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?
Small habits bring big changes when it comes to health.
Put on kindness.
Don’t judge. Just help. That’s kindness.
Kindness in the Bible is one of the most frequent descriptions of God.
In the New Testament, Paul reminds us that God’s kindness leads us to repentance–and into relationship with God, where we experience God’s kindness towards us over and over and over.
In the course of the entire Bible, we see that God consistently connects with people in kindness, and not because they deserve it. If God kept a list of why we don’t deserve kindness, where would we be?
Treat yourself with kindness.
We can be pretty good at beating ourselves up. The things you say to yourself, whether out loud or in your head, can be some of the harshest judgments you ever endure. Treat yourself with kindness. Point out the positive in yourself.
Be kind to yourself for no other reason than because God loves you. It will be good for your health.
My Thoughts:
In these two chapters, Dr. Morris is connecting two themes of the Christian faith – compassion and kindness. He speaks about the importance of demonstrating compassion to other people in the same way that Christ has compassion for us. In a similar vein, he encourages the reader to be kind to himself just as he calls us to be kind to other people.
The Christian faith is about loving God completely, loving ourselves correctly and then loving others compassionately. This is the theme of the church – Transformation Church – that my wife and I are members of. It’s through experiencing God’s love and loving him with abandonment that we are able to begin to love ourselves in a very healthy way. Likewise, the degree to which we love ourselves in a godly manner will determine the degree to which we can truly love others.
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:36-40
Questions to Reflect On:
How much do you love God?
How much do you love yourself in a godly and correct way?
To what degree are you able to demonstrate compassion and kindness to others because you have experienced the love of God?
Helpful Resources:
Article – Loving God
Article – It’s About The Relationship
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