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“God’s Prescription for Health”Theme: The Daniel PlanScripture: Romans 12:1-2

Things I’d like to remember from today’s sermon:

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The Meditation Moments below are taken from The Daniel Plan Journal which may be purchased in Soul Food

Books.

Meditation Moments for Monday, January 12 – Read John 10:10 – Jesus wants you experience the fullness of life. Your relationship with God enables you to pack meaning and purpose into each and every moment. Jesus says this abundant life in him will be better than all your dreams rolled into one.

In this real and eternal life, every part of you is interconnected: your spiritual health is connected to your physical health, and they are both connected to your mental and emotional health. A problem in one area will affect all the others.

God shaped you with this interconnectedness, so on your journey you must learn to trust that he has also given you the means and methods to maintain the good health necessary for an abundant life. God never intended for you to sit productivity with eternal significance.

What are the resources and means already in your life that will help you achieve your goals in The Daniel Plan?

How would your life be fuller if your were able to reach your health goals? What will you be able to do and accomplish with greater energy and better health?

How has your health hindered you from participating in the life God has for you?

Tuesday, January 13 – Read 1 Corinthians 10:31 – Food is a gift from God, and it is meant to be savored. When you hurry through meals, you tend to overeat, and you miss the point of the gift. Slow down and

Jeff Huber’s Sermon – First UMC Durango – January 10-11, 2015 Page 1

appreciate the tastes, textures, and pleasures that good food can give. Today, instead of eating in your car or standing at the sink, try sitting down for each meal and taking your time.

Meals are moments when you can refocus on God and thank him for providing you with the food you eat. It’s also a time when you can connect with friends and enjoy a meal together, celebrating what God is doing in your lives.

What might happen to the way you experience food if you simply slow down and take time to appreciate each bit as well as the company with whom you eat.

How did your meals align with The Daniel Plan plate today?

Wednesday, January 14 – Read Psalm 28:7 - Think about this: God would not have designed your body to need physical exercise and at the same time make exercise the most grueling, tedious thing you have to do. God knows we are all shaped differently, so there’s an “exercise” out there for every one of us. The best exercise is the one you will actually do because you enjoy it. So what do you love? What sounds like fun? Ask God to show you what it is, and give it a try, even if it takes you out of your comfort zone.

Here’s a good place to start: Move towards joy. If you think of exercise as drudgery, as an ought to in your life, your motivation will disappear. If you direct your energies wisely and do something you enjoy, something you get to do, you will find that motivation comes naturally.

Today journal about a time you had fun engaging in physical activity-as an adult and as a kid. What activities do your enjoy or did you once enjoy before you got too busy?

What comes to mind when you reflect on ‘move toward joy’. Pick a joyful activity and do it today!

Thursday, January 15 – Read Romans 12:2 – You may think transformation of your health begins with physical effort, but the truth is, if you want lasting change in your life, you need to refocus your mind. When you trade your old thinking for new thinking, that’s when transformation starts to happen. Ephesians 4:24 says, “Put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” To renew your mind, you’re going to have to let go of the old attitudes, the old thought patterns, the old images that you have been living with so you can put on the new garments God has for you.

Which of your thought patterns may be unhealthy or untrue? Ask God to transform your mind with his truth.

Dr. Amen wrote a book called Change Your Brain, Change Your Life. How do you do that? What are you feeding your brain that needs to be replaced with truth?

Whatever you focus on is what you move toward. Spend some time writing down the things you want in life and praying that God will change your focus so you can move forward.

Friday, January 16 – Read Romans 15:7 – God accepts us despite our messy lives, impure motives, and irritating attitudes (Ephesians 1:6). One of the ways we reflect God’s love and bring him glory is to accept each other just as he accepts us. This means we accept others’ quirks and look past their faults in order to see a person created in the image of God. This acceptance makes your friends feel safe with you. This acceptance is what you need for support on The Daniel Plan. To have that kind of critical support with your friends, you will need to accept one another unconditionally. This acceptance creates a safe environment where people are not afraid to express their fears and doubts or talk about their struggles and where lasting change starts.


