Connecting Your Spirit

Notes from Fred:

Sunday was a wonderful “Red Letter” Day for our Family – as we began our Journey to Wellness of Mind, Body, and Spirit, beginning with a Walk to Jerusalem. We could feel the excitement!

I hope that all of us will take full advantage of this opportunity: walking; exercising; praying; meditating; reading Scripture. My strong suggestion is that you find times to take this journey with others – To make our Journey to Wellness more meaningful and more possible with the help of partners….

Connecting Your Spirit

On Sunday, we completed our three part Series on Wellness, as God revealed that the wellness of our spirit is essential to the wellness of our minds and bodies – when we connect with the peace, power, and presence of God by praying for Jesus to take away our anxieties, worries, and strivings; and meditating on the Word of God to fill our lives with what is true, good, loving, and blessing . (Philippians 4:6-9)

In summary:

1. Paul reveals to us in his letter to the Philippians that the power for our minds and bodies to be made well comes from our spirit, our inner being. Jesus confirmed that truth in the Gospel of John: “I came to give life to your spirit; without your spirit, your body is useless”; and when he healed so many who came to him with illnesses of the mind and body, by healing their spirit, as he did with the woman crippled for 18 years: “He healed the infirmity of her spirit, and she straightened up…”
2. As we take our first steps on our Walk to Jerusalem for our Journey to Wellness, Paul shows us two steps for wellness of our spirits that will give us healthy minds and bodies. The First Step: “Do not be anxious or worry about anything, but, in every situation, by prayer, offer your concerns to God!” 
3. In order for our spirits to be well, we must first empty ourselves of anything that creates anxiety or worry within us, for the root word for both of these words means “choking.” This is the word Jesus used in the Parable of the Soils for the third Soil: “They hear the Word (get it in their minds) and begin to live the Word (get it in their bodies), but the worries of their lives and the strivings for money, pleasure, and things of the world, choke it out and make it unfruitful!”
4. Our spirits are choked by our anxieties and worries about our marriages, families, jobs, health; with strivings for money, pleasure, things… Medical science has determined that these cause unhealthy minds and bodies: stress, depression, mental breakdowns, ulcers, migraines, high blood pressure. 94% of us in our Wellness Survey wanted help with how meditation, prayer, and Scripture can improve our health – reflecting that we know that this is true, and that these health problems are, at the essence, spiritual problems….
5. And the first step for curing our spirit health problems begins with prayer, giving to God our spirit-choking anxieties, worries, and strivings. Not only do Jesus and Paul tell us this, we have experienced this: When we are filled with anxiety and worry about some issue or person in our lives, and we are at the end of our rope, we cry out (pray) for God to take it from us – and we begin to experience peace, and our minds and bodies begin literally to feel better.
6. But this is not the way to spiritual wellness. This is like using the emergency room for your primary care physician. God does not want us to wait until our anxieties, worries, and strivings build up and infect our minds and bodies. When someone is breaking into our home we do not wait until they are in, have choked and robbed us, to call for help. In the same way, God wants us to pray as soon as the anxieties, worries, strivings begin – in every situation. In response, Jesus will come and guard our hearts and minds, keeping them outside the door, and hauling them out if they have gotten in. And God will give us, through Jesus, His peace!
7. The good news is that God also wants to fill our spirits with what is good, and give us, through our spirits, good health for our minds and bodies. This is the Second Step: Meditate on what is true, good, loving, that blesses, not curses! There are many types of meditation, but we are called to Christian meditation, contemplating God’s Word with a  prolonged focus on God and His Word, letting God speak to us, not trying to control what He says.
8. Meditation is compared to a cow chewing its cud, chewing, swallowing, regurgitating, and repeating the process, until the health-giving food becomes part of them. We chew on is what is in the Bible, slowly, in small bites. So many of us miss the spirit-healing power of meditation by praying “quick prayers” for what we want; by reading Scripture to understand and apply it to a question that we have. But God also wants us to wait, stay silently with His Word, letting Him speak to us for what He wants, letting Him and His Word become a part of us.
9. Medical science has discovered that God is right. The list is too long to repeat here (hear it on our website), but, in summary, thousands of studies have determined that meditation has extraordinary health benefits: reducing stress; lowering blood pressure; strengthening the immune system; improving memory and academic performance; increasing energy and feelings of happiness, forgiveness, compassion…
10. We saw brain scans which showed that meditation on Scripture actually changes the structure of our brains, activating the part of the brain that causes these health benefits, and reducing the part of the brain that affects sense of self, opening our self up to the influence of God. As the author of that study (in How God Changes Your Brain) concluded: “The more we meditate on God, the more we will experience Him, and the healthier our minds and bodies will be!”
11. I concluded by sharing my personal testimony. My experience is too long to repeat (hear it on our website), but a part of my experience related to a Session meeting that would involve a potentially difficult issue, partially involving me. I meditated on our Scripture for Sunday, and the word that spoke to me and filled me as I prepared for the meeting, was “gracious”. As the meeting began, one of our Elders remarked, “I feel God’s presence here,” and all of us nodded. And when we got to the difficult issue, our discussion was filled…with grace!
12. As we begin our Journey to Wellness, pray for God to give you a healthy spirit in order to give you a healthy mind and body – by praying for Jesus to guard you against anxiety, worry, and strivings, and meditating on God’s Word.  God will give you peace, what is true, good, and blesses, and even Himself!

Connection for the Week: Begin your Walk to Jerusalem by praying for Jesus to take from you, in every situation, your anxieties, worries and strivings; meditate on the Scripture in your Journal; and experience the health-giving gift of a healthy spirit, and, through a God-filled spirit, a healthy mind and body… and life.