Health

The New Year hopefully brings for you a year of change and growth.  Some people like to get the changes started with New Year’s resolutions.  Now everyone knows the top resolution pertains to health in some form.  Health has been a popular topic for my pastor these past few months.  And I am glad it has because, it has made me realize how we have confused health with fads, diets and forgotten resolutions.  But so many of us just think health has to do with the body, and what we do to it.  As Christians health has a completely different meaning for us, and most of us don’t realize that.  Merriam-Webster defines health- (as) the condition of being sound in body, mind, or spirit.  I would change the “or” between mind and spirit to “and.”  I believe that just one of these does not make a person healthy that health needs to be in all three aspects to be truly healthy.  From the perspective of a Christian, one must first be healthy in spirit and the rest will follow through Christ (John 15:5).  If you abide in Christ he will abide in you through the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is our teacher and intercessor through which we mature and grow.  Through the Spirit we find unity with one another as a body, as the church (Romans 6:13, I Corinthians 6:19, 12:18).  And in a healthy walk with God we find a healthy mind as seen in these Proverbs (Proverbs 3:8, 27:7) where the word health is related to wisdom and righteousness. How do we know that we are healthy Christians? That should be easy for all of us—through our fruit (Mathew 7:15-20).  We know the unhealthy and the healthy through the fruitlessness or fruitfulness that is visible in everyone’s life.  Only in Christ we are saved, only in Christ we are healed, and only in Christ we are ‘healthy.’