You might well be aware of the verse in the Bible where Jesus teaches his disciples not to worry because God will provide.
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.“ Matthew 6:25-34
When you read this scripture what do you take from it? Specifically, why should you be able to not worry? Finish this sentence – “I don’t have to worry because….”
This passage in Matthew was the focus of a recent Bible study I attend. What came to me clearly was the significance of what Jesus says at the end of verse 26. He asks his followers, “Are you not much more valuable than they(the birds)?”
To God, you are so very, very valuable. This is huge! Do you really believe and know how much God loves you and how valuable you are to him? Jesus wants us to know this deep in our hearts? If we can let this sink in….. and we can remember and truly believe how much God loves us, we won’t need to worry. We’ll be able to trust that God will provide.
How much does god love you? Here’s what the Bible tells us – “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” John 15:13 That’s just what God’s Son did for you. He gave his life for you. So, may you have the power and ability to understand how wide and long and high and deep the love of God is for you. Ephesians 3:18 And in this, may you not worry but trust, have faith…. and be in good health.
Here’s another post with insight and thoughts captured from my reading of Health Care You Can Live With by Dr. Scott Morris, founder of the Church Health Centerin Memphis, Tennessee. The excerpts below are directly from the referenced chapters.
Excerpts From Chapters 15 and 16
Compassion is an intense desire to embrace people in a way that is not the norm in our world today. Through this embracing, we show what the Kingdom of God is all about. When compassion happens, everyone included, whether on the giving or receiving end, is better because of it.
God made room for you. In sending Jesus into the body-and-spirit humanity, God reached out to be connected to you. In compassionate mercy, you were made part of God’s family.
As you continue to discover what wellness means in your own life, ask how you can put on compassion toward others and yourself.
Look at yourself through the same eyes of welcoming love through which God sees you. See the wholeness God wants for you, body and spirit. If God wants it for you, shouldn’t you want it for yourself?
Annually, I enjoy watching a few stages of the Tour de France, especially the stages that are held in the Alps. The scenery is magnificent and the athleticism required to complete these mountain stages is phenomenal.
Today’s 200.5 kilometer-long 18th stage will end on the highest-ever mountaintop finish. The Col du Galibier sits at 2645 meters above sea level. The total distance of the last mountain climb is 23 kilometers and the last part of the climb is 8.5 km long at an average gradient of 6.9% (height gain: 585 m) with a maximum of 12.1% at the summit.
I can not imagine cycling up this mountain. I can not imagine the level of fitness and mental toughness that is required to endure the pain these riders must experience.
As you look at the profile of this stage – the up and down nature of the route – you can make the analogy that it’s like the ups and downs that life brings. Sometimes we are on our mountaintops and sometimes we are in the valleys. The ease of the cyclist’s valleys are like our mountaintops and the difficulty of their mountaintops are like the challenging aspects of the valleys of our lives. When we are on our mountaintops, things are grand. When we are in our valleys, life can be tough.
“The dominant approach to health care in the United States concerns broken bodies more than broken lives.”
“Health care is a mess.”
“”Jesus said, “The poor will always be with you.” So far, he has been right. If he ever asks me, “Where were you when I was poor and sick?” I want to be able to answer, “I cared for you as best I could.”"
” Doctors learn to ‘keep out.’ Doctors learn to practice medicine by taking a medical history and asking questions around the symptoms the patient describes. ….. This process also says, ‘Keep out.’ Keep out of my heart. Keep out of my sorrow, my stress, my fatigue, my relationships. Keep out of my private space. Just fix what hurts.”
“Every day, every single day, doctors tell patients there’s nothing wrong because they find no physical root for patient complaints….. Whatever is amiss is not a matter for the health care system.”
“Plenty is wrong. Spiritual and emotional issues manifest in physical ways.(my emphasis) But, our health care system draws a line and says, ‘Keep Out.’”
“Health care is a mess. People want change. But to what?”
“Efforts at health care reform fail because they avoid the essential questions of wellness. The starting point is off kilter. Our health care system is built on the premise of waiting for people to break in some way and then come through the doors, where we will use our technological wizardry to fix them…. That’s not health care.”
“Caring for health means attending to the things that keep you well long before you break and need the door to technology.”
