More gravy than grave in that spirit.

I was writing a sermon on Mark 14:37-41 and the disciples falling asleep and realized something I hadn't thought about when reading this scripture.

Consider this: Our humanity will pull us down spiritually and can hinder our spiritual impact.

You can't expect to serve God faithfully if you don’t do what you can to keep your body in the proper shape. 

Do we give ourselves margin, space in our lives?

Do we overdo it? 

I’ve been guilty of this?

We also need to realize it isn’t easy to fix. A few weeks back  I was hoping to get a bit of a spiritual retreat and woke up with a migraine. I looked around, once I was able to get up, and found I didn’t have anything to take for the pain. I called over to the people who watch over the retreat and they brought me Tylenol and Advil. I took it immediately and by the end of the day, I was doing fine.

Years ago, I would have refused to take anything saying needed to be tough. I ended up with migraines that would last a month. It wasn’t until a doctor asked me when was the best time to stop an avalanche? The answer was at the top. To stop the one boulder that would roll down, gaining speed and dislodging other boulders until at the bottom there would be no stopping it. She said that was the way it was with my headaches. I needed to take something immediately because if I did I would stop it from becoming an avalanche of pain. She was right and though I have had headaches and migraines since then they have never lasted that long.

The lesson for us in this message is our bodies can affect what we can do spiritually. They affect our moods and our ability to minister. We don’t often realize that taking care of our bodies is a spiritual act. I’m not saying we need to put a gym in the church and put everyone on a diet. However, I believe there is a time in our lives when God will say, You need to deal with this if you are going to grow more.

Let’s be careful also about how we judge how healthy we are. I had a boss once who exercised regularly, followed a strict diet, and was not at all healthy. The blood test that the doctors ran showed all kinds of problems. What kind of irritated them was that my numbers were perfect. I didn’t watch my diet and I have never been thin. The problems were not a result of diet but stress.

So let’s be careful and not judge people spiritually by their outside appearance. Also, we don’t know what God is working at them with and perhaps what you see isn’t the problem God thinks is critical.

This being said we need to realize and sometimes give others grace when they struggle because it may be that there is to steal a line from A Christmas Carol, there may be more "gravy than grave" about their spiritual problems. 

There might be more going on in us because of our body so we need to treat it well.