We tend to be focused on our diets and exercise when it comes to taking care of ourselves, but in order to have whole body wellness, we need to also take care of our mind and spirit as well. Just like our body needs exercise, whole foods, and proper nutrition in order to stay strong and healthy, our minds and spirits need attention as well in order to stay strong and healthy.
When I start to get busy and my schedule starts to fill up one of the first things to go is my time doing morning devotions. I will almost always get some sort of exercise or body movement in somewhere and try to eat as healthy as I can, but it’s easy to put my spiritual/mental health on the back burner. And when I’m tired after a long day, it’s easy to just scroll twitter, the news feed and instagram to see what’s going on in the world rather than to be disciplined to get in my daily devotional. The results are almost always the same when my habits start going downhill: no morning devo = mindset starts to go downhill. I start to get more anxious and worried, rather than trusting that God has it all under His control.
As I was listening to Priscilla Shirer (my favorite teacher) this afternoon, she mentioned that the breastplate (spiritual armor) is one of the most important pieces of armor that we can put on. This is the one piece of armor that we need to be sure that we are continually wearing. We will be attacked by the enemy, we will have life come at us hard and we need to have God’s armor on at all times so that we do fall while under attack. God’s armor helps us to remain impervious to the attacks of the enemy.
I believe that we as Americans have not ever had to endure real persecution for our faith. But a time is coming that we will need to have endurance and perseverance to be able to finish our our race while being faithful to Christ. Just look around at the political temperature right now. We are seeing churches being shut down, worship not being able to take place, and Jew’s in New York unable to meet for church or worship. Make no mistake, the enemy is at work looking to snuff out the name of Jesus Christ. There are hard times coming. We must keep our faith strong and our spiritual armor on to be able to withstand what is coming. If we ignore our faith or don’t consistently feed our faith with God’s word we will have a weak and shallow faith that will be unable to withstand the coming storms.
We must be as disciplined as we are with our diets and exercise to remain reading, praying, and learning scriptures to be able to have a faith that is deeply rooted like a strong oak tree so that when the enemy attacks us and our families, we are able to stand strong. Persecution will come, but if we are prepared, strong and ready for war, we will overcome.
What do you need to do in order to make your mental and spiritual health a priority?