“In the next couple of chapters, …. we’ll delve into what you can do to bring change to your [personal] health care.”
My Thoughts
Morris is right, so very often it’s deeper spiritual and emotional issues that are at the root of the physical ailments we have. Most medical professionals will agree that the greatest majority (80-90%) of visits to physician offices are because of stress-related issues.
Our greatest hope in changing our personal health status is in loving our creator, God, and in living according to the many principles found in his guidebook for living, the Bible.
God is love. 1 John 4:8
His greatest command to us is to love him. Mark 12:29
He tells us that to love him means to obey his commands or principles. John 14:15
God has given us his principles because he knows that the greatest chance we have for health and wholeness comes when we follow them.
Questions to Reflect On:
Are you addressing spiritual and emotional issues that may possibly be at the root of your sickness or disease?
Do you encourage your physician to help you look ‘inside’ at your heart issues in addition to the ‘outside’ physical symptoms?
Do you trust in God? Imagine what it would be like if you were really able to trust in God amidst your most challenging trials and most stressful times of your life. Then those ‘stressful’ times would not stress you out because you would be at peace – at Shalom. It’s this type of complete trust in God that he wants us to have. Our challenge is to not only understand this intellectually in our heads, but to truly believe this in our hearts and to live it out.
Trust in God – Experience His Peace
Earlier this morning, I read a wonderful article titled In Search of Shalom from the December, 2011 edition of In Touch Magazine. The author, Chris Tiegreen, hits the nail on the head as he explores the topics of trust in God and experiencing his peace. He points out that it’s God’s will for us to experience true Shalom – wholeness, fullness, safety, wholeness and well-being. Instead of placing trust in our God, our Creator, Tiegreen reminds us how we so often try to manufacture our own peace through our substitute material possessions and dysfunctional and often addictive behaviors.
Trust in God – Worry, Anxiety and Your Health
Many health issues stem from a person’s chronic state of worry and anxiety. God did not design us to be able to live healthily when we are in a constant state of worry. When we can get to the point where we resolve the inner battle of whether we can really trust in God, we can stop striving in our own strength and abilities to gain the peace we are searching for. To find wholeness and peace amidst life’s challenges and stressors, we must choose to believe that God is what we need most and then rest in the resulting peace that he gives us.
Trust in God – A Resolution for 2011
Looking for a New Year’s Resolution, a behavior to change or a new attitude to adopt in 2001? Perhaps it could be to more completely trust in God so that you’ll experience greater peace.
“Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” John 14:27
Have a Happy New Year!
Trust in God – Related Scriptures
Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I entrust my life. Psalm 143:8
Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. Proverbs 3:5
Therefore do not worry …… but seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well. Matthew 6:25-33
Paul writes about the Holy Spirit’s power in a prayer to the Ephesians:
“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” Ephesians 3:16-20
God’s power is available to us because of his Holy Spirit in us. This is not ‘our’ power, but it’s the power of the Holy Spirit who lives in us. There is a difference. Many people who do not really know God nor fully understand the scriptures, try to live out of their own strength and power. Verse 20 in the scripture above clearly states that it is the Holy Spirit’s power that is at work in us that enables us to live differently – to make changes in our lives.
The Holy Spirit’s Power
“I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms…” Ephesians 1:17-20
In these verses above, Paul reminds us that it’s through the “eyes of our heart” that we are able to understand how God works in our lives because of our belief and acceptance of Jesus Christ in our heart. When God begins to live in us in the form of the Holy Spirit, he gives us a new heart – a regenerated heart. With this heart, we are able to renew our minds to his truths found in scripture. (Romans 12:2) As we set our hearts on these truths and believe them, and we yield to God, the power of the Holy Spirit lives more fully through us. And as Paul writes, this power is the same mighty power that raised Jesus from his grave and sent him to be with his Father in heaven.
God wants each of us to experience this power so that we can realize the fullness of his love and live a kind of life that glorifies him. If this is your motivation – to glorify God with your life by the power of his Spirit – then God will answer your cries for more of his power as you yield to his Spirit inside you.
Questions to Reflect On:
Have you been trying to live life or make behavior changes by your own power and not through the power of the Holy Spirit?
Are you at the end of your rope in life and unable to make a go of it in your own strength?
