Don’t forget your spiritual health

Okay, who got a Peloton bike or a Bowflex set for Christmas?  How about a gym membership?

These things are very popular gifts for those who are resolving to get in better physical shape in the new year.  And after eating our way through December, it’s common to resolve to improve our health. 

Some will even want to attend to their mental health, perhaps through counselling, and that can be a good thing as well.

Trouble is, we often focus on our physical health, and possibly even our mental health, while ignoring our spiritual health.

As I’m going to talk about on Sunday at St. Paul’s Church, Nobleton, we can and should pay attention to our spiritual health as we look to a new year.  Just as we can’t ignore our physical or mental health, we can’t ignore our spiritual health, either.  In many respects, as Pete Scazzero says, our emotional health is tied to our spiritual health.

How can we work on our spiritual health, which affects the rest of who we are as people?

The best way is to understand our spiritual health as a relationship with God, and then to handle that relationship the way we would handle growing any relationship:  time spent together, and conversation.

We spend time with the Lord by sitting still (or even going for a walk) intentionally in his presence.  Being mindful that the Lord is with us whatever we do, wherever we go, has an impact on our spiritual health.

As for the conversation, we can talk with God in prayer, about anything and everything; after all, he already knows what’s going on in our lives, and like any parent, he delights in hearing us talk about our lives.

But that’s only a one-sided conversation.  

We hear God speak to us through his Word.  Read your Bible every day.  Listen for God to speak to you as you read the ancient truths of Scripture.  

Create a reading plan for yourself, or borrow one from any number of online sources.  Each day’s passage doesn’t have to be lengthy.  In fact, I am not an advocate for the “Bible in a year” plans; forcing yourself to get through such a lengthy volume in a year, while entirely attainable, may leave you rushing through a passage, “just to get it done”, when perhaps the Lord wants you to sit on it for a bit.  There have been times when the Lord has left me on the same passage for multiple days at a time so that I can absorb the richness of what he is telling me.  Do have a Bible reading plan, but hold it loosely; it may need to spill into the next year.

As you read, be sure to allow silence, giving space to God to speak into your heart as you read his Word.

Of course, there are other spiritual disciplines that you can practise, too, and I’ve written about them before.  But Scripture and prayer are the two most important.

This Sunday brings a new year, and it can bring a new you:  when you consider your health, don’t ignore your physical and mental health, but also keep in mind your spiritual health; eternity is a long time, and you’ll want to be in practice for eternity.

“[A]nyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun” (2 Corinthians 5.17, NLT).

Peace and Goodwill

In this Christmas worship gathering, we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, and hear a message from Luke 2.1-20 on how the church can achieve peace on earth and goodwill toward others. You can watch the message below, or the whole worship gathering below that.

Who’s Your Daddy?

In this worship gathering for Christmas Eve, we hear a message from Matthew 1 about the genealogy of Jesus and Joseph’s example that can help us grow as disciples of Jesus. You can watch the whole worship gathering below, or just the message below that.

God is with us…are we with God?

My preaching series this Advent season has centred around this pivotal verse from the Bible:

“Look! The virgin will conceive a child!
    She will give birth to a son,
and they will call him Immanuel, 
    which means ‘God is with us.’”

(Matthew 1.23, NLT)

And as the season of Advent wraps up with our celebrations on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, we do well to be reminded that in the birth of Jesus, we know that God really is with us.

The question that remains is this:  are we with God?

Often, in English parlance, when we say that someone is “with God”, that usually means the person is dead.  You know, “Great Aunt Hortense is with God” is a spiritualized equivalent of the idiom, “She’s pushin’ up daisies.”  She’s deceased.  She ain’t comin’ down for breakfast.

But I’d like us to think of being “with God” in a different light.

We take great comfort in the belief that in Christ, God became human and really is with us.  With the coming of the Holy Spirit, God lives in and through all followers of Jesus.

The challenge comes in our response:  God is with us, but are we with him?

We can give nodding acceptance to the notion that God is with us in Christ.  We like it; it’s like a warm blanket.

