Key points up-front:
Our wellness is largely a result of our decisions and behaviors
We must come to base our decisions and perspectives on the Word of God
There are Four Elements of Wellness: The Word, Mindset, Nutrition, and Activity
This post covers The Word in detail and features a bonus recording where I review The Word, Mindset, and Nutrition
In this 4-part series, I’ll dedicate a post to covering each of the Elements
Despite their undeniable cuteness and loveableness, Pandas are objectively dumb animals. Let’s just call it how it is. Their endangered status is more due to their own foolishness, and seeming inability to act in their best interest than any kind of environmental or predatory conditions.
I challenge you to provide a video of a panda doing something productive. I challenge you to provide a video of a panda doing anything other than eating or falling down clumsily. I don’t know exactly what I would expect to see to disprove my point, but I can’t recall ever seeing a video of a panda that made me think: oh yeah, this panda is going places. I mean, they can’t even be trusted to mate intentionally!
The same could probably have been said about me when I was… well for most of my adult life. Except for the mating part, I rarely demonstrated anything consistent with self-preservation, or even self-interest. I smoked cigarettes, drank way too much alcohol, ate like an offensive lineman, and was an absolute menace behind the wheel. That I made it into adulthood at all was as great a testament to God’s grace as any.
Come to think of it, it might be more appropriate to say that I was too self-interested. Too absorbed in my own desires and wants. At the expense of my future best self and to the great consternation of my family. Yeah - I was doing all of this as a husband and father. (I know, I know - I can feel you shaking your head disapprovingly through the screen, and trust me, I feel you.)
Though alive, I was not unscathed. I had high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and was overweight. My cardio conditioning was deplorable. I suffered from chronic arthritis so badly, particularly in my back, that at one point I was spending hundreds of dollars to go to the chiro 2x a week. I couldn’t stand for long periods, let alone walk long distances, without the aid of some kind of painkiller. On top of all this, or maybe because of it, I struggled with insomnia, and slept terribly most nights, causing me to be generally very irritable. As you can imagine, I was an absolute joy to be around.
My gut check moment came in 2017. We went to see Bonobo at a standing-room-only concert. By the end of the night, my back and hips were throbbing in pain, and I couldn’t wait to get home to lie down. This was my 40th birthday, and it felt like my life was over. The very real likelihood of enduring the next 20 or 30 years of my life in steady physical decline weighed heavy on my mind. I spent the next few days on the couch, slowly recuperating and lamenting the dark future ahead.
After all this, you might think that I had sufficient motivation to make changes — and you would be wrong. I continued to smoke, and drink - in fact, I drank more, as my tolerance increased, and the stresses of life, including the pandemic to come, provided more justification to drown my woes in alcohol - I continued to eat snacks and fast food like they were going out of style. Check, check, check - all my vices were still in tact.
It wasn’t until my wife started working on her fitness, a few years later, that I got any real conviction about my own. She was eating better, getting more exercise, looking great, and making it all look far too easy. Her priority shift created a new routine, and she was sticking with it. So much so that I was compelled to follow, although somewhat begrudgingly at first. Surprisingly, as my effort increased, so did the rate of rejuvenation that I experienced. In a matter of months, all of my physical ailments began to subside. I was sleeping better, breathing better, I had more endurance for all the things I wanted to do, and was carrying less weight doing it.
It was really that straightforward (emphasis on the forward). In hindsight, it is frustrating to think of the amount of time I spent in self-pity and self-loathing instead of self-discipline. How much sooner could I have enjoyed a better quality of life had I just been willing to implement a better quality of behavior?
Yeah, sure, I’m making that transformation sound easy now - it certainly wasn’t at the time - but it was doable. Not to try to fix it all overnight, not to try to boil the ocean, but to tackle one thing at a time, and make incremental progress. What I slowly began to realize was that I was no more condemned to a path of inevitable decline than I am now guaranteed a future of endless revitalization. My fate (and yours), is directed by my decisions, and my decisions by the perspectives that frame them.