Why do you think people are more likely to change after, rather than before, they find acceptance? How can youreach out with acceptance to a friend or person in your Daniel Plan Group?

Can you recall five events from your past that make it hard for you to believe that God accepts you as you are?

Saturday, January 17 – Read Matthews 6:11 – Notice the Bible doesn’t say, “Give us today our weekly bread” or “Give us today our yearly bread.” God wants you to trust him one day at a time. You don’t need to be concerned about tomorrow until tomorrow. You don’t need to be concerned about two weeks until next week. This means you don’t have to stress about all the future steps necessary to make you Daniel Strong. You just need to focus on what you need to do for today. You can focus on succeeding at The Daniel Plan one day at a time. Jesus said, “So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today trouble is enough for today” (Mathew 6:34 NLT).

Why do you think God wants you to take it one day at a time? Make a list of all your concerns related to your Daniel Plan journey. Now trim the list down to only

those things you need to deal with today.


Theme: The Daniel PlanINTRODUCTION TO THE DANIEL PLAN

“God’s Prescription for Health: What God Says About My Body”Sermon preached by Jeff Huber based on a sermon series by Rick Warren

January 10-11, 2015 at First United Methodist Church, Durango

Scripture – Romans 12: 1-2

1 And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. 2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

VIDEO Daniel Plan Week 1 Sermon Starter

SLIDE God’s Prescription for Health

Today we begin a new sermon series called the Daniel Plan. The big idea behind the Daniel Plan is that our lives, physical, emotional and spiritual, are given to us as a gift from God. We are called to care for each of these parts of ourselves. I have this theory I have been toying with for years, really ever since I started my career in ministry as a youth pastor. One of the challenges in our culture is that we have separated the mind from the body from the spirit. We go to school for the mind, or sometimes to a therapist, and we go to the doctor, or a massage therapist or chiropractor, for our body and we go to church or some other religious practice for our spirit. I find it fascinating that those three major institutions in our world—schools, health care and churches—are all in crisis right now and undergoing radical change. I think the challenge is that that these areas of our lives were never meant to be segmented and separate, but were meant to be seen as a whole.

While I don’t have all the answers as to how we bring all of these together, over the course of this sermon series, and the next one on Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, which is what we will do for Lent, I hope we can begin to see and learn how to bring all the parts of ourselves together to be as whole and healthy


as possible. We do that not only through these weekly worship times but also through small groups that I hope you will join as well as some exercise groups we’ll be starting throughout the week.

As we begin this week I want to invite you to pull out of your bulletins your Message Notes and Meditation Moments. At the top you find one of the scriptures we will use and then some blank lines that I want to encourage you to use to write some things down. Then you will find Meditation Moments you can use for each day of the week. During this sermon series those Meditation Moments actually come from the Daniel Plan Journal so if you would rather use one of those, which have the full readings for each day, you can find them for sale in the atrium as you leave.

I do want to share one caveat with you as we begin. The Daniel Plan material comes from Saddleback Church in Southern California and most of it was written by Pastor Rick Warren. I have found most of the material very helpful and I believe there is something we can learn from most material like this that comes from other churches. I also want to acknowledge that each of us will find things in the material that we don’t agree with and that’s okay. The Daniel Plan is not the Bible and it’s not perfect and there will be things in it that you don’t connect with. I want us to be a church that thinks for ourselves and wrestles with tough questions and asks challenging ones as well. So please don’t be afraid to disagree, but also be open to being challenged to connecting our faith with our mind and body so we can be whole persons.

This week we begin by looking at physical health. The truth is you already know what how important physical health is, and you even know what we should do to take care of our bodies. This is not rocket science. It’s not brain surgery. I’m probably not going to share much that you don’t already know. To get healthy we have to eat healthy and we have to eat an appropriate amount. We have to get moving, like the song from the 90’s said, “You’ve got to move it, move it!” We have to get proper sleep and we have to lower the stress and get more rest in our lives. This is not rocket science. I know this. You know this. There’s nothing I can teach you on that today.

But what I want to do today is to focus on the motivation, the why we should try to be more healthy. Why do we not stick with get-in-shape programs, get-healthy programs, diets, exercise and whatever resolution we made for the


New Year? How many times have you set a resolution to get in shape and a month later it’s out the window? The reason why is, if we don’t have the right motivation, we will not stick with it. We have to be clear on the reason. When we figure out the why in our life, God will always show us how.

