Page 1 Embracing the Love of God 8. Caring for ourselves But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in God s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life. (Jude 20-21) May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thess. 5:23) Embracing the love of God involves caring for ourselves and all three aspects of our life our spirit, soul and body. 1) Body We are made up of a physical body, a soul (mind, will and emotions) and spirit. The three are interconnected and directly affect each other. What is happening with you physically affects you emotionally and spiritually. In Shakespeare s Much Ado About Nothing, Leonato argues that however much even philosophers pretend to have godlike detachment from the pain and passions of life, they still howl when they get a toothache : For there was never yet philosopher / That could endure the toothache patiently. We are not detached from the physical.
Page 2 Sy Rogers: What s good for the body is good for the soul. Everything we do with our bodies affects our soul and spirit. In one section of C.S.Lewis s The Screwtape Letters, the senior devil tells the junior devil to try to persuade the Christian whom he is tempting to believe that the body is inconsequential: At the very least, they can be persuaded that the bodily position makes no difference to their prayers; for they constantly forget that they are animals and that whatever their bodies do affect their souls. According to the Apostle Paul, if we belong to Christ, our bodies house the Holy Spirit: 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; you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your bodies. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20) To the Romans, he writes: (in the message version ) So here s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life and place it before God as an offering. (Romans 12:1 MSG) So, writes Ken Shigematsu: the care of our bodies through regular exercise, adequate sleep, and healthy eating constitutes a foundational part of our rule, our trellis that supports our life with God. The body, mind and spirit are interconnected. This means that physical practices are also spiritual practices Sleep. Healthy eating. Physical exercise.
Page 3 Spiritual depression (Martin Lloyd Jones) Sleep. Elijah 1 Kings 19:1-8 I lie down and sleep; I wake again, for the LORD sustains me. Psalm 3:5 Have you ever tried to pray when you are lacking sleep? Before Elijah was to spend a prolonged time in solitude and prayer at Mount Horeb, the angel of the Lord had him take not one, but two long naps. Contrast this with the disciples at Gethsemane, who could not pray because they kept falling asleep. Sleep is a gift from God. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives sleep to the his beloved. (1 Kings 19:1-9) For some of you perhaps the single most spiritual thing you could do right now is to take a nap. (John Ortberg) Removing electronics from the bedroom Night-time ritual Not staying up late watching TV / playing video games Sleeping in on the front end (Wayne Cordeiro) Sleep is a central plank to your walk with God it s vital! Healthy eating.
Page 4 As well as letting Elijah sleep, the other thing that God did was send his angels to feed him. There was no Holy Ghost meeting, no singing and dancing, no counselling, no thunderous voice from heaven I am the Lord thy God pull thyself together Elijah. No instead, God called his angels together and asked which ones of you are any good at cooking? When Elijah was at his lowest ebb God made him a meal. The angels made him freshly baked bread. When David was pursuing the Amelekites, they found an Egyptian in the field and brought him to David, and gave him bread and he ate, and they provided him water to drink. They gave him a piece of fig cake and two clusters of raisins, and he ate; then his spirit revived. When Peter had more or less rejected his faith and gone back fishing, Jesus made him breakfast. Best meal ever bread and salad in Kefalonia Eating well and healthily and in the right amounts is an important part of caring for ourselves Hangry = hungry and angry If it s good for the body it s good for the soul Physical exercise I have a friend who is a pastor in another church. He told me recently that he felt God had challenged him to run a marathon. He said it had to be God because there is no way that he would think such a thing. He is not a big runner. I liked Mark Ritchie s recent definition of serious runners
Page 5 People who run, do it because they love running People who jog, do it because they like cake I told my friend this was definitely God s voice and to get his running shoes on. I like it when God speaks to other people in this way. Again, depending on your stage and season of life, this will look different for each one of us. At a personal level, I know my life looks and feels very different when I am exercising, eating well and getting enough sleep. My spiritual capacity rises exponentially. When I am stressed, not sleeping well, not exercising, and not eating right, it is a whole different story. Some of us need an Elijah revelation on this. The way we use and treat our bodies, for better or worse, will profoundly shape our spirit and our relationship with God, others, and life itself. (Ken Shigematsu) It will have a deep affect on your ability to embrace the love of God 2) Soul Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers. (3 John 2) Soul = emotions, passions, feelings (James Bryan Smith) Soul = mind, will and emotions Pete Scazzero s work on emotionally healthy spirituality