But if we do nothing about it, is it really all that comforting?

If we’re honest, most church-going people are quite content to think about this in a very universal way:  “God with us” means “God with everybody”, which in turn means “Everybody’s going to heaven.”  Trouble is, Scripture is pretty clear that this is not the case.

Yes, Jesus came for all.  “God so loved the world,” said Jesus in the famous John 3.16.

But Jesus’ coming really only matters for those who respond:  “…that everyone who believes in him will not die but have eternal life” – that’s how the famous verse concludes.  Everyone who believes in him.  

And those who believe in him do so in practical ways, starting with active faith:  “If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.  For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved” (Romans 10.9-10, NLT).

God is with us in Jesus; that’s what Christmas is all about.  It is through active faith that we are with God.

So when you attend Christmas services, come with faith.  Come with your heart; that’s what Jesus really wants.  He came so that we could be with God.

(If you’re looking for Christmas worship opportunities, you’re welcome at St. Paul’s Church, Nobleton on Christmas Eve at 7:00 p.m. and on Christmas Day at 10:00 a.m.

Merry Christmas!  God is with us…let’s make sure, by faith, we are with God.

God with us…in the beginning

In this worship gathering, we hear a message from John 1.1-14 in which we learn that while God is with us in the challenging seasons of life, he is also with us all the time, because he was with us in the beginning – from the beginning of time. You can watch the whole worship gathering below, or just the message below that.

Verify Your Identity

The weeks leading up to Christmas are busy for most everybody, whether it’s preparing extra services (hello, preachers!) or going to celebratory gatherings or buying the right gifts for people we love.

And in the retail world, especially online, it’s a busy time for fraudsters.  We know of this personally in our house.

A couple of weeks ago, my wife’s Amazon account became inaccessible.  It turns out that someone had successfully guessed her password, turned on two-factor authentication to his or her phone, and then made some fairly big purchases.  We only found this out when we called the credit card company to cancel the card and re-issue it; the outstanding balance on the card was A LOT higher than we ever keep it.

After several days and several calls, the issue seems to be resolved with both Amazon and the credit card company, but the challenge my wife had with this whole ordeal was being able to verify her identity – something that we always have to do when dealing on the phone with any number of organizations.

Whether it’s through passwords or verification texts or multi-digit codes or one’s mother’s maiden name or what-have-you, the ways in which we must verify who we are can be confusing, as necessary as these things are (and, in the end, they’re not always tamper-proof).  Isn’t it good to know, then, that there is one iron-clad aspect to our identity that can’t be messed with?

For followers of Jesus, that’s our identity in Christ.

Identity has become a big buzzword nowadays, not just in terms of commerce, but in terms of nationality, sexuality, pronouns, vocation, and countless other things.  It can be quite confusing, especially for those who are particular about it.  But for people of The Way, for Christians, there is only one aspect of identity that really counts:  we belong to Jesus.

And the really good news is that this identity cannot be stolen from us.  It is given by the Father, and he will not take it away.

If there is any two-factor authentication for our identity in Christ, it’s in how we live.

We don’t engage in good works to earn our identity in Christ; that’s given to us.  It’s all grace.   But we can prove our identity in Christ by what we do.

Whether it’s offering a kind word to the person who serves you coffee, or shovelling a neighbour’s driveway, or inviting a lonely friend for a meal – the possibilities are endless – we prove our identity as followers of Jesus by what we do, by how we live.

So make sure you have two-factor authentication turned on so you can verify your identity as one who belongs to Jesus.

“[L]et your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father” (Matthew 5.16b, NLT).

God with us…in the storms

In this worship gathering, we celebrate the Cross family’s contribution to the life of our church, and hear a message from Acts 27 about how God is with us even in the storms of life. You can watch the message below, or the whole worship gathering below that.

Follow your heart?

“Follow your heart.”  It’s advice we read everywhere, especially on social media, usually accompanied by several sappy emojis.

One would think that its popularity suggests it is a universal truth – and some people think it is just that.

But, honestly, I think that’s why the world is in the ethical pickle it’s in today.

