Vitals | Week 5 | Full Service

health, and we've been looking at as what the Bible says is wholeness is health, and that all the individual parts of being healthy need can't be compartmentalized. They need to all fall into the wholeness that comes from Christ.

And we've been taking that apart, and this is our last one. We're gonna talk about physical health day. And and I know a lot of people when they hear physical health,

they they think, oh, is this gonna be a seminar? This is gonna be this thing? And and we think of physical health and taking care of yourself as as not that spiritual unless we're sick. All of sudden when we're sick or have something, then it's like get all the prayer warriors. It's a spiritual thing. But the truth is the Bible's really clear, and we're gonna see this about about what does it mean to go after physical health. And they do connect. They're all connected. This is, research has said that people with ongoing physical health conditions are more than twice as likely to experience common mental health problems and emotional health problems as those without them.

And when doctors look at chronic disease and depression and or anxiety, they almost always find them together. This is the secular world saying, body and mind are not separate boxes. It's like, wow. They caught up with what the Bible said three thousand years ago.

And and so as we look at it, we're gonna just talk about this idea of physical health. And I know that my journey of thinking about physical health began very young because I was born, and, and I was a sickly kid, asthmatic, allergic to everything on the planet, especially here in Arizona. And,

and so I was sick a lot. Used to miss thirty, forty days of school a year. And,

and so my dad you know, the back then in the seventies, doctors would be like, well, just don't run. Just don't do stuff that's gonna irritate your lungs. And my dad said that's the biggest load of you can't say in church ever. And he got me running and swimming and all this stuff.

And, and so that's how it began. It began my journey began I just didn't wanna be sick because I I, you know, I didn't wanna miss that much school. Actually, I didn't mind missing the school. I missed the recess and my friends and and all that kind of stuff. But, and I missed being in in playing sports. I like sports. So as I got bigger, I kept trading. And then in playing baseball and sports, I I get I was a good hitter. I hit line drives. I I I could pitch. I wanted to throw harder, and I wanted those one hoppers that hit the fence to be home runs, so I kept lifting weights to get stronger. Then I got into high school and I even lifted more weights because I wanted to not only be a better player, I wanted to look better in my uniform for the girls.

And so my journey has always had these different goals, and none of those goals are bad. I mean, they're not they're not bad that that's a a health goal. But as you progress, you realize that what's God's goal? What what what is the purpose of physical health?

And what we're gonna see is the big idea today is simply this, is physical health is about faithfulness, not fitness. Being physically fit might be one of the categories under it, but it's really the goal is faithfulness. Meaning, our taking our care of the body God gave us is a matter of being a steward and being faithful

and to be able to have the best amount of energy and ability to take what he's given us and live out the calling he's called us to.

And that's really what it's for. And when we can get disconnected and run after, we can make the the the secondary little fun goals. We can make the wrong thing the major point and miss the whole thing.

So as we talk about this, I know there's some people are thinking, well, what about if you're like me, only worse. I was born with this kid. Or I've had this accident. Or I've had this problem. Or I have this disease. Or I have this sickness.

It's not about comparison. We're not trying to make everybody like to to to be like an Abercrombie and Fitch model or something like that. That's not what it's talking about. It's it's it's about taking what you have, taking the the the the the the the life you have, the body you have, and managing it to the best.

To be able to not not really just have more years of your life, but to put more of the life Jesus died to give us into those years. That's really what what it's about. And we're gonna see this

today as we unpackage what the Bible says about this, but we're gonna start and frame it in the context of a story of one guy. His name's Elijah. And we're gonna be in first Kings 19. We're gonna start there. We're gonna jump through some other scriptures, and we're gonna end back at that story.

Because in the story of this prophet Elijah, we see all of the weeks that we've preached. You see in this story in his life, he struggles with a spiritual health that's related to mental health that affects his emotional health that's caused or driven or exaggerated by his physical health.

And they all fit together. And here's the problem. All of them get tripped. Don't know which one started at all, but they all affected each other. And that's the thing about health is its wholeness. You have to look at it all to be healthy. And so what's happening in this story is Elijah

was a was a was this prophet of God in a time when Israel was not really following God. They were all really following this God ball.

And and and it was a horrible God. You know, that's like some of the things they did is you sacrifice kids for your when you got a new home to make your home be nice and stuff and things like that. And and and and it was just bad. And it was really pushed by the king and queen who were evils, primarily the queen. She was very strongly

and and and and kind of a a a really scary queen, and her name was Jezebel. The king was Ahab. And what's happening in this passage is in this time, Elijah has come and been this prophet. He comes, brings God's word, says, isn't it gonna go well? He's being faithful.