To get at the “why”, I want us to look at what God says about the importance of our bodies. Then we will look at a couple of areas for health that you may have never thought of and you won’t find in a nutrition book or exercise programs.

First, let’s look at what the Scriptures teach us about the importance of our physical health. 1 Corinthians 6 is the classic passage on the body where we read these words.

SLIDE 12 You say, “I am allowed to do anything”—but not everything is good for you. And even though “I am allowed to do anything,” I must not become a slave to anything. 13 You say, “Food was made for the stomach, and the stomach for food.” (This is true, though someday God will do away with both of them.) But you can’t say that our bodies were made for sexual immorality. They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies. 14 And God will raise us from the dead by his power, just as he raised our Lord from the dead.

Some things in life are not necessarily wrong, they’re just not necessary. Does that make sense? We’re free to do whatever we want. But not everything is beneficial. And I’m not going to be mastered by anything – I’m not going to let it dominate me. I’m not going to be addicted to anything. Food was made for the stomach and the stomach for food – but God will destroy both. In other words, they’re not going to last forever. That’s not the real reason we’re here.

SLIDE 19 Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, 20 for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.

This passage teaches us several radical counter cultural things about your body. This is the exact opposite of what culture teaches us today, what the media teaches us today about your body. The first thing is this.


SLIDE God expects me to manage my body

I’m not the owner; I’m the manager. God is the owner of my body, but I am the manager. The Bible uses word, “steward.” “Stewardship” is the old English word for “management.” We’re talking about the stewardship of health today. In other words, I cannot blame other people for how I use or misuse or abuse my body. I can’t blame anybody else. I’m the manager. My body is a gift from God, on loan. God owns it and then he loans it to me; and one day I’m going to give an account. One day I’m going to stand before God and he’s going to say, “What did you do with what I gave you?”

We’ve talked about this many times. Life is preparation for eternity, and God is seeing what he can trust you with. What did you do with the health I gave you? What did you do with the mind I gave you? What did you do with the opportunities, the abilities, the freedom, the wealth, what did you do with what I gave you? One of the things God is going to say is, “What did you do with the body I gave you?” I’m the caretaker of my body. God expects me to manage it.

SLIDE My body is God’s property

The Scriptures also teaches me that my body is God’s property. That’s fighting words here in America, because all of us were taught growing up, my body is my own body. It’s my body and I’ll do what I want to with it. God says otherwise, “It’s not your body, it’s my body. I just loaned it to you. It’s not yours because you didn’t create it.”

Everything that you see was created by God and the Creator owns it all. You don’t own anything. It’s loaned to you, just like we have talked about our money and how it all belongs to God. You don’t own your money; its loaned to you for about eighty years. It was somebody else’s before you were born. It’s going to be somebody else’s after you die. You just use it while you’re here. He owns it and he loans it. My body is God’s property. In other words, I don’t have the right to just share my body with anybody, and neither do you and that’s a radical and challenging concept for us in our culture.

We Americans today make a common mistake that the Greeks did, which is called dualism. Back in the days of Aristotle and Socrates and Plato, the Greeks believed in dualism which was about separating the mind and the body and seeing them as independent. They said that what really matters is just your spirit


or your mind and having those right with God. If your spirit is right with God it doesn’t really matter what you do with your body. They devalued the body. In fact, some of them taught the body was evil, so it really doesn’t matter if you mess up your body because it’s just evil. They believed that what really only matters is your spirit.

The Scriptures teach us something different. Your body is not evil but a good gift from God. Your body is holy because God made it. And everything God makes he makes for a purpose. God has never made anything without a purpose. So don’t compartmentalize and say all that really matters is my spirit, not my body. They both matter. It’s a false myth to say that the body and spirit are meant to be separate, because they are not.

Even the church has messed this up a bit in our past, by being uncomfortable talking about sex and our bodies. We have sometimes given the impression that sex and sexuality are not good, but they too are gifts from God and meant to be enjoyed and not shunned or treated us bad. This also has implication for how we treat other people’s bodies, and that we are meant to do so with respect, recognizing that they belong to God.

