Family Chapel

We've been learning over the past few weeks of how different aspects of your life and (spiritual, mental, physical, emotional) self are interconnected, and that the thriving we hope to pursue is holistic. Therefore it's crucial that we learn to thrive relationally because healthy relationships enhance all our other "healths" (mental, emotional, physical, financial, etc). This Sunday we will look at three main ideas: the essential need for relational health, the foundation of relational health, and the test of relational health.

Mental health is such a complex intersection of spiritual, physiological, emotional, and relational factors that it's hard to give a comprehensive definition, but in general, thriving with mental health means loving God with all of our mind in such a way that we think, feel, and act in ways that are pleasing to God. And we can pursue after mental health as we rightly know who God is, rightly experience who God is, and rightly live in light of who God is. We are able to experience a greater wholeness in our inner thought life as we set our minds on the things above.

In order to thrive with physical health, we need a biblical theology of our bodies. In looking at what the Bible has to say about our bodies, we see that God has created us as embodied creatures, sin has impacted our bodies, Christ has redeemed not just our souls but also our bodies, and that we have the hope of a bodily resurrection. In seeing these truths, we recognize that our bodies are not outer shells that we eventually throw away when we get to heaven, but our bodies are very valuable and important gifts that God has given us to steward well for His Kingdom purposes.

When it comes to our emotions, we tend to fall into one of two errors: we either ignore our emotions or we idolize our emotions. But as we see throughout Scripture, we are called to rightly engage with our emotions in order to more deeply worship God. We do so by identifying, examining, evaluating, and rightly responding to our emotions. And in doing so, the goal of emotional health is not to avoid "feeling bad", but rather it is to bring ourselves as whole people, in both our positive and negative emotions, before God in deeper love and worship.

This week, we begin a 7-part series on Thriving Health in the different arenas of human life (spiritual, emotional, physical, mental, relational, vocational, and financial). If we want to obey the call to thrive, it is important that we strive to be healthy holistically in each of these seven categories. We start this series by first exploring how to thrive with spiritual health. Spiritual health is ultimately achieved when we are rooted in the Spirit. By His grace and strength, He has provided us the means of grace to remain rooted in Him.

As the Apostle Paul closes out his letter to the Galatians, he ends with a call to live the cross-centered life. Rather than living in fear of human rejection or living in love of human praise, we can live the cross-centered life by boasting in the cross and by walking by the Spirit. This cross-centered life will be especially lived out in the context of suffering. But in living the cross-centered life, we walk in fullness of joy with the One who has gone to the cross on our behalf.

I want to include the last verse of chapter 5 (v.26) because I think it fits with the overall message of chapter 6:1-10. Here Paul is explaining the practical outworkings and evidence of a Spirit filled life, and that is to love one another. Walking in the Spirit means the freedom to truly love one another through mutual accountability. This means to look out for one another. But in order to do this with true love, there needs to be personal accountability. This means to check yourself before you wreck yourself (examine your own faith, pride or envy). And lastly, a genuine fruit of the Spirit will produce a persevering accountability. Let us not grow weary in doing good, a very much needed reminder in the season that we are in.

In this letter, the Apostle Paul has graciously reminded us of the freedom we have in Christ and he has exhorted us to live in that freedom. But as we have all experienced, we struggle to live like we’re free. And the reason for this struggle is because we face an internal battle between our flesh and the Holy Spirit - between who we were born as and who we were born again to be. But we can rightly live in the freedom that Jesus provides by crucifying the flesh and by walking by the Spirit.

After defending the doctrine of justification by faith, the Apostle Paul now shows how justification by faith secures freedom in Christ. Freedom in Christ is received by faith in Christ to live as children of God through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. As Paul has already shown in his letter, freedom in Christ is not legalism, which seeks to earn God's favor. But on the flip side, freedom Christ is also not libertinism, which seeks to abuse God's favor. Rather, freedom in Christ seeks to live in God's favor and primarily expresses itself in love for others.

Through His resurrection, Jesus secures for us the hope of Heaven. And the hope of Heaven brings us the hope of restoration. We can look forward to the presence of God and the absence of sin. And by doing so, we can move forward with confidence in our present circumstances by holding on to our future hope. This is our unshakable hope in Christ!