And then they have this prophet showdown between him and the priests. And these priests of Baal, hundreds of them, they come and he challenges them to say, hey. We're both gonna build an altar and put a sacrifice to our God. We're gonna pray,

and the real God's gonna be the one that comes down and fire from it is gonna consume the to accept the offering.

So that happens all day. You know? Elijah builds his. The hundreds are there over there cutting themselves and doing all this crazy stuff, screaming and crying all day. He just calmly he not only builds the altar. He builds a trench around it, dumps hundreds of gallons of water on his offering to make it look like, how is this ever gonna catch on fire?

And then he's actually doing some trash talking like people do on Super Bowl Sunday. He's like, oh, yeah. You guys are losers. You're probably Seahawks fans. You know, stuff like that. And and they're talking back and forth. And and then he gets to the end, and he prays. And all of sudden, this fire from heaven just comes down and vaporizes this offering.

It's this powerful moment. And all the people go, woah. This is why God did it. He showed up in power because it made everyone realize, wow, we've been unfaithful to the God that's real and has loved us.

So they ask him what do what do they do? They gather up these prophets of Baal. They tear down the altar, and they execute these prophets, these these priests of Baal. So he has this incredible victory. So you think, yay. Finally, he's been faithful. People are turning back to God, all of that.

And then the simple thing happens. Jezebel hears about it and sends him a note that says, may God strike me dead if you're not dead by this time tomorrow. So he's he's faced hundreds of these priests. All the people that didn't serve God and has this incredible victory in the power of God, he gets a note from the queen,

and he freaks out. So either something else is going on in his health, or this is the most terrifying woman that's ever existed on the face of the earth.

I mean, she was probably scary, but there was no reason for him to react the way he did based on the situation he's in. But here's what happens. We're gonna pick up in chapter 19 verse three, and I just wanna read verse three through, eight.

And it says, Elijah was afraid

and fled for his life. He went to Beersheba. That's the end of the promised land and a town in Judah, and he left his servant there. So now he's like, you can't keep up. I'm getting out of here, and he keeps going. Then he went alone into the wilderness traveling all day. He sat down under a solitary broom tree and prayed that he might die.

He's having some mental and emotional health issues right now. He's like, I'm done. He says this, I've had enough, Lord. Take my life from no better than my ancestors who've already died. He's got no hope. He's frustrated. He's tired. He's exhausted. He's acting out of fear. He's running got from God.

He's running from his calling. And he just sits down and says, I might as well die. Have you been there? Are some of you there right now? That whatever is going on just seems like I just can't do this anymore. He's not sure if he trusts God. He's not sure. He's just like, just take me.

And then he laid down and slept under the broom tree. Almost sounds like a kid that has a really bad day, just has a tantrum, and then falls asleep. But as he was sleeping, an angel touched him and told him, get up and eat.

He looked around and there beside his head was some baked bread and hot stones and a jar of water. How asleep do you have to be that someone showed up and started a fire by your head with hot rocks and cooked food

that then they had to wake you up to eat it. He then he he says, so he ate and drank, and then he lay back down again. That's how tired he was. He he carved up, he hydrated, and then went back to sleep.

It says, then the angel of the Lord came again. Now this time it says it's the angel of Lord. That tells you a little bit. This is not a common angel. When you hear angel of the Lord in the Old Testament, that's Jesus pre incarnate before he he he came as a man. He's he's the the the God, the Son.

So it's not just an angel. Jesus himself showed up. And he he wakes him up again. And he says, get up and eat some more or the journey ahead will be too much for you. So he got up and ate and drank and the food gave him enough strength to travel forty days and forty nights to Mount Sinai, the mountain of God.

He didn't tell him where he'd go. He knew that he was running someplace and he goes, you're gonna need more sustenance to go where you're about to go. And it's interesting. It says he came to the cave, and there he spent the night. So he goes to sleep again. So he's having this this breakdown spiritually, emotionally, and

physically. He's obviously physically worn out. Maybe the physical stuff maybe hadn't been taking care of himself for a while, not sleeping, not eating right, and now it finally caught up to him. Or maybe all the mental and emotional stress, everything going caught up to him and he was just not taking but they're all there. And

what does Jesus do? What does God do even though he's running away? The first thing he does is have him take care of himself physically. Because he knows he's not gonna be able to handle the journey, the battle ahead. He's not gonna be able to do it.

And if you've been a soldier, you know that. You're trained to do that. If you're out in the field, my dad knew that. He goes, when you're in the middle of battle, yeah, it might seem like you can't stop it, you better take care of rest and sleep. My dad used to say, eat, sleep, and poop whenever you get the chance. He didn't use the word poop. I had to church it up.

It's like it doesn't matter. If you don't take care of yourself, you're not gonna be able to fight. And that's one of the issues that you and I face. Some of us, the reason we're unhealthy in so many other ways and struggling and wanna sit under a broom tree and die is not really the situation we're in.