Mary Chind of The Des Moines Register was recently awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her photograph above of the heart-stopping moment when a rescuer dangling in a makeshift harness tries to save a woman trapped in the foaming water beneath a dam. The woman, Patricia Ralph-Neely, was saved by a construction worker after her boat went over the Center Street Dam. Her husband, Alan Neely, didn’t make it. He and his wife were in the boat, scouting out a perch on the riverfront for their grand kids to watch the holiday fireworks show. Read more about this incident here.
Chind’s reporting and photography represents the immediacy and urgency of this dramatic rescue.
When I saw this picture for the first time yesterday, my initial thought was that the man’s arm stretching out to rescue the woman is representative of how God reaches out to help us in times of trouble. As well, God patiently reaches out to us to restore us into relationship with himself, despite our faults and shortcomings.
Sometimes we feel like we are drowning in the circumstances that life throws at us because life can be tough. And during those really tough times, it can really be a “Godsend” if someone will reach out to help us. If we listen close enough, we’ll realize that God is reaching out to lend a helping hand.
“Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends.” Revelation 3:20
Questions to Reflect On:
Does the photo above, and the idea that God is reaching out to you, strike a chord within you? If so, will you grab his hand?
Perhaps I’ll begin to occasionally send along an inspirational song…… as a reminder of God’s love and to encourage you to stay close to him.
If you have any suggestions or favorites, I’d love to hear from you so that I can share them with others.
Have a terrific day!
“I pray that you … may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.” Paul in Ephesians 3:17-19
Today’s Wall Street Journal carries an article titled “Thinking Happy Thoughts at Work.” The author’s corresponding blog post uses the following title – “Workplace Blues? Call a Happiness Coach.”
“How would you feel if your employer brought in a happiness coach — a trainer or speaker urging you to practice new behaviors, cheer up and stop stressing out?” That’s how Sue Shellenberger’s blog post begins. She writes that trainers and coaches are “drawing on psychological research and ancient religious traditions to teach inner peace, gratitude, kindness and resiliency in the face of adversity” that is so prevalent at the workplace in today’s tough economic times. Shellenberger writes that coaches are placing an emphasis on the inner happiness of their clients and how they can control their own mood amidst turbulence or misfortune. Some techniques mentioned are writing emails to friends thanking them for something they’ve done, meditating daily to clear your mind, doing something for someone without expecting anything in return and focusing on the process of work rather than the outcome which you can’t control.
It’s true that we all can benefit from applying techniques and activities that will bring us peace, kindness and strength during tough times. Fortunately, God provides us many principles for this in the Bible. Let’s take a look.
What the Bible Says About Happiness and Joy
“Oh, the joys of those who …. delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night. They are like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season. Their leaves never wither, and they prosper in all they do.” Psalm 1:1-2
“O LORD Almighty, happy are those who trust in you.” Psalm 84:12
“Happy are those who hear the joyful call to worship, for they will walk in the light of your presence, Lord.” Psalm 89:15
“Joyful are people of integrity, who follow the instructions of the Lord. Joyful are those who obey his laws and search for him with all their hearts.” Psalm 119:1-2
“As pressure and stress bear down on me, I find joy in your commands.” Psalm 119:143
“Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand.” Philippians 4:6-7
“Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise….. then the God of peace will be with you.” Philippians 4:8-9
What You Can Do
Deep inner happiness or joy is what people are looking for. That need is greater than short term happiness which is typically dependent on our circumstances. So how do you come to a place of joy? Our creator, God, inspired the authors of the Bible to tell us that this kind of deep happiness comes from placing your trust in God and by following his principles or commandments.
Trust and faith in God require a decision deep in your will. It requires you to believe deep in your heart that God is who the Bible tells us he is…. a loving, forgiving, all-knowing, powerful and holy God. When you believe this, it enables you to place your trust in him and to follow his ways.
You can’t know his ways unless you learn them and the best source of this knowledge is the Holy Bible. The more you read it, the more you can come to an understanding of who God is and what his principles for living are.
The challenge then is to live in accordance to these principles. We might call this obedience. The Bible tells us that if we truly love God we will obey him. (1 John 1:5) Having a deep love for God and spending time alone with him will enable you to obey him more easily. The scriptures above remind us that it’s through following his principles that we receive deep happiness or joy.
