Spiritual Health – by Pastor Chandler

  Posted on January 10, 2017  by   1 comment

We are in the thick of it, but at least we are all in it together. It is cold season. Snot runs freely from chapped, cracked, and dried noses. Sneezes fly through the air easily working their way through the poor covering our fingers make and around the wall the crook of our elbow tries to establish. The germs are rampant and loving it. Coughing fills our homes, workplaces, and church buildings echoing from one person to the next. Throats are swollen, sore, red, and achy. Have you been tested for strep? Many have. Sleep comes with great difficulty because when we decide to rest our weary warn out bodies our sinuses decide, “Hey, this has to be the very best time to expel all that nastiness that’s collected in us all day, right?” The night is difficult and so our slumber that is meant to refresh our weakened frames becomes an exhausting endeavor to aggressively blow all the goop and gunk away.

As I write this pondering, my young children and lovely wife have been stricken with the cold plague. Poor Rinna and Salem can hardly see because their eyes are crusted shut with greenish flakes that are relentlessly caking to their eyelids. My dear wife is trying to be a caring mother to these sick children when she herself is battling the woes of the cold. Sleep escaped us all last night and so we walk around as coughing zombies trying to make it through the day.

Praise be to God, though, that with modern medicine and cold-relief practices as old as time, we have been graciously given methods for coping with the nasty sickness that so easily entangles our weak bodies. My house is filled with sleek looking humidifiers that are filling the air with the moisture we so desperately need in the midst of this dry winter. If things get too bad our children can have medicine to ease their pain and to bring them more readily back to health. We have thermometers that help us monitor the temperature of our children. This information gives us wisdom on what our children need. Daytime cold medicine relieves us adults from the onslaught of side effects brought on by the virus. Nighttime cold medicine gives us some sort of shelter as we try to gain access to the all-important sleep we need.

When we get the cold, it’s easy to tell. As I have tried to graphically depict above, signs bear witness to the invasion of a virus. The nose tells us with snot, the chest tells us with coughs and pain, the throat makes it clear as it swells, and the head proclaims it with throbbing aches.

What about our spiritual lives? What if we begin to neglect our relationship with God through our Lord Jesus Christ and so, in a sense, become spiritually sick? Are there signs for this? What can we do to find our spiritual health again?

Pause and ask yourself a couple of questions: Does the study of God’s Word seem like a chore? Do you get bored easily on Sunday mornings when the Word is taught? Do you sing the songs of the church with joy or do you open your mouth hoping no one will notice you’re just lip-syncing? Does serving others come naturally or is it something that you force upon yourself so you look like a good, healthy Christian? Do you treasure the simple gospel – Jesus took on all that we deserve to give us all that He deserved – every single day?

These questions can help us realize if we have a spiritual cold or not.

After Paul spoke to Timothy about the gospel and Timothy’s spiritual health, he wrote, “Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress. Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching” (1 Timothy 4:15-16a). Just as we keep a watch on our physical health we need to keep a consistent gauge on our spiritual health because, as the old hymn says, our hearts are prone to wander.

Do you have a spiritual cold? I have four simple suggestions. (1) Pray to God. Give thanks to God for all of the blessings He has graciously given you. Beseech Him for wisdom. Ask Him for spiritual health. (2) Open His Word with drive. Don’t simply read random passages or a short verse. Immerse yourself in His Word and study deeply the life-gushing fountain. (3) Worship God. Surrender the worship of other things and make much of God in word, deed, and thought. (4) Finally, and maybe most importantly, return to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Remind yourself of the grace of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. Look at Ephesians 2:1-10 and realize that God has saved you even when you were spiritually dead as a free gift of His loving kindness.

We may have colds, but God has given us everything we need for spiritual life. Let’s pursue relationships with God that are free of coughs, goopy noses, and headaches. Let’s follow hard after God. We’re in this together.

In Christ,
Chandler