It's not taking care of ourselves. And so he does that, and he stops. So so as before I jump back and see how the story concludes,

let's unpackage this a little bit. What's the Bible really talking about when it says to to to take care of ourselves' physical health? Because it's about faithfulness, like I said, not fitness.

Meaning, it's we take care of ourselves for a purpose, for a greater purpose, not just to be in good shape, not just to live longer. Or as as they've said, my dad actually told me this once, he's like, hey. It's not how many years you have in your life. It's how much of the life you have in your years.

That's what it's about. And and and and where do we get unfaithful in that? So before I jump in and talk about some things, I wanna talk about so three ways we're unfaithful and then what faithfulness actually looks like to take care of ourselves physically.

And and the three unfaithful ways is we have these these off ways of what we do. Some of us, what we struggle is we we neglect our body. That's why we neglect it. We just don't take care of it at all. And and that's what that's what Elijah's problem was. He wasn't taking care of himself.

And maybe that's you. And there's a lot of reasons why. His was I think he got so stressed, too busy, overwhelmed, didn't trust, and started to think wrong, so it led to that. Others of us, we just feel like I don't have time. I can't do it. I struggle. A lot of you have kids, and that kinda can make it hard.

But my mom I mean, if my mom had this struggle. She died younger than she needed to be because she never took care of herself physically. But it was because she had an this fixation on it was because she was doing a good thing, just too much of it. She was very gifted and always took care of other people.

But that shouldn't be an excuse. She took care of them at the point of never taking care of herself. So she ended up dying way sooner than she needed to, which made her not be able to take care of people anymore. Maybe that's you. Maybe you're struggling. But like I said, if some of us, we have limitations

that have happened. We live in a broken world where disease happens, sickness happens, accidents happen, things happen. This isn't about perfection. It's about am I doing the most with what I've been given? That's what it is. But some of us, we just neglect our body. Obviously, we're not managing it at all.

And and and and we we we need to. The second one is we reject our body. And that's where we kinda get self esteem. We get this idea that that we just think too much about, like, how I look or how I am. It's somehow that's that's who I am, and and we wrestle with that. And sometimes we have body dysmorphia.

You just don't like the way you look. Body dysmorphia affects us in so many ways.

We go one and two ways. And a lot of times when you have that and you don't like it, it's more like you're wrestling with God. Like, hey. You made a mistake when it came to handing out the bodies. And we did mine's defective. Can I get ahold of the warranty department? What's going on?

And and and you and you and and then you get sad to get and then you end up that usually sometimes when when you reject your body, that'll lead you one of two ways, either to neglect it, like, hey, I do I hate it. I don't like it. I don't care. Or you go the other way to the third thing is that you perfect your body.

So the ways we try to act on it is we try to neglect, reject, or perfect.

Perfect is the one that most people think, oh, they're great. They're they're honoring God. Their their body is a a temple as the Bible says. The problem is they're trying to they're trying to be perfection. You're chasing after something with it. It's it's too much. You're going so far. The problem is, yeah, you've turned your body into a temple,

but the statue in there that is worshiped is you. It's Your endgame is just looking good. Your endgame is fitness. Your endgame is I wanna live forever, man. But do you have God's purpose? Is there a faithfulness to what God called you to or are you just trying to to do this?

And that's where body dysmorphia can force you to that too. When you don't really like the way you are or you wanna be better or you're trying to perfect or you're trying to impress or you're trying to get past shame and all that will drive you to just say, I give up, or it'll drive you to this point. Like, body dysmorphia is where, like, eating disorders come from. And so many like, it's it's a lot of when we think of eating disorders, we think of women. We think of they they get anorexic. They wanna be thinner and smaller. And the problem is body dysmorphia distorts the way you think. You see a woman that weighs eighty pounds and she thinks she weighs too much.

That's a disconnection from the image of God. That's that's not when you reject your body or try to reject your that's not humility. That's having a disagreement with your creator.

And you're and then that and it's usually created by a lot of other issues in your life. That's health is wholeness. Sometimes that that happens. And do you realize the number one climbing category of body dysmorphia problems that's happening in our culture today? It's young men getting illegal steroids.

So opposite of wanting to be so skinny, they feel I have to look a certain way, and they're trying to get bigger and stronger, and they're doing it in the most unhealthy ways possible.

Those are three ways that are super unhealthy. And a lot of times, perfecting your body, people, hey. They're the fittest person. They're not. You might have washboard abs and and and look like like an Abercrombie and Fitch model or something like that or a great athlete,

and God would still say, you are physically unhealthy.

Because if that health, if you are in that kind of shape and have that strength and don't serve the Lord, you are wasting your time. Because that strength was meant to live out the calling and the life that I died to give you. So think about it. Where are you at on those? Do you struggle with any of those unfaithful ways?