Okay, truth be told, the other extreme isn’t always better, is it?  “Follow your brain.”  While this has a certain appeal to many, when we do what is logical without regard for its impact on others, that can be scary, too.

When I work with people in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®, I often have to deal with questions surrounding the Thinking-Feeling continuum.  Yes, thinkers feel, and feelers think; it’s just that for each, one is more reflexive, preferred over the other.  (This is why working in teams is both very beneficial and sometimes challenging.)

So what’s so wrong with following one’s heart, then, if feelings are legitimate and important?  Well, I don’t think I could put it any more clearly than did the Old Testament prophet, Jeremiah:

“The human heart is the most deceitful of all things,
    and desperately wicked.
    Who really knows how bad it is?” (Jeremiah 17.9, NLT).

The heart was seen in those days not as the seat of emotion (that was the bowels, if you can believe it!), but the seat of one’s life and strength.  To talk about the heart in the Bible was to talk about the soul, the spirit.

And here’s Jeremiah, pouring rain on our parade.  But he’s right.  The Bible illustrates for us time and again just how untrustworthy our hearts can be.  Heck, the news illustrates for us time and again just how untrustworthy our hearts can be.

Should we trust only our minds, then?  All parts of us are under the curse of sin.  But our redeemed hearts and our redeemed minds, in tandem, can be powerful tools for doing the work of God’s Kingdom in the world.  

The trick is to ensure they are redeemed – not just once, but daily!  When we invite the Lord to pour out his Holy Spirit upon us as each day begins, we engage in an ongoing conversion of our lives.  And that prevents our hearts from becoming the “idol factories” that theologian John Calvin wrote about so many years ago.

So don’t focus on whether or not to follow your heart, or your mind.  Follow Jesus, and be filled with the Holy Spirit.  That’s what will make all the difference.

God With Us…In the Wilderness

In this worship gathering for the second Sunday of Advent, we hear a message (inspired by the work of Craig Groeschel) based on 1 Kings 19 that helps us understand that God is with us, even in the wilderness times of our lives. You can watch the message below, or the whole worship gathering below that.

Jesus is not part of the story of Christmas…

We are just completing the first week of the season of Advent.  Advent is a word that means “coming”, and is a four-week time of preparation for the birth of Jesus.  

Among all the traditional Christian ‘seasons’, it was the last to be adopted (even though it’s the first in the Christian calendar).  And originally, like Lent, it was a season of penitence, where people often engaged in physical deprivation as part of their spiritual preparation for the birth of the Saviour.

Nowadays, even the church has transformed Advent into a season of anticipation and joy, perhaps in an attempt to keep up with the secular season of “Christmas” that begins at various times, depending on what store you’re visiting.  (In Costco, it tends to be late September; in some other places, after Hallowe’en; and in others, after Remembrance Day.  The retail side of Christmas still beats out Advent every time, chronologically.

Happily, though, the church has not transformed the season into complete compliance with the world; secularism can have its mountains of presents, but the church still has the greatest gift of all to offer in Jesus Christ.  After all, he is what Christmas is all about.  I saw an unusual post on social media the other day that illustrated this.  It was what I would call an “Orthodox meme”:  it was a meme, in the sense that it was an image that had text around it; and it was Orthodox, in that the image that was at the centre of the meme was an eastern Orthodox icon, depicting the incarnation!  Its message was this:

Jesus is not part of the story of Christmas.
Christmas is part of the story of Jesus.

Whatever you do to celebrate this season of preparation and celebration leading up to the nativity, put Jesus at the centre of it.  He’s not just part of the story of Christmas; Christmas is part of the story of Jesus.

Central to our anticipation of his birth is this truth, prophesied in the Old Testament and proclaimed in the New:  

“Look! The virgin will conceive a child!
    She will give birth to a son,
and they will call him Immanuel, 
    which means ‘God is with us’” (Matthew 1.23, NLT).

No matter what you are going through – and this is a tough season for many – God is with us in Jesus Christ.  That’s what it’s all about.