizing I will never know Him fully, but choosing to grow deeper in my relationship with Him enough to let go when things begin to get crummy. And trusting that He will fix it, if I listen and obey.
If I could change modern day society I would change the hate and greed that has taken over society. I think they are the biggest challenges we face. I know that it seem impossible, and there is definitely no quick fix.
This change would have to begin on multiple levels, personal, cultural, institutional, and systemic.
Hate and greed begin in the human heart. Hate and greed have to be fed. We would need to stop feeding it. Changing the narrative in media and culture. And reform the systems that reward greed and division which begins with economic reform, political accountability and the big media responsibility. All while investing in communities and connection.
I for one am tired of the governmental experiment that is being used against us and had been used against for many years.
The Bible tells us grace is free. If grace is free, shouldn’t holiness be free also? Why should I have to exert effort to live a disciplined, righteous life? Why won’t God just give me sinless behavior, with no self-control required?
The problem is passive transformation. There are some things we struggle with that we will never be able to have self-control over. We can only surrender it to God. At least not in this life.
The reason Reality is we were not put on this earth to be passive. The key to overcoming is to rise above the temptation we have no self-control over. Not struggle or resist but to let go and give it to God. Maybe if we’re struggling it is proof that we’re doing something wrong, or we are trying too hard.
We all tend to look for a short cut of a cheat sheet, especially when it comes to doing the hard things. I would love to progress in my life without exerting any effort. Throw up my feet, put on the music, and let the changing begin. “Jesus take the wheel.”
Sadly, this is not how it works. The Bible gives us exhortations to resist temptation, die to sin, deny self, fight the good fight, and strive for godliness. In the Greek translation the meaning of strive is purposeful struggle.
In a Billy Graham sermon in 1957, he likened a believer to a boxer who masters his own body and practices self-restraint. All through the New Testament we can read words that describes what a believer’s life should be like, fight, wrestle, run, work, suffer, endure, resist, agonize, and persevere. This doesn’t sound like being passive to me. They describe a way to live a disciplined life.
So many churches equate spirituality with passivity. But that is not Biblical. Many people will have to reset their expectations. Being a follower of Jesus isn’t a pleasure cruise toward holiness. It takes pushing our bodies and learning that progress can feel like pain.
Our reluctance can be a smokescreen, a way of avoiding the humbling, hard work of seeking to change.
Holiness encompasses both Justification which is legal standing to being declared righteous and sanctification which is practical outward of that righteousness in daily life.
Justification is God’s declaration that believers are righteous through faith in Jesus’s atoning sacrifice. And sanctification is the ongoing process of being transformed into holiness.
Holiness is being set apart for God’s purposes and reflecting His character. It’s important to understand that holiness is not just a one-time event but a lifelong journey of growth and transformation,
We want to say we are saved by grace and not by anything we’ve done. So its easy to want to carry this truth over and apply it to sanctification. When we do that, we assume sanctification should happen like salvation: instantaneously and without effort. But in our attempt to protect one biblical truth, we distort another.
We can end up believing sanctification is passive in which God transforms us unilaterally. And it ends up hampering our spiritual progress. We become stalled out circa simple lack of effort. It becomes something Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace,” an unbiblical view of the gospel that embraces Jesus’s message but refuses the hard work of following Him. This devalues grace and ends up crippling our spiritual growth. But by striving for holiness, we honor the gift of grace.
What goes on between our ears causes us more problems than we sometimes realize. Too often we let our thoughts get out of control. We fuel a wildfire of fear and anxiety and burn up our lives in the process.
If we don’t learn how to control our thoughts, we end up in a desolate mental wasteland without hope. We also end up on an emotional roller coaster that we don’t need to be riding.
One of the ways our thoughts get out of control is by believing the lies Satan tells us. They can sneak into our thoughts in the way we talk to ourselves, or believe words someone else says to us. It’s easy for our perspective to get colored by the false things we believe, they hold us back and keep us bound.
The lies we believe steal our joy no matter what situation we find ourselves in. My circumstances began when I was a child. The lies were drilled into my brain daily. I was trained to believe the lies, because that’s all I knew. Lies leave us feeling insecure and defeated, and unable to carry out our purpose.
The reality is that we can only stop listening to the lies when we replace them with the truth -God’s truth.
It takes work. I had to retrain my brain to get where I am today.
The lie: I will never be good enough had to be replaced with I am good enough because the Holy Spirit empowers me. “I am God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which prepared beforehand that I should walk I them” (Ephesians 2:10.
The lie: I am worthless had to be replaced with I am God’s treasured possession. “The Lord has chosen you to be His treasured possession” (Deuteronomy 14:2).
The lie: I am ugly inside and outside had to replaced with I am God’s masterpiece. For I am God’s masterpiece. He has created me anew in Christ Jesus, so I can do the good things He planned for me long ago” (Ephesians 2:10 NIV).