Our bodies are not objects to be gawked at or objectified or mistreated, but they belong to God. The fact is God owns your body. God’s the boss of my body. We may not like it, but it’s the truth. God owns our bodies and expects us to manage them well, caring for them as holy and sacred.

SLIDE Our bodies will be resurrected after we die

This is another thing we learn from this text and others in Scripture. My body will be resurrected after I die. God never wastes anything. God never wastes a hurt, if you’ll give it to him. God will take even the hurtful things in our lives and turn them around and use them for good. God doesn’t waste anything. God recycles. God says to us, “You think that body I gave you, that’s just it? No, we’re going to recycle it.”

Right now you’re living in version 1.0 – in heaven you’re going to get version 2.0. But you will have a body. Some people think that when you get to heaven you’re just going to be this amorphous spirit, just kind of floating around like “May the force be with you!” Other people think they’re going to be angels. You’re not going to be an angel. Angels are angels, people are people. A lot of


times people, their idea of heaven is white robe, wings, playing a harp, sitting on a cloud. Friends, to me that would be hell! I can’t think of anything more boring than that. Why is heaven all white? Who do you think created color? God did. Who do you think created taste buds? God did! Who do you think created all the sights and sounds and gave us music? God did. Who do you think created all the beauty and gave us eyes to see it? God did. If the world is broken and it’s this beautiful, what do you think heaven is going to be like? Multicolor, extravaganza of smells and tastes and sight like you can’t believe! I don’t think it will be some white-clouded thing.

You might wonder how it’s going to, isn’t it going to work with your body all decayed in the ground? You might be cremated and wonder how that will work. But God clearly tells us we will be resurrected to eternal life and our body will be put it together in version 2.0. God is the Creator of the universe and I’m pretty sure he can do anything if he created the universe.

We also ask this question, “What’s my resurrected body going to be like?” We don’t really know but we do know that after Jesus was resurrected he walked around Jerusalem for forty days, and one time was seen by five hundred people and talked to them. His body actually had some kind of capability to dematerialize because he could appear in a room without walking through the door. That’d be kind of cool, don’t you think?! It would be kind of like Star Trek where we dematerialize and then materialize again, “Beam me up Scottie!”

But everybody recognized Jesus so that gives us a clue that when you get to heaven you’re going to have a different kind of body than you’ve got right now, but everybody’s going to know who you are. You’re still going to be you. You’re just going to be you, version 2.0, with no blemishes, perfect in every form. You’re going to be you in perfect format.

We are reminded of this truth in 1 Corinthians 6:14.

SLIDE 14 And God will raise us from the dead by his power, just as he raised our Lord from the dead.

“And God will raise us from the dead by his power…” This is one of the three reasons why we don’t stick with diets, one of the three reasons why we don’t stick with our get-healthy programs.

SLIDE We use willpower instead of God power


Willpower works for about three weeks, then you get tired and you go off the diet, and you start smoking again, because willpower is not enough to change. Willpower is fantastic in the short term. But the entire time we’re doing something by willpower, that we’re forcing ourselves to do, our natural brain does not want to do. Pretty soon we’re going to get tired and we’re going to let go of the steering wheel and the autopilot of the boat is going to take us back the other direction. That’s why resolutions by themselves don’t last. We need more than willpower. We need God’s power. Willpower alone is exhausting and eventually we get tired.

Whatever our weakness is, we’re going to probably struggle with it the rest of our life. We’re going to need more than simply our own energy. We’ve got to plug into God’s power.

SLIDE We have the wrong motivation

The second reason we don’t stick with getting healthy is that we have the wrong motivation. When the goal is simply all about me, it is usually not enough to keep most people moving forward. We need something bigger than ourselves to draw us out of ourselves. We need a drives that is bigger than, “me,” to get us out of bed in the morning. I can’t tell you how many diets or exercise routines or giving up diet soda I started on simply because I wanted to look good (kind of hard to be any better looking than this but…) feel good, and live longer.

