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Are You Spiritually Fit?
It’s time to evaluate your spiritual fitness level. Ask yourself the following questions and evaluate why you may have answered yes or no to each one.
Do you have a deep and satisfying happiness and peace with your current life situation?
What philosophies and beliefs are steering your lifestyle behaviors?
Do you get frustrated and upset at the slightest of trials?
Are you experiencing an inability to cope with feelings of hopelessness and depression with inability to change unhealthy lifestyle behaviors?
Are your thought patterns positive with an attitude of “I can do this” or is your current attitude toward changing your health situation one that says “it’s impossible and I can’t”?
If you are experiencing the negative and frustrated attitude what philosophy or world view are you choosing to believe that is causing this?
Be Transformed
Everybody experiences stress at one time or another. Problems in life such as relationship issues, job pressure, injuries, illness, chronic pain, financial distress and emotional pain are common and unavoidable to humans. Stressful events can come upon us unexpectedly like car accidents or the death of a loved one and they can also be due to our own bad decision making or philosophical confusion in things like gambling too much or divorce. It is inevitable that a storm of stress will eventually come into your life and the question that arises is how prepared are you to handle it. Why is it that some people can handle stress with a sense of peace and strength to make it through the most terrible of events in life and others completely fall apart in despair and the inability to cope? When the storms of life arise every person has the choice to either cave in to their disappointments and wallow in self-pity or face it with a renewed attitude in making the best out of the situation. The way you respond to each situation is related to how your daily thought patterns are conditioned and will impact your health of mind, body and spirit for better or worse.
The good news is that even if you are currently rooted only in the lower levels of happiness with the high risks and bad health outcomes that come from them you can be renewed. Negative thought patterns can come from many different avenues including past hurts, traumas or bad situations or simply the views you have seen in TV or movies. The Christian lifestyle and world view has endured for 2,000 years as a proven healing pattern for moving people from the darkness of a self-centered life to the light of a God centered life. St. Paul preached this perfectly as he lived in the same type of self-centered un-Christian culture when he wrote in Romans 12:2 “Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.” In this passage St. Paul is convinced that the human mind in all its thought patterns, moral foundations and beliefs can be changed and made to function in a way that is completely different from before. Science confirms that the mind and physical brain are changeable with the science of neuroplasticity which is caused by our thoughts. In essence, St. Paul is telling his readers that shifting their way of thinking from the ways of the worldly culture with its glorification of pleasure above self-sacrifice, utilitarian views and self-centered actions to a thinking rooted in the truth of God will bring them to what is good, pleasing and perfect.
The Battle is in the Mind
We have seen how our lifestyle habits are shaped by our view of what happiness is and the philosophies we are integrating into our lives. There is an old saying that goes like this “Sow a thought reap an act. Sow an act reap a habit. Sow a habit reap a lifestyle. Sow a lifestyle reap a destiny.” This saying illustrates that our habits, lifestyle and ultimately the legacy of our lives are dictated by the way we think and can even start from just a simple thought that developed into a habit. In order to achieve the thought patterns that lead to health of mind, body and spirit we need our thoughts to be rooted in the Truth of Jesus Christ as St. Paul says in Romans 10:17 “Thus faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ”. This means that if we are listening to anything other than Jesus Christ we are in jeopardy of being led astray. The reality is that if we are listening to the prominent voices in the culture such as pop music, TV shows, magazines and movies we are likely being influenced by the relativistic worldviews opposing the teachings of Jesus. Contrary to the philosophy of relativism there is only One Truth about how to live a spiritually healthy lifestyle. The extent to which you accept and authentically live this lifestyle or reject it in compromising with the lies of the world is the extent to which you will have true peace, true health and true happiness.