Healthy Choices

In our Sunday services this weekend, Shepherd of the Coast will have a special Health and Wellness emphasis. It is an effort to remind people of what most of us already know: we need to make some changes in our habits, behaviors, and lifestyle to become healthier.

Things like losing weight or quitting smoking or exercising more are changes that many of us should make. We would benefit immediately and over time from those changes. Changes like that are healthy changes because they result in having more energy, fewer illnesses, and a longer life. A healthy change improves both the quality and quantity of your life.

Healthy changes are also the hardest ones to make. Personal change is very difficult unless we are highly motivated. There usually has to be a dire consequence or a very attractive reward in order to get us to even attempt a major change in our behavior. We may know all the best reasons to change, but knowing why we need to change doesn’t change much.

We can measure our physical health by our own perceptions or with the assistance of the medical professions. How you feel is one way to gauge your health while a doctor or nurse can tell you how high your blood pressure is. But, how is your spiritual health? How healthy is your faith? They are difficult questions and hard to measure, but they need to be asked.

So, how are you doing, spiritually. Here’s one answer: “Better than I deserve; I’m living by grace.” We need to admit that, when it comes to our spiritual health, we depend on grace and grace alone to make the healthy changes that need to be made. “It is God who produces in you the desires and actions that please him.” (Philippians 2:13).

I hope that you make some healthy choices today. I pray that you trust God in His grace to work in you your spiritual health.