There’s nothing wrong with those goals in and of themselves. In fact, those are all good goals. Those are legitimate good goals. But what we’re talking about today is far deeper than goals like those. There’s far more spiritual significance to being in shape than simply looking good and feeling good. There are other reasons for it. Appearance is not a big enough reason. I discovered that once I got to the size I wanted, I stopped caring. I stopped trying. I stopped doing willpower. Then I’d go right back to my old habits, and old ways. And pretty soon I’m just yo-yoing back and forth. Does anybody identifying with this? I think you know what I’m talking about.

So when I’ve got the wrong motivation, when I’m just using willpower instead of God’s power, I just try to change on my own.

SLIDE We try to change on our own

We have to have the desire and will to change, but when we try to do it on


our own, it isn’t going to happen. We were made for community. We were created for community. We need group support. We have to have a partner or a coach or a support. We need accountability. That’s why we insist as the church, the body of Christ. That’s why during this series we are challenging you to be in a small group.

Why? Because we know we’re not going to make it on our own. We might say that one of these days we’re going to change. If we could, we would; but we can’t, so we won’t. We need help. We’re better together and we need each other.

When I try to change on my own it doesn’t work. I have to have group support. That’s why we insist on everybody in this church being in a small group.

So we read in the Scriptures that God created our bodies. God expects me to manage my body and one day God’s going to resurrect my body in version 2.0.

SLIDE My body is connected to the body of Christ

We also learn from the Scriptures that we are part of the body of Christ. You may have never heard it put this way before, but my body is connected to the body of Christ. In that same passage in 1 Corinthians 6: 15 we read this.

SLIDE 15 Don’t you realize that your bodies are actually parts of Christ?

We also see in that same passage another truth about our bodies in verse 19.

SLIDE 19 Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God?

SLIDE The Holy Spirit lives in my body

This is a profound truth. God puts his Spirit into my body. That means God takes up residence inside you. God puts his Spirit into your spirit, so you are the temple of God today.

If you study Hebrew history in the Old Testament you will find that God, on earth, as always had a dwelling place. First, God dwelt in the tabernacle that was designed according to the specifications he gave to Moses. The tabernacle was the dwelling place of God. Then later God gave to David the specifications for the temple in Jerusalem, which eventually was built by Solomon and later rebuilt by King Herod. God dwelt in the temple, in that building, but the temple was eventually destroyed. Today God dwells in you. You are the temple.


If you were out walking down the street one day and you saw people vandalizing a house of worship and they were breaking the windows of a synagogue or a church and they were writing graffiti on a temple, or a house of worship, what would you do? Would you say, “That’s cool”? Or would you try to stop them or at least call 911? You should not be vandalizing a temple. You would either try to stop them or you would call the police.

Here’s a hard truth for us to accept. We vandalize a temple all the time – our body, by what we put in it, by our sleep schedule and by not taking care of our body. We are vandalizing the temple of God when we don’t take care of our bodies because the Holy Spirit lives in it—in us.

You often here me say that you were made by God to be loved by God. This is the truth we read about from the very beginning of the Scriptures, in Genesis. But we forgot that truth and all of these other truths that our body belongs to God, that we are supposed to manage our bodies, that our bodies will be resurrected, that our bodies are connected to each other as the body of Christ and that the Holy Spirit lives in my body. Our human tendency is to contradict all of these truths which is why we need a Savior.

That’s why there is one final verse I want us to look at in this passage from 1 Corinthians 6.

SLIDE You do not belong to yourself, 20 for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.

That’s one of the things Jesus came to do. Jesus bought your real estate.

SLIDE Jesus bought my body on the cross

Do you know how much you’re worth? If you want to know how much you’re worth, look at the cross. With arms outstretched and nail-pierced hands Jesus said, “This is how much I love the world, and every body in it.”

I don’t care if you’re Buddhist, Baptist, Jewish, Mormon, Muslim, atheist, whatever. Jesus said, “This is how much I love you. I love you this much. I love you so much it hurts. I love you so much I’d rather die than live without you. I came all the way from heaven to do this for you. That’s how valuable you are. Your body is priceless.”


