3 Keys to Thriving in Your 20sНамуна

Take Care of Your Mind and Body

A young, healthy mind and body might be some of the easiest things in life to take for granted when you are young and healthy. When everything is working properly and nothing hurts or bends the wrong way or is the wrong color, we tend to feel no urgency to care for all of the moving parts. There will be time for that later, right? The problem is that not only does this idea not hold up practically, but the Bible teaches against living this way.

First Corinthians 6:19–20 reads, “Don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought at a price. So glorify God with your body.” In other words, these bodies don’t even belong to us. They are God’s, and He has instructed us to care for them. Now, the primary thrust of that passage is not about physical health and fitness, but about abstaining from sexual immorality. But the larger point remains: what we do with our bodies can either glorify God . . . or not.

I’m neither a personal trainer nor a nutritionist, so I’m not here to pretend to be the expert on what you should eat or how you should move your body. Entire industries exist to help guide those decisions. However, if we’re going to be good stewards of the gift of our bodies, we each have the responsibility to figure out the best way to do those things. It doesn’t mean we should all train like Cross Fitters or Olympic athletes or weigh every single bite of food we eat and treat our bodies like science experiments. But it does mean that we should avoid laziness, keep our bodies moving, and fuel ourselves with healthy nutrients.

All of our bodies are different and respond to things like food and stress differently, so the command is less about a specific list of things to do and more about understanding our own needs and limits. We must prayerfully consider how to care for ourselves so that we might use our bodies in ways that best honor our Creator. This means good rest, good fuel, and healthy, consistent movement to keep our bodies functioning well to the best of our ability.

And our minds are equally as important as our bodies. More than ever before, we face the potential to clutter our minds with an onslaught of information from thousands of sources in any given moment. Just holding our phones in our hands means we have access to literally unlimited correspondence, entertainment, and information. The social media phenomenon in particular poses a real danger to our ability to have meaningful conversations, to pay attention to more substantive sermons, to read deeper books (like the Bible), and to generally relate to others in “the real world” without awkwardness or anxiety.

Distraction throws itself at us at every turn, and if we aren’t careful, our minds can so quickly become filled with everything from trivial information to destructive misinformation, crowding out important and needed truth and Scripture.

Have you ever considered that Jesus Christ Himself needed rest? We read in Luke 5:16 that “he often withdrew to deserted places and prayed.” If the Lord of the universe needed this kind of rest for His mind, how could we possibly imagine that we are above it? We must take time to withdraw from busyness, seek moments of quiet where we are free from distraction, and refocus on prayer and communion with the Lord. Again, this can look different for every person, but it can’t be neglected if we expect to remain physically and spiritually healthy.

I once had a young man ask me how he can know if he’s getting healthy rest or just being lazy. It’s an excellent question, especially for those who tend to lean more toward laziness than production. We can easily justify laziness as rest, can’t we?

Unfortunately, I don’t have a checklist or formula for what is the perfect ratio of activity to rest, nor do I believe everyone should have the same checklist or formula even if a good one did exist. My answer then is what I still believe to be true. The only way to know for sure if you are in the “healthy zone” is through prayer and ongoing communion with the One who created your body. If you worry that you are being lazy, ask the Lord to convict you in this area. If you worry that you’re never sitting still or getting enough rest, ask the Lord to convict you of that. He will.

The bottom line is that our bodies and minds are our primary tools for any form of ministry we can hope to carry out in this life, so we must care for them to keep them fit for ministry. You don’t need to have a fitness plan that looks anything like anyone else you know, but you do need to steward the body the Lord has given you in healthy ways if you are to remain obedient to whatever calling He has on your life. As much as you can, stay active, fuel your body well, renew your mind, and get some rest. And most of all, keep an ongoing conversation underway with the Lord so that you can ask Him to help guide you in these efforts.