When working with my coaching clients, I first seek to understand their mindsets and perspectives. Not just about their physical wellness, but mental and emotional as well. This groundwork gives us both a wider lens to better understand their tendencies and goals - the ones that they’re intentional about, and the ones they are not.
The key perspective here was seeing and understanding the bounty of life that God meant for me to have. For the first time in almost two decades, I was able to be truly sensitive to His gentle leading voice.
1. The Word
Thus, my decisions over the last few years have been primarily informed by my faith in and of the word of God. The Bible has quite a lot to say about physical health, in addition to spiritual and emotional health. Here are a handful of my favorite scriptures:
3 John 1:2 (NKJV) — Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers
2 Timothy 1:7 (KJV) — For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (NIV) — 19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.
Isaiah 41:9-10 (NKJV) — 9 You whom I have taken from the ends of the earth, And called from its farthest regions, And said to you, ‘You are My servant, I have chosen you and have not cast you away: 10 Fear not, for I am with you; Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, Yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.’
The point I want to impress upon you, dear friend, is that it is in God’s best interest for us to be healthy and prosperous.
What greater advertisement could there be for His love, and for modeling ourselves after Christ than for us all to be living wonderfully abundant lives? What better way to encourage others to embrace this lifestyle than to visibly demonstrate its effectiveness?
Matthew 7:11 (KJV) — If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?
This is not to suggest that being a follower of Christ is all rainbows and gumdrops. We experience our fair share of trials and tribulations, more so, in fact. However, with great faith comes the power and authority to overcome ALL of the struggles we encounter, up to and including sickness. Realizing that God not only wants us to live a healthy life but expects it, is a wonderful encouragement, especially during challenging times when we do encounter sickness, infirmity, etc.
It is additionally encouraging to see how our well-being must fit in with His grand plan for us to do Kingdom business on Earth:
Build the Kingdom - Have dominion
Genesis 1:28 — Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Advance the Kingdom - Preach the Gospel
Mark 16:15-18 — And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.
(note the power that Jesus grants His followers through the Holy Spirit - amazing!)
Enrich the Kingdom - Serve God and others with our gifts; don’t waste them!
Matthew 25:29 — ‘For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away.’
Unfortunately, so much of the suffering we experience, even as believers, is self-inflicted. Again, primarily through the decisions we make. Since the fall of man, the enemy has known exactly how to get us out of alignment with the will of God, and the individual calling He’s placed on our lives. All the enemy needs to do is play upon these age-old vulnerabilities to exploit us. No fancy trickery. No hocus pocus. Simply presenting the things we want, and inviting us to enjoy them. That’s it.
The Bible puts all of these vulnerabilities into three categories of sins. The temptations that the enemy used to ensnare Adam & Eve in the Garden are the exact same temptations he uses to ensnare you and me today:
Lust of the Eye - the desire to have the things we see (riches, possessions, food), even when we know those things that are not good for us.
Lust of the Flesh - the desire to satisfy our physical cravings (food, sex, drugs, etc.), even when we know they are bad for us.
Pride of Life - the insistence to make decisions based on the aforementioned lusts and ego rather than the wisdom of God.
Knowing this, it becomes vital that we be able to consistently make good decisions. From the grand to the seemingly insignificant. That is a skill we must cultivate intentionally. Day in and day out. By being vigilant, by leaning on the word of God, and seeking his guidance through prayer and fasting. Start your practice of better decision-making today, beloved. Don’t wait for a future that you are not guaranteed to have.
Want to learn more about making good decisions? Checkout this recent post:
It All Comes Down to Decisions
I had a fun Uber ride home the other day. It was one of those rides where tastes and dispositions fit together perfectly in an instant, and the whole ride is full of good vibes. In between small talk, my foot-tapped enthusiastically to the music, as he slapped the steering wheel in unison. The weather was unseasonably nice, and with real urgency to rush…