Let me ask you a question. If you owned a million-dollar race horse would you feed that race horse junk food? You’d be crazy to do it, but we put that stuff in our bodies all the time, and we are priceless. You are priceless. You are worth more than a million-dollar race horse. You are the temple of God and the Holy Spirit lives in you. Will you turn to someone near you and say this?

SLIDE The Holy Spirit lives in you! You are priceless!

This is why the Apostle Paul writes these words to the people of Rome in Chapter 12.

SLIDE 1 And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. 2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

This passage doesn’t say offer your soul. It says offer your body – your physical body. You serve God with your body. People often say, “I’ll be there in spirit. I’m not going to be physically present but I’ll be there in spirit.”

That’s a nice sentiment but compare that to when someone is actually present with you in body. Do you notice a difference when someone is there in body and not just in spirit?

Paul tells us that this is truly the way to worship. Did you know that taking care of your health, and then using your body to serve God and others, is an act of worship? Who would have thought that taking care of your body is an act of worship?

I want to get my body in better health. And as your pastor who loves you, I want to get your bodies in better health. Not just so you can look good. Not just so you can feel good. Not just so you can live longer. Yeah, I’m glad for all that. Those are legitimate motives. But because of these six things: God created my body, Jesus died for my body, God’s Spirit lives in my body, I’m connected to Christ’s body, one day God’s going to resurrect my body, I’m expected to take care of my body and one day I’ll give an account for it—those are the spiritual reasons.


Let me say them again: God created your body, Jesus died for your body, the Spirit lives in your body, your body is connected to the body of Christ, your body is going to be resurrected in version 2.0 someday, and you’re expected to care for it in the meantime.

Based on these six facts, can you see how caring for your body is more than just saying, “I’d like to look better”? Taking care of our bodies is meant to be a spiritual discipline. The healthier you are the more God can bless you and the more God can use you.

You’ve heard people say, “When in doubt consult the owner’s manual.” The Bible is in many ways the owner’s manual for you. Nobody knows more about our bodies than God does. And if we will do what God asks, we’re going to have better health. There are all kinds of health promises, health principles, and health programs in the Scriptures.

Psalm 119:73 says this:

SLIDE 73 You made me; you created me. Now give me the sense to follow your commands.

The Bible says in Deuteronomy 32:

SLIDE 47 These instructions are not empty words—they are your life! By obeying them you will enjoy a long life...”

If I stood up here today and said, “I have discovered a new pill that will give you a long life. This pill is guaranteed to extend your life,” would you buy that pill? You’d pay big bucks for it, and if I threw in a free set of Ginsu knives…and said, “But wait! Only three payments of $19.95…. Operators are standing by right now!” You’d pay big bucks for any pill that would extend your life.

The truth is that you don’t have to pay me a thing. It’s all right here in the Scriptures and we’ll give you a free Bible if you don’t have one! There is promise after promise. You can do a Bible study of all the verses and there are many that say, “If you do this, I will extend your life… If you do this, you will have a long life…” It’s all through the Scriptures.

By the way, ninety-eight thousand Americans now are over one hundred years of age. So the likelihood is you’re going to probably live longer than your parents. The question is what kind of quality of life are you going to have? Are are


you going to actually live your life like Moses did where it says he was sharp and he was in full health until the day he died?

By the way, the healthiest place to live, and those with the longest longevity in life in America are Hawaiians. You will live longest if you live in Hawaii and I’m guessing it’s because they hang loose with little to no stress. The second highest longevity is Minnesota. Minnesota! The worst place for longevity – the fifty-first place, all fifty states and the District of Columbia is Washington D.C. You do not want to live in Washington, D.C. as it has the worst health rate in the country.

As I said, you already know about nutrition, exercise, sleep, rest. This is not rocket science. Let me point out to you maybe some unknown health factors that you’re not going to read in any nutritional book. You will find a few of them in Proverbs 3.

SLIDE 1 My child,* never forget the things I have taught you.Store my commands in your heart.2 If you do this, you will live many years,and your life will be satisfying.3 Never let loyalty and kindness leave you!Tie them around your neck as a reminder.Write them deep within your heart.4 Then you will find favor with both God and people,and you will earn a good reputation.5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart;do not depend on your own understanding.6 Seek his will in all you do,and he will show you which path to take.7 Don’t be impressed with your own wisdom.Instead, fear the Lord and turn away from evil.8 Then you will have healing for your bodyand strength for your bones.9 Honor the Lord with your wealthand with the best part of everything you produce.

