Five Days to a Healthier Spiritual Lifeናሙና

Three Spiritual Disciplines to Get Healthier

How do I become who God has made me to be? How do I ensure that tomorrow’s “me” is spiritually healthier than today’s?

Although the answer is not easy, it is simple: you become a healthier, truer, and more Christian by not only understanding what a healthy life with God is but by disciplining yourself in three crucial areas to get there.

• Your attention—the most precious commodity you have. Who you are today is built on where your attention went yesterday. If you want a future self that is healthier in Christ than you are today, disciplining your attention is non-negotiable.
• Your emotions—God created emotions, and Jesus experienced and stewarded every emotion perfectly in the flesh. He showed us how to manage, and not be managed by, emotions. If you discipline yourself to give your emotional life to God regularly as Jesus did, the you of tomorrow will be more like Christ.
• Your limits—We have a Creator, and we are not that Creator, yet often, we view our limits as obstacles instead of mercies. A life of self-sufficiency is a repeated declaration of independence from God, and this is not the call of the Christian. If you want to get healthier as a Christian, you’ll need to get disciplined in how you embrace the boundaries of your creaturehood. [1]

These three categories—attention, emotions, and limits—are purposefully broad. Becoming disciplined in these areas is a starting point for training in godliness. These disciplines orient us first to God, then to ourselves, and finally outward to others. The order is important here. Plenty of best-selling advice for the good life misses the first and third steps, directing you toward yourself—and yourself only—as the origin and object of change.

God knows what we need, and He has provided for us in Jesus. Through the Bible, God invites you to an eternal quality of life, the life you are designed to live. He invites you to know, love, trust, and obey Jesus, to be renewed in the image of your Maker. No hidden agenda, no scam, and no other shoe waiting to drop. You can trust God for now and for who He has called you to become.

Overcoming Obstacles to Growth in Christ

Many Christians assume that because we have agreed to the basic tenets of Christianity, our obstacles are dead and gone. But here’s the truth: we have just as many obstacles. Perhaps they aren’t obstacles to surrendering to God, but there are plenty of obstacles to growing in Him.

I believe the single most effective weapon against our joy in Christ and becoming who we are made to be is the lie that God is not who He says He is, and you can’t trust Him. But if we take God at His Word, not our own, we hear a different reality. If we get this right, it will change our lives.

In John 15, Jesus tells His disciples: “As the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. Remain in my love” (v. 9). God does not love like we do. His love is better than ours and transforms us to be loved by Him and to love like Him. Christian, we have moved not just from death to life, but God has reconciled us in love—from slave to sin to child of God. And you can enjoy a thriving life in Him.

[1] Klyne R. Snodgrass, Who God Says You Are: A Christian Understanding of Identity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 18.