Those unhealthy ways? Because what we're supposed to do is respect our body. Don't neglect it. Don't reject it. Don't try to perfect it. Respect it. Respect it. You don't idolize your body, and you don't ignore it. You don't sit there and idolize it. You know, first rule of CrossFit, always talk about CrossFit. It's

not about posting your recipes and the picture of the meat substitute that you made out of mushrooms and tallow. I'm sorry. A lot of you probably do that, so it's not like I'm making fun of you. It's just that I'm making fun of you. So

my daughter said that joke was dumb, And then someone asked, what's tallow? Isn't tallow made out of beef fat? I go, yeah. So I go, how could that be a meat substitute? I go, that was my joke. So and then she got it.

But we need to respect it. That means you don't idolize it. You don't ignore it. You steward it. So what does that look like? What does faithfulness look like? Four things that scripture really kinda talks about I think helps us be faithful in physical health. And the first one is it talks about self control.

Self control, discipline. It's it's learned. It's not inherited. You learn it. But what does he what am I talking about? A couple passages. First, Ephesians five seventeen and eighteen says, don't act thoughtlessly,

but understand what the Lord wants you to So in the greater context, he's talking about trusting God's call in your life and living out. It's like, take your time, your talent, your treasure, your testimony, your life, and live the calling he he calls us to as a disciple, as a follower of him. He says, do what the Lord wants.

And in that context, he's talking about he says, don't get drunk with wine because that will ruin your life. Use bourbon instead. No. It doesn't say that. It says, don't get drunk with wine because that'll ruin your life. Instead, be filled with the holy spirit.

Now yeah. Yeah. Alcohol is something you should be careful of. It's it's definitely on the health list. It's like, he's not at they drank wine. It's not saying, oh, this legalistic if, oh, you put a drop of alcohol on you, you know, heresy. What he's saying is, is it the thing you run to instead of God?

Is it an unhealthy coping mechanism? Is are you doing that like we talked about in the emotional health thing? It's like when we have these struggles, when we think wrongly about God, that leads to thinking wrongly about us and wrongly about what's happening. That mental health

will then lead to emotional health problems because our feelings will take over and we'll follow them as if they are the destination, which they're not.

And then we get all messed up. And then when we're in those moments, we get sick of trying to control the feelings. We run after things that make us feel better. We want the good feel and away from the bad feel. The problem is the things we go after are very temporary. Alcohol is one of them.

I've discovered that that heavy cream with cereal is another one in my life. That's a bad one. You know, the food and and or it's maybe being on the the phone or the screen or sexuality. That's the next verse. Sex and stuff like that. We run to these things because we're we're not healthy.

And then these things make us physically unhealthy.

And really what he's saying right there is if we look at this next verse is this. First Corinthians six twelve and thirteen says, you say I'm allowed to do anything, but not everything is good for you. He's talking about that freedom we have in the grace. That there's things that it's not an outright sin.

He's just saying, but it's not healthy. He says, I must not become a slave to anything. You say food was made for the stomach and stomach for the food. This is true. Though someday, God will do away with both of them. If you have a problem with food, that last statement just freaked you out.

Wait. Where I'm not gonna be able to just eat everything I want in heaven and not get fat? He says we're not gonna need food. We're not gonna have food. If you're really stressed about that, food might be a comfort thing for you. You can't imagine a heaven without it.

But you can't say that our bodies were made for sexual immorality. They were made for the Lord, and Lord cares about our bodies. He talks about how sexual or morality is not just something that God says is bad. He's not like, wrong, shame. He says, it's not healthy.

All these things he's talking about are false coping mechanisms. They're wrong comforts. In other words, what he's saying is anything that controls you competes with the Holy Spirit in your life. Anything that is controlling you

as that is the thing I am. Anything that you say, you pray you go after you go after it. If God prevents you or if you don't get it, you're frustrated with God and you get hope lack of hope that tells you you probably have an idol in your life with that.

And idols are anything, even a good thing, that you make the God thing, and that's always a bad thing on health. And so we need to have self control. In other words, ask yourself, is this fueling my calling or just feeding my cravings in your life? Second

thing is movement. You gotta move. You know, idea of exercise. First Timothy four eight and nine says, physical training is good. He said it's good, but training for godliness is much better.

Promising benefits in this life and life to come. And he says, this is a trustworthy saying, and everyone should accept it. Now a lot of people, when you read that, we because Paul was writing in this Greco Roman world that they were really in. You think we're into fitness. They were really into fitness. I'm mainly into fitness taco into my mouth, but they were really into fitness.

And and and the idea that Jim's everywhere and when he's watching this, he's like, hey. He didn't rip on it. He said it's good to train, but training for godliness is better. We automatically assume what he was saying is, ah, physical fitness is okay. But you know what you really need to do is be really spiritual.

