New Year’s resolutions – do you make them?
Every year millions, perhaps billions, of people all over the world resolve to make things different in the New Year. The resolutions that are made are as varied as the people making them. However, one resolution that frequently appears at the top of the list has to do with improved health.
“I want to be healthier in the coming year – to lose some weight.”
Health is a fairly significant concern for many, many people.
Recently I have had the privilege of hearing some very educated speakers on the topic of health. We tend to primarily focus on exercise when we want to address issues of health, but from what I have been hearing we need to focus more on what we put into our bodies.
Is exercise important? Yes. Is what we put into our bodies really important? Absolutely.
I am a swing and a miss on both counts: I don’t exercise regularly and I don’t fuel myself well. In fact, I was chatting with Anne just before dinner as I sat down to write this, and realized that I haven’t had anything to eat today. A caramel macchiato at 10 AM has been my only sustenance all day. And, when I do eat, it’s not necessarily the best ingredients I put in my body. Habits like that do not lead to a healthy body, soul or spirit.
I can starve my body of the nutrients it needs to be the best it can be. It’s not out of ignorance, it’s out of laziness. I know what I should eat and drink, I’m just too lazy to actually do it – I don’t care enough. That’s a bad habit that needs to change.
We can do the same thing spiritually. We can starve ourselves of the very “food and beverage” we need for life; to survive, grow and be healthy. We starve ourselves of the spiritual food we need that leads to the life we so desire.
My question to you is simple: Are you starving yourself of the spiritual food you need to be vibrant and alive? The very spiritual food you need to experience the life you are looking for from Jesus?
I have met many men who confess they feel empty; they aren’t experiencing the life Jesus promised them. There can be numerous reasons for this, but I want to look at it through the lens of personal responsibility…
What would you think of a man who was sick, losing weight and slowly fading away because he refused to eat? And, he was complaining that God didn’t seem to care about him because he keeps getting worse.
You would probably say something like, “Buddy, wack your head with a stick – you need to eat. You’re starving yourself. God hasn’t abandoned you, you have abandoned yourself – and God.”
It seems ridiculous when we look at this in the natural, but this is what we often do in the spirit. We starve ourselves of what the Lord has given us to ensure we are healthy and growing in Him. There are myriad spiritual foods the Lord has given us, but some of the basic food groups are the following:
Fellowship with God and with others.
If you feel empty, if you feel like you are starving for the life God promised you, then perhaps you are not feeding on what the Lord has given you for life.
I think there is one great impediment inhibiting us from feeding on that which the Lord has given us for life…
Pride.
We think we can do life on our own without what God has said we need for life in Him.
Are you starving yourself of the life God has for you? Are you insisting on disregarding that which God says leads to life and instead are doing your own thing?
Let’s resolve for this coming year to humble ourselves and feed on that which the Lord says leads to life – may 2014 be our healthiest year yet.
Isaiah 55:1-9 (The Message)
Seek God while he’s here to be found, pray to him while he’s close at hand. Let the wicked abandon their way of life and the evil their way of thinking. Let them come back to God, who is merciful, come back to our God, who is lavish with forgiveness.
“I don’t think the way you think. The way you work isn’t the way I work.” God’s Decree. “For as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think.”