10 Then he will fill your barns with grain,and your vats will overflow with good wine.


God is encouraging us to trust in him instead of worrying. Don’t get stressed out. Live a tranquil life. Don’t try to figure it all out. Live a straight life of integrity. Have humility. Be generous. Thy is that important? Notice in this passage we read about tranquility – trusting in God; integrity – paths straight; humility – don’t be wise in your own eyes; and generosity – give the first part of your wealth away.

If you live a life of tranquility, integrity, humility and generosity you are going to be in better health. There is a direct connection between your spiritual health and your physical health. So let me just wrap this up with these four words of encouragement that we need to do that will help us be healthier.

SLIDE Trusting God is good for our health

Why? We’re either going to worship or worry in life. We’re going to pray or we’re going to panic. If we pray we won’t panic, and if we worship we’d have a whole lot less to worry about. Trust God. The Bible says in Psalms 116:7, “I said to myself, ‘Relax, because the Lord takes care of you.’” Just relax. The Lord will take care of you. That’s trusting God. Proverbs 14:30 says…

SLIDE 30 A peaceful heart leads to a healthy body; jealousy is like cancer in the bones.

There is a modern proverb which says, “It’s not just what you eat that matters. It’s what eats you.” We can have the best plan in the world and eat fresh, healthy, organic food in proper portions. We can have great workouts every day. But if we’re resentful against our parents and envious of our friends and bitter towards an enemy and guilty about something we did yesterday, it’s what’s eating you. When we say, “She’s a pain in the …” That’s why we’ve got a pain in the …

When we hold onto resentment and bitterness, it’s like taking a poison pill and hoping the other person dies. It’s like a fire. It’ll burn us up on the inside. It’s not just what we eat. It’s what eats us.

There is an issue there that says trusting God and then getting rid of stuff and that leads to number the second thing we can do to be more healthy.

SLIDE Be honest and confessing sin

Being honest is good for us. Confessing sin is good for our health. You could


talk to any therapist who would confirm this truth. We can’t repress it or suppress the broken places in our lives. Remember that sin is simply brokenness between us and God or between us and another person. When we carry that brokenness and hurt around, it’s like carrying dead weight. We have to let it go and give it to God by confessing that sin. We need to express it to God. When I swallow my anger, my stomach keeps score. If we don’t talk it out to God, we’re going to take it out on our body. It’s like putting a bandage over a wound and then never taking it off to air it out or wash it off. The gets infected and makes life worse. We get a fever and other illnesses, and if it does heal it will leave a bigger scar, all because we did not take care of that wound to begin with.

David says this in Psalm 32.

SLIDE 1 Oh, what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sin is put out of sight! 2 Yes, what joy for those whose record the Lord has cleared of guilt, whose lives are lived in complete honesty! 3 When I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away, and I groaned all day long. 4 Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat. 5 Finally, I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide my guilt. I said to myself, “I will confess my rebellion to the Lord.” And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone.

One of the healthiest things we can do is receive the forgiveness of God in our lives. Just throw away that garbage sack. Don’t carry into this New Year all the garbage of last year. Don’t carry all the resentment, fear, worry, guilt, legalism, jealousy and envy and all those other emotions. Let them go and give them to God. Trusting God is good for your health. Confessing my sins is good for my health.

SLIDE Giving generously is good for our health

Giving is good for your heart. Every time I give, my heart grows bigger. Every time I give, I break the grip of materialism in my life. Sometimes we say, “I’m not materialistic.” Look at your check book and your calendar and you will see the truth. Look at how you spend your money and your time and you will see what your priority is. Do I spend it all on me? Am I giving and generous?

There are more promises in the Bible about giving and generosity than any


other subject, because God says I want you to learn to be like me. God is a giving God. God is generous. Everything we have is a gift from God. We wouldn’t take our next breath if God didn’t give it to us. Everything we have, the next beat of our heart, is a gift from God. God says, “Like Father, like son, like Mother, like daughter. I want my kids to be like me. I want them to learn to be generous.” Every time we give generously, we give away instead of keeping and hording, we become healthier.