That's not what it's saying. He's saying physical training is good, but you should be training yourself physically for godliness. If it's not leading to following God's word and using your body to serve him, it's no good. It's not that good. It just helps you live a little bit longer.

And so we should think of his physical health and training as training like an athlete to be able to go after the mission. Like I said, a soldier, be able to be in the fight. A lot of us really struggle

with what God's called us to do. I get up and share a message. Here's what it means to be a disciple. And I'm telling you, if you think you are spiritually healthy and you're healthy because you come to church most weeks and sit in a row and this is all you do, I got news for you. You are not healthy at all.

Health is do you know your gifts and you use them to serve God? Are you connected in that way? Are you a part of the body? Do you sit in circles? Are you being the church? Are you being a disciple? Are you letting other people know about the faith? Are we on mission with what God died to give us the mission of, which is actually

where you really will find that true peace and contentment and joy that all these other things you're running after are saying, I don't have time to do what God wants because I'm too busy doing this. All those things you're too busy doing are not healthy, and you'll never get what you want out of them.

They're unhealthy. And any unhealthy coping mechanism like chips and salsa, which I've talked about or or whatever you do, alcohol, every one of those things takes more and more to get less and less from. That's why they kill you physically in the end.

You that's what the bible's saying is is you become a slave to that. And you think that, well, the church is making me do all so I gotta become slave to it. No. Doing what God said is what gives us freedom. Chasing the cravings enslaves you and kills you. Look at the endgame of any addiction.

At first, it's fake. You feel free. At the end, you know it's killing you, and you chase it down anyways. It ruins relationships. It destroys things. We need to have the self control, but we also need to have the movement. In other words, for movement, just it's like, don't go so far. It's like I

've I've been a trainer, and I've been a strength coach, and I'm an athlete. And I know maybe not look like it anymore, but I've done these things. And I'm gonna tell you one thing. The biggest thing I've noticed is that most people, it comes to moving, exercise, trying to be in a little bit better condition, is

you either do nothing or you try too much, which leads you back to nothing again.

You just you don't we're not training to be Olympic athletes. We don't all have to join a gym.

We gotta move. Matter of fact, they didn't have to talk so much about movement back then. You know why? They got up and went to work during the day. Their life was moving. Did you know I I I researched this? Jesus walked 15 to 20 miles a day.

That's like 10 times more than the average person married, five times more than those that were trying to get our 10,000 steps. They didn't have to try to put one of these on.

This this this thing would break in Jesus' day. It's like, can't keep up, man. If there's there's stories in the Bible where they they walked to a town, and if you look up the map, they walked. It was eight miles. It says they went in the morning. They walked. They ministered all day. They were standing and doing stuff all day, and then they walked home.

That's eight miles away, eight miles away. You know what most of us would call that? An Ironman competition or something. It was like the the those guys back then would look at that and go, that was Tuesday.

And so we we but we do need to move. Our bodies are meant to move. Matter of fact, a lot of us, like, I'm just too tired. You realize that's the trap of it all. When you don't move, you get more tired.

I know this because I get through with the weekends, especially if, like, on Monday of when we have, like, Easter, and we do, like, quad a quadrillion services. And and I, and then I go home on Monday, finally.

I've gotten up on a Monday on that day and go, I don't wanna do anything. And I literally have had my watch on. And at 08:00 at night, I look down, and I go, I'm at eight hundred and twenty seven steps all day.

I'd realize, wow. That's true. I have only all day, that's the three trips to the bathroom and the 15 trips to the refrigerator. That's all I've done today. And and and and and but then there's been Mondays after I'm just dead tired, and my wife gets up and say, hey. Let's go do something.

Come on, let's go. And whatever she wants to usually involve shopping and walking around so you're moving. I mean, I'm not going to the gym just moving, but just walking. I re I fight it and then I go and by the time I'm really awake and alert and then I wanna do something else. Some of us, the reason you're so tired

and too tired to move is because you're not moving. We're meant to move. It's good for us. That's why I walk pace back and forth here. I average 1,500 steps a pre a sermon. It's probably because I do this a lot too, but so it's false. I'm cheating. I'm not it's like you when you go, I need 100 more sip. Like,

I made the goal. I used to do that when I was competing with my wife. We'd be watching TV and I she didn't see my arm. I'd be like, I'm gonna beat you. That's useless. And I don't even know why I said it because it's getting later in the day and I'm getting loopy.

Set a goal. You know one of the easiest things? I'll give you a simple thing, the trainer in me. You wanna just get more steps in when even if you're busy and you do a lot of you gotta go a lot of places, lots of errands? Park far away.

Half the time you will drive around and spend a couple minutes looking for a close spot. If you just park far away, you didn't spend any more time, you spent that couple minutes walking. You do that all day, I guarantee you can get over 10,000 steps without even exercising in the way you think.

