God cares about every areas of our lives and He wants to bless us in all those areas. He wants us to be healthy, not just physically but in all of the key areas of our lives. Thus, this is a series about God's plan and promises on the 7 Key Areas of our Life which are (1) Spiritual, (2) Physical, (3) Mental, (4) Emotional, (5) Relational, (6) Financial and (7) Vocational.
As I have said, God wants to bless us, in fact, He promised to bless us! There are so many promises in the bible wherein He talked about it but one thing about those promises is that in every promise, there is a premise. There are always statements where God told us that "if you do this", that's the premise, "then I will do this" and that's the promise.
Therefore, on this series, we are going to look on God's promises on all these 7 key areas of life and we're gonna discuss the premises that we could take in order to live on God's blessings. But for now, we're going to discuss about these 7 habits that we could do, to improve our spiritual health.
7 Habits that will Improve your Spiritual Health
Love Jesus supremely.
Luke 14:26 NLT “If you want to be my disciple, you must, by comparison, hate everyone else—your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even your own life. Otherwise, you cannot be my disciple.
Well, it doesn't literally mean that we should hate our family but what the verse is telling us is that we should love Jesus above all else. Because spiritual health is measured by love. It is not measured by how much we know, or how much we give, or how much we attend church. Instead, it is measured by how much we love God and others.
Mark 12:29-30 NLT Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. 30 And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.
Mark 12:29-30 states the most important commandment that God told us to do. But how can we show God that we love Him? Simple. In the bible, loving God is called worship and whoever we love is what we worship. Therefore, we must love God more than anything else because that's how we can show Him that it's Him whom we worship.
Meet with Him daily.
The second habit that we should do is to meet with Him daily. It could be for only 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, or whatever. It doesn't matter how long. What's important is that we should meet with Him daily.
Just sit in the quiet, talk to God in prayer, worship Him and have a quiet time with Him. This is also applicable on doing a daily devotion where you take a quiet time with God to pray and to study His words.
Proverbs 8:34 ESV Blessed are those who listen to me, watching daily at my doors, waiting at my doorway.
See God's promise on Proverbs? The premise is that we should meet with Him daily and the promise is that He will bless us.
Again, it doesn't have to long, but it does have to be habitual.
Study and do His word.
Psalm 1:1-3 NLT Oh, the joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or stand around with sinners, or join in with mockers. But they delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night. They are like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season. Their leaves never wither, and they prosper in all they do.
See God's word from Psalm. There's a premise that we should meditate the law day and night, and there's a promise that we will prosper in all that we do.
There are so many promises in the bible which stated that He bless us. There's this word from John 15:14 saying that we are God's friends if we do what He commands. James 1:25 also says that if we look at the perfect law that sets us free, which is the bible, and if we do what it says and that we don't forget what we heard, God will bless us from doing it.
You see, it's one thing to study the word but that's not enough. If we want to be spiritually healthy, we have to study the word and we have to do what it says.
Title your income.
Now, this one includes our finances.
Malachi 3:10 NLT Bring all the tithes into the storehouse so there will be enough food in my Temple. If you do,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, “I will open the windows of heaven for you. I will pour out a blessing so great you won’t have enough room to take it in! Try it! Put me to the test!
I know, what we are earning might not be enough for us but keep in mind the promise of God from Malachi 3:10 wherein God promised that He will pour out blessings if we give to Him. What we give, He will give it back with a lot more.
Besides, God doesn't even want our money. What He wants is our heart for where your treasure is, there your heart is.
Love other believers.
God doesn't want us to just love Him. He also wants us to love other believers.
John 13:35 NLT Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”
People will not know that we're a Christian just because of a post we shared, or a shirt we wear. He clearly stated it in His word that the mark of being a disciple is loving everybody else.
We have to love other believers. We have to love the family of Christ.
1 John 4:20 NLT If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a fellow believer,[a] that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see?
Spiritual growth happens in community. We cannot be a disciple by ourselves. We cannot only love God, we have to love everyone on His family like what He have commanded us, like how He told us to love our neighbor as ourselves.
Serve others unselfishly.
To grow, we have to develop our strength and one way to develop it is through service.
Mark 10:45 NLT For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Take not of the word "serve" and "give". That verse alone highlights the 2 primary purpose of life after worship and that is to serve and to give for it defines a Christian life.
Why is it important to serve others?
Simple because it is our form of spiritual exercise. If all that we do is to listen and to take it all in, but we're actually not doing anything, then we will become spiritually fat. We won't develop a muscle, we won't experience growth, it is unhealthy.
So, let us do our spiritual exercise, be humble and serve others unselfishly.
Pass on the good news!
Another important thing for spiritual growth is to give what we received. We should pass on the good news. We should tell others that there's a purpose for their life, that they can be forgiven. Tell others that they can have a purpose in living and they can have a home in heaven.
2 Timothy 2:2 NIV And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.
This is Paul telling Timothy to pass on the good news to people who will also do the same. This is a chain. Have you told anybody about it? Did you break the chain?
Jesus told us in Matthew 28:18-20 which is the great commission that we should go and make disciples of all nation. Because to be a disciple, we have to be a disciple-maker.
Challenge:
Now, here's a challenge for all of us. Let us set a target of bringing 1 person to Christ. It's not many, it's only 1 person. Think of someone whom you can share the good news with and start praying for that person.
We might think that it's not easy but think about it. Maybe the reason why it's not easy is because we're not praying for it?
That being said, I want to encourage you all to pray for one person whom we can bring to the family of Christ.
There you have it! The 7 habits that we must do in order to grow spiritually. Take note that growing is not automatic. It is a choice that we have to make and I hope that we'll all choose to grow.
Choose to grow! Because if we are not alive in Christ, then we are spiritually dead.
I hope that we'll all be able to make all these habits as our lifestyle that we might grow in Christ. Thank you for reading this far. See you on the next installation of this series! :)
Anyways, this is actually from one of the preaching of Pastor Rick Warren. If you want to hear the actual preaching, you can watch it here:
Series: God's Plan and Promises on the 7 Key Areas of our Life
1st Part: 7 Habits that will Improve your Spiritual Health
Date: 01-31-2022
Thank you so much jiji!! I hope everyone here will read this article. Actually, this kind of a writing that everyone needs to read. It feels like you are already talking with God.