It is not a mistake that the word “miser” and “miserable” come from the same word. Misers are miserable. There are only two kinds of people in life – takers and givers. Takers are always sad, always mad. Givers are glad. They’re the people who give away. Proverbs 11:25 reminds us of this truth.

SLIDE 25 The generous will prosper; those who refresh others will themselves be refreshed.

This last thing that makes us healthy is a good one to end on.

SLIDE Having fun is good for our health

Having fun, the Bible teaches, is good for your health. Life is meant to be enjoyed not merely endured. God created everything for our enjoyment. Let me tell you from personal experience, if you learn to laugh at yourself you’ll never run out of material. You’ll always have lots of good stuff. It’ll just keep coming. You’ll never run out of stuff at which to laugh. You need to put some fun in your life. Put play in every day. People say the family that prays together stays together. That’s true. But also, the family that plays together stays together. You need to have some fun. It’s better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all. You need to enjoy life.

During the time of the book of Daniel the Persian Empire had taken over the world. The nation of Israel had been captured prior to this time and the entire Jewish race moved to Babylon, most of them to slaves. They were in captivity for seventy years, just like what happened to the Israelites for four hundred years in Egypt. While the Jewish nation is held captive in Babylon, King Nebuchadnezzar commands that his soldiers take the top young men in the Jewish nation and bring them to him. He put them through a mentoring intern program and many of them became royal advisors to the king.

One of the perks of being in the king’s mentoring program was you got to


eat at the king’s table. You got to eat all of his fine delicacies and all his rich food and all his wine and other delicacies. We pick up the story in Daniel 1.

SLIDE 5 The king assigned them a daily ration of food and wine from his own kitchens. They were to be trained for three years, and then they would enter the royal service. 6 Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were four of the young men chosen, all from the tribe of Judah. 7 The chief of staff renamed them with these Babylonian names: Daniel was called Belteshazzar. Hananiah was called Shadrach. Mishael was called Meshach. Azariah was called Abednego.

8 But Daniel was determined not to defile himself by eating the food and wine given to them by the king. He asked the chief of staff for permission not to eat these unacceptable foods. 9 Now God had given the chief of staff both respect and affection for Daniel. 10 But he responded, “I am afraid of my lord the king, who has ordered that you eat this food and wine. If you become pale and thin compared to the other youths your age, I am afraid the king will have me beheaded.”

11 Daniel spoke with the attendant who had been appointed by the chief of staff to look after Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. 12 “Please test us for ten days on a diet of vegetables and water,” Daniel said. 13 “At the end of the ten days, see how we look compared to the other young men who are eating the king’s food. Then make your decision in light of what you see.” 14 The attendant agreed to Daniel’s suggestion and tested them for ten days.15 At the end of the ten days, Daniel and his three friends looked healthier and better nourished than the young men who had been eating the food assigned by the king. 16 So after that, the attendant fed them only vegetables instead of the food and wine provided for the others.

In John 5, Jesus is walking down the street and he sees a man sitting on the side of the road who’s been sick for thirty-eight years. He’s a paraplegic. Jesus walks up to him and he asks an important question. Jesus asks:

SLIDE “Do you want to get well?”


That is a profound question. This man has been sick thirty-eight years. Of course he wants to get well. Yet Jesus still asks, “Do you REALLY want to get well?”

That’s a great question for each of us today. Do we really want to get well? Where do we want to be a year from now health-wise? Do we want to have the most energy, the sharpest mind, the brightest smile, the strongest body that we’ve ever had? Do we really want to get well? I prayer we do. Let’s pray together.

SLIDE Prayer

God, you created our bodies. You sent Jesus to show how much you loved us, all of us, even our bodies. You sent your Spirit to live in our bodies. Help us to never forget that our bodies belong to you, not to us. Help us to remember that our bodies are connected to the body of Christ and one day our bodies will be resurrected. Forgive us for all the times we’ve misused our bodies and abused our health. We commit together to join in a journey of health for your glory. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.


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