Just just just just just do it. Another simple thing is every time you eat a meal, walk for ten minutes. Easy. Just walk around. It's great for your digestion too. And these are easy things. They don't take up that much time to move. Because then this other thing is you you gotta get rest,

sleep. 100 and Psalms a hundred and twenty seven two says this.

It is useless for you to work so hard from early morning till late at night, anxiously working for food to eat, for God gives rest to his loved ones. See, a lot of us, we think I can't do all this stuff. I can't serve God. I can't this because I'm too busy. If you're too busy to do what God asked and to do these things, you're too busy. You are doing stuff God never asked you to do.

There are seasons where, hey, this is get a little bit but if if your whole lifestyle is that way, it's unhealthy. It's unhealthy.

And God never asked you that. And matter of fact, the reason you struggle, then you hear a sermon on, well, now I need to get out of the row and into a circle. I should serve. I should give. I should do this thing. How am I ever gonna do that? It seems so impossible.

The reason it seems impossible because what you're doing is you're pulling your plow. You're plowing the field that you're trying to do with your life all by yourself. So it's a smaller plow, and it's not even as big of a field. But it's just you. Jesus says, take on my yoke because my yoke is easy and light.

It's not easy and light because it's do less. It's because he's pulling with you. And when you have Jesus pulling with you, you go further, faster, and have a bigger field and get more done. When you pull by yourself doing your own thing, you're always gonna be more tired. You're gonna be worn out, you're be more stressed, you're gonna be all this because you're doing it alone.

And so you think, well, I gotta go over there to that field and do all those things Jesus asked me to do? Try it, and you'll see that his burden is light. Because in that field, not only does he help, all of a sudden, all the mental health issues, you start clearing up those emotional struggles, you start getting really

wholeness and health, and it multiplies your time.

Research says that anyone that does if you just get just not enough sleep and all you do is get not not sleep where you feel tired a lot, it says you are more emotionally reactive and less able to regulate your negative emotions. Small frustrations feel huge. Anybody who's married knows that.

And you usually know it from what is happening if it's if your spouse is the one getting less sleep because it's you're quite aware of how little things become big things really fast. And then if you're both not, that's why when you have young kids, there's a lot more arguing going on. It's like because everyone's tired.

And when we're tired, we overreact. So we need self control movement, rest, the sleep. And I know we all struggle with sleep. It's like and and and one of the biggest things we struggle with is is we'll do anything to get eight hours of sleep. You could go on there's so many articles out there. Try melatonin.

Drink this herbal tea. You know, whatever it is. And and and and then we try and we will do everything. And Wayne, I've seen I've seen out there that people will do anything, anything to get eight hours of sleep except go to bed eight hours before they have to get up. That's the only thing we won't try.

Go to bed earlier. But here's the problem. If you go to bed and you have your phone or the TV on and you're watching a screen or looking scrolling, we say that's relaxing. I'm gonna tell you again, it is not relaxing you. It is proven medically, scientifically that when you scroll, the light itself

turns off the melatonin effect. It stops your body's natural process of relaxing, just the light. But then you add social media. Social media does not relax you.

It makes your brain pick up, speed up, and for many of us, it even causes low grade stress in the background. It's like elevator music. You don't realize it's there, but it's there. You have, like, Barry Manilow singing in your heart all night. You don't even realize how awful that is. And and so we do that,

and we think and that's why we can't sleep. Put the phone down. I go, what am I gonna do? I I have a hard time.

And I said, you know what? Really, you we need to replace this the the idea to be faithful, the idea to really have wholeness is to be in the presence of God, not just once a week, but to be in the presence of God. He brings the wholeness.

So we need to be in the word. I've said it all the time. Well, here's an idea, especially for you guys. Say, I can't read the Bible. I fall asleep. I can't read any books. I fall asleep. Go to bed earlier and start reading your Bible. Boom. You solve both problems.

You'll get you go, yeah, but I'll fall asleep after I read five verses. Well, it's five verses more than you were reading, and now you're asleep. There you go. I just you're welcome. I just solved your your your your issue. Try it.

God will forgive you that after three verses, the bible hits you in the face because you fell asleep, and he's like, let it roll off. That's okay.

Self control, movement, rest, and the final one kinda pulls them together, peace. Proverbs fourteen thirty says this, a peaceful heart leads to a healthy body. Jealousy is like a cancer in the bones.

You realize there's things when we struggle, when we don't have a peaceful heart. A peaceful heart, that word peace whole heart. A whole heart. It's not about calm, it's about peaceful.

That wholeness we've been talking about. Wholeness in Christ. When you trust God and you have that peace that he brings, and he's he's like, that is good for you, your body. It's actually good for health.