The lie: Everyone will reject me had to be replaced with I have been chosen. “He chose me before the creation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4).
The lie: I will never be happy had to be replaced with my joy comes from the Lord. “The Lord has done great things for me and I am filled with joy” (Psalm 126:3). “The joy of the Lord is my strength” (Nehemiah 8:10).
Every time a lie would come into my mind I learned to replace it with God’s truth. I would write it down where I could see it and learn it. After a while, I began to reframe my mindset and my life began to change for the better.
While Satan cannot read our thoughts before we have them, he can use his knowledge of human nature, and our past behaviors to suggest thoughts and influence our decisions. He can exploit our weaknesses and insecurities or sinful tendencies to steer us toward choices that align with his desires rather than God’s.
We can protect ourselves from Satan’s influence by strengthening our faith and learning God’s promises in His Word.
I tend to listen to worship music at work and home. Pretty much I listen to music every where I go when given the chance.
It keeps me motivated and creates a positive and uplifting environment for me as I work. It reminds to who I am truly working for -God. If my work and my attitude does not please Him I definitely need to up my game and do better.
It boosts my attitude and my morale during the day.
I believe God has a plan for each of our lives, a divine destiny He wants us to reach. But, our journey to this destiny is rarely a straight path. It’s like a drive with a destination in mind, we sometimes encounter detours that slow us down or redirect us. They can be God’s way of preparing us for the destiny He has for us.
We see this in the Bible when Moses spent 40 years in the wilderness. It was a detour that equipped him for the monumental task of leading the Israelites out of Egypt, or Paul on his three-year detour in the desert, where God prepared him for his mission. They were detours that were part of God’s plan.
Just like Moses and Paul, our detours are designed to develop and refine our character, and to equip us with the skills and faith needed for our ultimate purpose. While we may be eager to reach our destination, it’s crucial to embrace these detours. We need to trust that God is at work in our lives to shape us for our destiny He has prepared.
These are opportunities for growth and development that allow God to refine our character and equip us for the future.
The accounts of Moses, and Paul are a few examples that demonstrate that detours are a common part of the spiritual journey. They are essential for our preparation for ultimate success.
The detours in our lives may seem like delays when we experience them they are part of God’s perfect timing. Trusting Him requires faith and patience, knowing that He is working all things together for our good and for His glory (Romans 8:28).
Detours teach us patience, perseverance, and reliance on Him. Qualities that are essential for fulfilling our purpose in life.
Embracing this journey, including the detours is crucial for our spiritual growth. By accepting and learning from these experiences, we can align ourselves with God’s plan and prepare ourselves for our destiny God has in store for us.
In the Bible, we see that God we know has a pattern of disrupting the lives and activities of sinful people. He disrupted Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden after they sinned in Genesis 3:1-4. He quarantined Noah and his family in the Ark and then disrupted the world by sending a universal flood in Genesis 3:1-24. He confused the language of those building the Tower of Babel, disrupting them and scattering them geographically. He disrupted Egypt by sending them severe plagues, the destroyed the nation in Exodus 5:1-14. There are many more.
God’s greatest disruption so far happened when He sent His own Son into a hostile world, into Satan’s hostile kingdom of darkness, to be the light of the world and go provide salvation to those enslaved by sin in John 1:5-9, 3:19-21, Galatians 51. Jesus declared “I am the light of the world, he who follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” -John 8:12.
When Jesus shared His divine viewpoint with others, on several occasions disruptions happened because of Him (John 7:43, 9:16, 10:19). As a result of His teachings we learn that many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him (John 6:66).
Jesus said Luke 12:51 “Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division.” When Jesus told His apostles to go into the world, they obeyed His words and became men who upset the world (Acts 17:6). Followers are called to “be diligent to preserve unity of the Spirit in the bond if peace.” but never at the price of God’s will or at the price of His truth.
We need to be the lights of the world, and this means learning God’s Word and interjecting His truth in daily discussions and activities. We are not supposed to be neutral. I love what Jesus tells us in Luke 10:5. “Into whatever house you enter, first say, peace be on this house. If the son of peace is there, your peace will rest on him, but if not, it will return to you.”
Those of us who walk with God, and can teach His Word will disrupt Satan’s plan in the world. There will be people who do not want to hear the truth. In Luke 9:5 Jesus tells us, “As many as font receive you, when you depart from the city, shake off even the dust from your feet for testimony against them.” To me this means don’t let their not listening to you affect my faith in God.
In the end, God will cause more disruptions when He removes true followers of Jesus. The great judgments upon the earth will happen, the seven seals torn. The final judgment will come.
There will be no further disruptions in our eternal state. Until then I will praise God for His disruptions.
From Pity to Praise 