Page 6 With one breath God made us human. Yet somehow today we slice out the emotional portion of who we are, deeming it suspect, irrelevant, or of secondary importance. Contemporary discipleship models often esteem the spiritual more than the physical, emotional, social, and intellectual components of who we are. Contemporary psychologist and theologian Thomas Moore writes: The great malady of the twentieth century, implicated in all of our troubles and affecting us individually, is loss of soul. When soul is neglected, it doesn t just go away; it appears symptomatically in obsessions, addictions, violence and loss of meaning. James Bryan Smith writes: When our souls are not cared for they will find ways to let us know. Some of the pain we experience comes from the fact that we have neglected our emotions, refused to pay attention to our feelings, and denied our God-given passions. Julie Nash s message on loving God with your soul: 1. Express your emotions 2. Explore your emotions We must pay attention to what we feel. Much of the time I monitor and judge my feelings before I get a chance to experience them. You shouldn t feel that way, I tell myself the moment anxiety, fear or depression emerges. But I do feel that way. 3. Encounter God in your emotions
Page 7 Psalm 42: Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God. One of the ways that I speak to my soul when I don t feel loved by God, when my soul is downcast, is through music and song, and through telling myself the truth of scripture, thanking God that he loves me. Pete Davies message the other week change the music track. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. (Col. 3:16) Play and recreation When we allow ourselves to experience healthy pleasure, to enjoy the world around us, we are caring for our souls. Joy is a fruit of the Spirit. The more full of the Holy Spirit you are, the more joy-filled you become. Holiness = wholeness, not dourness and sourness. Holy people are fun people. I bet Jesus was a whole lot of fun to be around! He loved a good meal, a glass of wine The sour religious people of his day called him a drunkard and a glutton, which of course he was not but he did know how to enjoy himself.
Page 8 As we grow from children into adults, our sense of wonder and joy and play can diminish. We become productive and focused and time-conscious But God loves it when we play and express child-like joy. Ken Shigematsu tells of the time he was in the park with his son and how he took immense joy in the contagious joy of his son. I can identify with that. I love to see my children having fun, laughing uncontrollably, singing, making up stories whatever it is. When they laugh, it makes me laugh (most of the time). Just as we delight in seeing our own children light up with joy, so too does God our heavenly Father. In our recreation, we simply delight in the company of God, others, and the rest of creation. Journalling. Too serious. Too uptight. Need to r e l.a.x and enjoy the journey. Be fully present and engaged with the good things and experiences all around and to record them and rejoice in them Play is different for every one of us The quote attributed to Eric Liddell When I run I feel his pleasure. Reggie McNeal speaking about this.inspired by the film started to run. But he did not feel the pleasure of God What is to for you? What fills your emotional bucket?
Page 9 What are you going to do to strengthen your emotional health? 3. Spirit When we become Christians, our dead spirit is made alive in Christ. We are born from above. This new birth requires nurture and care to grow well. We need to care for our spirit. Interaction between the body and the spirit are the spiritual disciplines Spiritual exercises that will strengthen you and help you grow. JBS 6 most helpful spiritual disciplines 1. Sabbath keeping 2. Solitude 3. Silence 4. Prayer 5. Study 6. Practising the presence of God God s power is made available to us through these spiritual disciplines God has left us certain activities and exercises that allow spiritual life and power to flow through us. These have been used throughout the ages of the church. We neglect them at our peril. It is all too easy to neglect our lives, these precious gifts over which God has put us in charge. We honour God by caring for the body, soul and spirit with which he has entrusted us.
Page 10 This will ultimately allow us to embrace more powerfully the love of God. Keep yourselves in the love of God. Community group questions and discussion points: 1) What do you think it means to keep yourself in the love of God (Jude 20)? 2) Good for the body, good for the soul. To what degree does the physical affect the spiritual? 3) So here s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life your sleeping, eating, going-towork, and walking-around life and place it before God as an offering. (Romans 12:1 MSG) What does it mean to offer God this life as an offering? 4) Read 1 Kings 19:1-8 together. How did God minister to Elijah when he was spiritually depressed? 5) Are you getting enough sleep? Do you have good nighttime routines to help you sleep? What are you going to change about this? 6) Do you eat healthily? 7) Do you get enough/any physical exercise? Do you think this is important? Do you think this is spiritual? 8) How can we care better for our soul? (Our mind, will and emotions). How does this area of our life affect our walk with God? 9) Consider the area of play and recreation. What do you do, or what would you like to do, that would fill your emotional tank?
Page 11 10) We also need to develop and nurture our spirit. Geoff named six spiritual disciplines that might help us in this area. Which of these resonate with you? Which do you think you need to give more attention to? 11) Based on this message what ONE thing are you going to change, stop doing or start doing?