So some of our health struggles are because we're not dealing with these other things, and part of peace comes from actually surrendering to God. When you live a surrendered life, many of us don't even realize that disobeying

God, fighting him as a Christian, sitting out there and keep wanting your own or having one thing. I'll trust you, God, everything, but not this. This is mine.

And when you hold on to that, it's another thing that's like background music. It bores into you. It you. David talks about it a lot in the Psalms. Every time he was living in sin, even though he was a God man after God's own heart, but he would actively

choose to sin and not honor God in ways he says it would be cancerous in his body. He would talk about sweating in his sleep and all. He wasn't talking about it figuratively like that. He literally

said it was making him physically ill. Some of us, the constant illness, the struggle, the source, some of, not all of it, but there is partially some of the things that we struggle with physically are a direct result of disobedience and not a lack of willing to trust God and trying to hold on

to something that says, I don't care what God says. I want this. It will affect you. Be at peace. In other words, the answer for all of this is pursue wholeness in Christ. To pursue wholeness in Christ because it affects us in all the ways if we don't. You know, we worship God with our songs and our prayers,

but we're also supposed to worship him with our sleep schedules, our fork, our feet, our serving, as Roman says, our entire bodies.

And that's the key to physical health. It's also one of the keys to wholeness, which is what the Bible says is health all the way around. So that's what I learned in my health journey, is that why I try to still work out, I've gotten to this point that I've learned something. If I do too little, everything hurts.

If I do too much, everything hurts. If I do just the right, only some things hurt, and they don't hurt as bad. Amen. Amen.

But the reason I do it is not for a sport, not for that. I do it to be faithful to what God's called me to do. I want to be able to stay faithful that no matter how many years I get, I want all the life he died to give me in those years.

And that's why I I do the I exercise. I try to eat better. I just I try to not have heavy cream with cereal at night like I like to. I try to fight that and not let it control me because I want to be a better husband because I'm in better shape.

I want to be a better father. I want to be able to throw my grandkids around, you know, and not have my back go out all the time. I wanna be able to still beat up my son because sometimes he makes me mad and I want him to know that I brought him into this world and I can still take him out of this world. Amen.

Although he's he's figured something out at 26, he looks at me and he says, dad, I think you'd still win, but we're both sharing an ambulance. I go, he's probably right. But I wanna be a better leader.

I wanna be able to do what God's privileged me to do. Starting this church and being here, yeah, there's hard days. It's difficult. It's tiring. But I couldn't imagine my life if God didn't allow me to serve him in this way. And I wanna do it as long as I can, as well as I can. I wanna be a servant of his,

and I wanna be able to do it until he calls me home or he comes to get me. And I think physical health is one of the keys to being able to hear him say, well done, good and faithful servant. And the same for you. And that's really what's happening in Elijah's story as we look at this. If you go back to it,

he's now in this cave. He slept the night again. So now he's had a lot of sleep. He's had good food. He's now ready to have this conversation with God. And and and it says, but the Lord said to him, what are you doing here, Elijah? So that's how he gets woken up. God says,

what are you doing here? Now it wasn't he was shocked you're here. It's not like, hey, Jesus didn't tell me you were coming. I would've cleaned the place up. He he's basically the real question is, why are you here?

And not like, why are you here like I you showed up. It's like, why are you in this place? Why did you come here? How did you end up here? How did you end up so far from me? How did you end up running from your calling? How did you end up wanting to give up? How did you end up so physically

worn out and exhausted and not taking care of yourself? How did this even happen? And he says this. Elijah replied, I have zealously served the Lord God Almighty, but the people of Israel have broken their covenant with you. See, it's like when you are messed up,

it's always something else. It's always out there is the problem. Now I'm not saying that those aren't issues, but we try to say, I am not trusting God and I'm not doing this and I'm not doing that because of what God allowed to happen is what he's saying. And he says, but

the people have broken their covenant with you, torn down your altars, and killed every one of your prophets. I'm the only one left, and now you're trying to kill me. First of all, they did not kill all the prophets.

They're not the people aren't trying to kill them. They actually turned. It was one woman wrote him a nasty note.

So then he says after he gives him that answer, he goes, go out and stand before me on the mountain, the Lord said. And Elijah stood there. The Lord passed by and a mighty windstorm hit the mountain. It was such a terrible blast that the rocks were torn loose. So God's showing his power.

But the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind, there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake, there was a fire, which is interesting, the last thing of this fire. What came down and burned his great victory, he saw the Lord show up in power was the fire. So he sees this fire again, just like at Mount Carmel.

But the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire, there was a sound of a gentle whisper.

