What makes you feel healthy?

I opened up my list making journal today and the list of this week was, “List all the things that make you feel healthy: Mind, Body and Soul.”

So it got me thinking..what does make me feel healthy? 

I don’t know how many of you are aware of this but this is something I have spent the last 3 – 4 months working on. I’ve been working a lot at looking at myself at the heart level and I’ve spent a lot of time working on becoming healthier physically as well and to wrap them all up in the same boat, I have been working on becoming healthier in my relationship with Jesus. 

Again, I don’t know how many of you are aware of this but I started this year in one of the most unhealthy places I have been in a very long time. Not just physically but spiritually. 

I had gotten to the point that I was living completely for myself and caring more about my own (temporary) happiness than about living in the will of God. I was running in the complete opposite direction of where God was calling me. 

In the first chapter of Jonah, God called Jonah to Nineveh. Nineveh would be similar to a country full of isis. It was not a place people willingly would go.  So Jonah didn’t. Instead, he got onto a boat to head to Tarshish which was about 2500 miles in the opposite direction of Nineveh. “Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up…” (Jonah 1:4)

As this storm was happening, Jonah again decided to avoid it and went below deck to sleep it off. “The captain went  to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us so that we may not perish.”(Jonah 1:6) Jonah goes on to tell the sailors that he worships the Lord and that he is the reason for the storm. They were terrified and the storm continued to worsen. “So they asked him, what should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?” (Jonah 1:11) Jonah told the sailors to throw him overboard, once again in attempt to run from God. They avoided it as much as possible but then prayed for forgiveness before throwing Jonah overboard. “Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.” (Jonah 1:17)

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You see, just as Jonah kept trying to run from God and go in any direction except where God was calling him, I did the same. I hid in all the ways that I could but God continues still to run after me and draw me near to Him. 

In this, I have still failed and will continue to fail because I am human but I couldn’t fail if I wasn’t trying. 

I have learned what makes me feel healthy and chasing after God is the biggest of all of them because let me tell you, there is no greater feeling. 

I am going to share a few of the other things that make me feel healthy just because I think they all go hand in hand with serving Jesus with my time and with my energy. 

I feel healthy when I laugh. 

I feel healthy when I workout daily. 

I feel healthy when I fuel my body with good food. 

I feel healthy when I wake up without an alarm. 

I feel healthy when I do laundry. 

I feel healthy when I have good and deep conversation. 

I feel healthy when I go grocery shopping or fill my car with gas. 

I feel healthy when I am outside breathing fresh air. 

I feel healthy when I not only talk to God but when I actually listen.

 

Maybe what makes you feel healthy is different than me, (heck it should be because we aren’t all the same) BUT I’d really like to encourage you, take a look at yourself and your life and figure out just how healthy you are living and what makes you feel healthy: mind, body and soul.