How to Stay Spiritually Healthy

I've noticed that I don't think about how healthy I am until I stop being healthy—I only think about wellness if I'm sick. Which gets annoying, because then I'm hardly ever grateful for the blessing of health that God has given me. 

It also has the side effect of making me never think about how healthy I'm behaving. Which is also a problem, because then I don't eat good things or get enough sleep or exercise, and then I start to feel pretty miserable. 

I wonder if we do the same things with our spiritual lives as well. Do we try to keep our souls in shape? What does that even look like? 

Staying spiritually healthy is equally as important as staying physically healthy, and it's a responsibility that we often overlook. 

 

Monitor your diet

I'm sure we're all familiar with a famous novelist's words on the subject of food: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that if a man eats exclusively Kraft macaroni and honeybuns, and drinks only Red Bull Energy drinks, that man will likely not have the most pleasant of existences."

All jokes aside, it's true. You are what you eat, and if what you eat is mostly high fructose corn syrup, your stomach is not going to be very happy with you. 

How about in our spiritual walk, though? Well, our spiritual "food" is going to be the teaching we're given. It's something we take in, and it nourishes and sustains us. 

Spending regular time in God's word is going to make us more spiritually healthy. If you don't eat every day (or at LEAST every week) you're probably not going to live very long, right? Why should we neglect our spiritual food as well? 

I've noticed that on days when I don't read my Bible, I tend to be more irritable, less inclined to patience, and just a whole lot less loving. Funnily enough, those are also common symptoms of being "hangry," so I wonder if being hangry for the Gospel is a thing. If it is, shouldn't we be more motivated to spend time in the Word? We should hunger and thirst for righteousness—the Bible's where we get that. 

This also applies to church teaching, and it's where the second part of "healthy eating" comes in. You've got to exercise discernment when it comes to what you consume—because after all, not all doctrines are created equal. 

What if you're sitting in church, and what the pastor is saying contradicts clear Biblical teaching? It might be a sign that the church isn't a true one, and that accepting the sermon as infallible truth will do you harm. 

Just because someone is claiming that an idea is true doesn't mean that it is. After all, McDonalds would love for you to believe that their burgers have 30% less fat than Wendy's across the road, because whether or not that's true, it'll get you inside their restaurants. 

There are false teachers in this world. Don't listen to them. Pray, and know that God is the highest authority—and his Word is perfectly true.  

 

Exercise

If you eat the best diet in the world, not exceeding your daily calorie intake and checking off all the boxes for Vitamins A, B, C, and Q, you would still be pretty unhealthy if all you did was sit in front of the TV screen all day. 

No matter how good the teaching you hear, it won't make one speck of difference if you don't do anything about it. Didn't Jesus say so? "Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock." (Matthew 7:24)

It's not good enough to hear and read the words of truth. That's not real spiritual health. Instead, those words have to make a difference in your life—make you do something that you couldn't do by yourself. 

What if you shared the Gospel with someone? That gets you outside your comfort zone. Much like the muscle burn that comes with pushups. 

Exercising your spiritual disciplines is necessary for keeping yourself in good shape. It'll make you stronger, and push the limits of what's comfortable so much that you can do great things for Christ. 

If you don't want your muscles to atrophy so much that you begin to resemble one of the people from WALL-E, then you'd better start exercising them. Start small—reaching out to somebody you think needs a friend, or attending a Bible study when you'd rather be watching Netflix. It's these little things that are going to build up over time. They'll make a real difference. 

 

Staying physically healthy makes you feel better. It gives you more energy, and overall, it improves your mood. 

Spiritual health has even better benefits; it prepares you for a lifetime of eternal bliss, and it enables you to live in the imperfect and broken world that humans inhabit. 

Isn't that worth a little muscle burn?