When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. This is interesting. God showed all these displays of power, but he wasn't in the wind of the bow. He's trying to show him something. You're messed up in your thinking. And now you think it's all this stuff, and you ran away. And he's stay faithful because you now you think you're alone. You think you're trying to be killed. You think I'm not there for you. You think this. And you think that what I'm supposed to do is always show up in the fire,

in the earthquake, in the we always think if God doesn't show up and shake the ground around me, if the fire of God doesn't come down and pulverize something I need, if God is then where is he? But when it became a gentle breeze, he walked out to hear a little from the Lord. That tells you something about Elijah.

He's been in the presence and heard the voice of the Lord many times. He knew that God was in the breeze, not in the whirlwind.

How about you? Do you know that God wants to be in that still small place to meet you? But if we're physically unhealthy because we're mentally thinking the wrong things, and now we're emotionally unhealthy because we're chasing feels, And we feel despondent, overwhelmed, and burdened.

And now we're like, it's because of that and that and that and that.

We're not listening for his voice. And so he goes out and listens. And here's what God says. What are you doing here, Elijah? He asked him the same thing. But you know what I think he meant the second time? It's kinda like when you talk to your kid

and you tell him what needs to happen. What are you doing? Well, it's because it what you're basically, why are why didn't you clean your room? Well, because blah blah blah blah blah blah. Well, that's doesn't matter. This is why. Trust me. You gotta do it. And then you come back ten minutes later,

the second time you ask, it's he's more saying, why are you still here? It's like, are you still stay sitting here on the couch? Why aren't you cleaning your room? He's he's basically saying, why are you still here, Elijah? He gives the same answer Elijah does.

And if you read, then God just gives him the advice. He tells him he goes on and says, go back the way you came. He says, you need to turn around and go back and get back to the calling. You need to go back to wholeness. You need to go back to health. You need to go back to trusting me.

And he also tells him, because you were never alone. He sets the record straight. You're not gonna die. This isn't the end. Because God always promises it'll be good in the end. In the end. Doesn't say it's always gonna feel good, but he goes, when it's all said and done, it'll be good. And he says, so

if it's not good, Elijah, it's not the end. Do you need to hear God say that to you right now?

Do you need him to know that if it's not good right now, it's not the end? And, yeah, maybe you're having problems out there. Maybe there's physical issues here. Maybe there's something that scares you over there. But the answer is not to run after unhealthy things. It's not to run away from God and run away from your calling and live in disobedience

and ignore that and make excuses. The answer is to go back the way you came and listen to the voice of God. So I ask you, why are you here? Why are you here?

Because what we need to see is the wholeness that comes from God and God alone. That's health. That's the most vital thing in our life. And that's what Jesus was trying to explain to the disciples the night before he died. When he took bread and he broke it,

he said, this is my body broken for you. He took the cup and said, this is my blood spilled for the forgiveness of your sins. He was explaining to them what was about to happen. He was explaining that I'm gonna go die for you.

He was letting them know that, hey, I I know you're not gonna get it because in your world, dying does not look like a win.

But it's not the end because three days later, he rose from the dead. So he goes, even if it looks like death, you don't have to worry because it'll be good in the end. And if it's not good, it's not the end. And what he was saying was you need to trust me.

And what he was telling you and I in this moment, you're not alone. You're never alone. You don't have to worry about all those things. Just trust me and follow me and be obedient to me because here is where wholeness is found. I died. We are whole because Jesus was wholly broken. He was broken so we can be whole again.

And that's what you need to remember no matter what you're going through. That's why he says do this in remembrance of me. He wants us to always come back when we run away. When some of us, you're out in the wilderness right now. You've ran in, like, I'm about to give up, but I can't do one more thing for, Lord. I've I've I've tried. It's not working because you need to trust, not try.

And you need to hear God say, meet me at the cross. And remember, wholeness comes from me and nothing else. And that's why we take this moment. So I what I wanna do is I wanna give us a moment to reflect on Just give us a quick moment. Just close your eyes, and maybe you answer the question to God's posing. Why are you here

in the spot you are in your life? And knowing who he is, some of you need to hear, why are you still here? Where do you need to go back the way you came and step out in faith and actually trust him with all of you, including your body.

Jesus took the bread, he broke it, said take and eat.

He then took the cup that this is my blood spilled for the forgiveness of sins.

I was broken. I poured out my life so you can be filled, so you can be whole. Take and drink.

Father God, I thank you. My prayer is simple for me, everyone in this room, and anyone watching online. May we hear your voice and hear the truth that sets our mental thought patterns correct, that then directs what we do with our feelings, that then we can live out spiritually the calling you've given us in our life,

And that we will be healthy stewards of our body to be able to do it to the utmost of excellence for as many years as you give us. In other words, may we have health that is only found in the wholeness that comes from you. I pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.

Thank you guys for joining us for our online service. You can stay connected all week long on rockpoint.ao and our social media. We'll see you next week.