BY GREG CRUM
“The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear?” Proverbs 18:14
Did you know that your spirit, the real you, the part of you that is created in the image of God, can help heal your sick body?
Proverbs 18:14 speaks of the importance of healthy spirits inside the bodies of men and women. Even if you have a physical body currently racked with disease, if you are born again, and your spirit is “fit,” you have a hope of realizing the promises of prophecy provided by the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
I Peter 2:24 still applies today, and if we will focus our lives here on this planet on the development of our spirits, we can more easily receive this wonderful truth in our lives.
Last week we ventured upon the idea of spiritual fitness. While all of us have heard of physical fitness, and some even strive to be physically fit, not many today have a good understanding of the need for spiritual fitness in their lives. We just amble through life, thinking that if we are “born again” everything else will take care of itself, and there’s nothing else for us to do except maybe go to church every now and then.
Being “born again” is the most important step toward anyone’s spiritual fitness. If we haven’t chosen to give our hearts to Christ, our spirits are in the worst of cancer-ridden conditions. With that said, there is so much more for us to do to get and maintain our spiritual health once we do get “saved.”
Friends, there is a natural aspect to this life, and we need to give some attention to our physical and mental wellness, but much more, we need to give heed to the condition of our spirits and work to be as “fit” as we can be in this area of our being!
How do we accomplish this? Last week we started to share some tips that will gear us toward spiritual wellness. First, we wrote that it is important to keep our minds centered on the reality that we are not these bodies. These bodies are what we see and feel on a daily basis, and because of that, it is a real temptation to give them more attention.
Our bodies are just one-third of who we are on this Earth; in comparison, it is the least of the three. (In this life, we are spirit, possess a soul and live in a body—I Thessalonians 5:23).
More attention needs to be given to that which is most important, our spirits. Then when our lives are prioritized correctly, things begin to line up.
Secondly, we mentioned that we must understand that just as a body can be unfit, so can a spirit. Our spirits can be out of line with the will of God, we can be lacking in the “fruit of the Spirit” in demonstration in our lives, and we can be clueless when it comes to a huge aspect of the foundation of our spiritual fitness—an accurate knowledge of the Word of God. We must understand the importance of spiritual fitness in our lives, and then we must work to ensure that our spirits are getting fit!
So, those are some of the understandings that we need to motivate us to put in the work necessary to have a fit spirit, but how do we actually get spiritually fit? What needs to be done to strengthen our core and better reflect the nature of God in our lives?
Well, here’s where the parallels with the physical continue.
To be fit physically we know that we must eat right, exercise and rest. Did you know that to be fit spiritually, you must…Yes! That’s correct! You must eat right, exercise and rest. If any of those three areas aren’t tended to properly, we won’t be at our best physically. It’s the same with our spirits. Of course, we are “eating,” “exercising,” and “resting” in a much different way to grow the spirit man!
Brothers and sisters, God desires us to be spiritually fit. The benefits of a fit spirit touch every part of who we are and will help us to better navigate this sin-torn world!