Thinking “healthy” thoughts is also key to maintaining a good attitude and achieving an on-going level of peace. As you renew your mind by thinking more about God and His nature and truth and less about untruths and negative thoughts it will likely improve your day-to-day attitude and corresponding emotions, as well as your disposition on life. This ought to contribute to a sense of peace and may well impact in a positive way on your emotional and physical health.
So, receive God’s love deep in your heart, get to know him better, place your trust in him, pray to him, think about “things of heaven,” thank God and follow his principles found in the Bible. That’s the pathway to deep joy and inner peace.
I don’t know about you, but God is my Happiness Coach.
Have a terrific day!
Questions About Happiness and Joy to Reflect On
How are you handling the pressures at work or in your home?
Who is your Happiness Coach?
What books or materials are you reading as a source of truth on how to have joy and peace?
meditating on it day and night. 3 They are like trees planted along the riverbank,
bearing fruit each season.
Their leaves never wither,
and they prosper in all they do.
When we have strength we can make it through tough times. This strength enables us to live a healthy lifestyle and to manage the stress that is present. Are you looking for insight about how God can be a source of strength? Today my devotionals led me back to two passages in Ephesians where Paul shares his understanding of how God supplies us strength. I’ll do my best to pass his wisdom along to you here.
What the Bible Says about Strength and Power
Ephesians 1:15-21 is a prayer of Paul to the people of the church of Ephesus. He is especially praying that they be unified in their new faith so that they can be the body of Christ that God intended them to be. This prayer still applies to us today… and it is my prayer for you. I pray that you may know God better and that your understanding of him be deep in your heart. This deep understanding of who God is and of the love he has for you should be a source of hope – the kind of hope that can only come from God. Accompanying this deep understanding of God and belief in his character and nature should be great power. Paul tells us in verse 19 that this power is like the working of his mighty strength – the same strength that God used to raise Jesus from his grave. This same power, and strength, is available to you if you believe.
Further in this same book, in Ephesians 3:16-21, Paul again writes to these people in a prayer. We are also told that we can have this great power because God’s Holy Spirit lives in us who believe in Jesus. When you are deeply rooted in God’s love you are able to grasp how much Jesus loves you and cares for you. This is hugely important because as you embrace this love, you begin to realize the fullness and power of God. God’s Holy Spirit, who lives in you, gives your mind this ability. It’s not your power, but God’s power that is manifested in you and at work in you. (Ephesians 3:20)
Another important determinant of receiving God’s strength is our weakness. We are told that Jesus’ strength was made perfect in Paul’s weakness. (2 Corinthians 12:9) Paul came to recognize that it was his personal weakness and associated dependence on God that was key to him having power that came from God. So, it is in admitting our weakness that we affirm God’s strength.
Receiving God’s Strength
So, according to these scriptures, how do you receive strength that is available from God?
You believe in his Son, Jesus.
You begin to understand just how much God loves you and you receive this wonderful love.
You humbly acknowledge that you are weak and dependent on God.
You know that his Holy Spirit lives in you.
You believe that God’s power raised Jesus from his grave.
And, you believe that God wants to use this same mighty power for good in your life.
This is how you have strength – strength that comes directly from God. It’s about your faith, belief and trust – the essence of the Christian faith.
You were created by God as his masterpiece to do wonderful things through the salvation you receive by believing in Jesus. Ephesians 2:10 When you receive strength from God, through his mighty power that is available, you can make it through the challenges that life throws at you. When this happens, God is glorified. Ephesians 3:21
Are you worried? Anxious about something…. or your life? Research shows that chronic anxiety or worry can contribute to health problems.
Do you trust in God? Imagine what it would be like if you were really able to trust in God amidst your most challenging trials and most stressful times of your life. Then those ‘stressful’ times would not stress you out because you would be at peace – at Shalom. It’s this type of complete trust in God that he wants us to have. Our challenge is to not only understand this intellectually in our heads, but to truly believe this in our hearts and to live it out.
Today’s Wall Street Journal carries an article titled “Thinking Happy Thoughts at Work.” The author’s corresponding blog post uses the following title – 
Let’s Connect!