Spiritual Health – Andrea Arthur Owan

5 Steps for Spiritual Health and Renewal

I’ll begin this blog post with the same question I asked last week: Does your spiritual life feel non-existent, bland, or in dire need of a spiritual revival?

Then I went on to discuss how living solely on daily devotionals can cause your spiritual life to degrade to blah.

But what else might be missing in your spiritual life? How can you improve your spiritual health and be renewed?

That’s what we’ll look at today.

Feeling Disenchanted with your Christian Life?

Many Christians find their initial fervor in the faith wanes after a few years, and their hearts feel a little dulled. If you find yourself facing that dilemma, rather than just consider it normal, or trying to brush it aside, or convincing yourself that your spiritual life is really okay, you should ask yourself the following questions:

Are you consistently listening to or watching good, solid Bible preaching? The kind that challenges and stretches you; reinforces your faith. Gets you excited, or even convicted.

Just as daily physical nourishment is required for good health, you need to feed yourself with the solid word of God for your spiritual well being. No offense to the power of positive thinking crowd, but that kind of preaching doesn’t delve deeply enough into the meat of the gospels. The whole Bible. Find a good Christian radio station to listen to, a television or streaming program with strong, biblical preaching to watch.

Do you have a circle of strong Christian friends you fellowship with regularly?

Iron sharpens iron, and this fact can’t be missed, or dismissed. Even Jesus had his twelve and then his inner three, although the joke is that He had Peter, James and John follow Him around because they were the most likely to get in trouble, and He had to keep an eye on them.

Belonging to a solid, Bible-teaching congregation is critical to spiritual health. Find one and become an active participant.

Find a Bible study group and be sensitive to others that you feel connected to. Seek them out. Join them for coffee or lunch. Get your hearts knit together. You don’t need an army of them. Two or three friends that stick together, lift each other up, make you feel safe and blessed are what you need.

I wouldn’t be able to survive without mine.

Have you been baptized?

Getting Holy water dribbled on you as a clueless baby is a lot different than taking the full plunge in front of witnesses as an adult.

You’re making a statement, a formal commitment to Jesus Christ. Proclaiming yourself to be a follower. It’s a serious matter and incredibly joyful and freeing event.

Your church doesn’t submerse? It doesn’t have to be the Jordan River. Ask a pastor to join you and some friends in a backyard pool.

Are you partaking of Communion?

Every time you gather with other believers to profess Christ’s body and blood given in sacrifice for Christians, you are remembering the Lord and what He has done for you, and everyone else gathered there. It is a community event. It means you accept Him as your groom as He proposes to you, His bride.

It is also a time of introspection, since no one should come to the Lord’s Table without a repentant heart.

And let me go out on a limb here and say that I believe it to be perfectly acceptable to pour yourself a small glass of grape juice, (or wine), and snag a small piece of bread or a cracker (as a side note: the bread Jesus used would have been unleavened, not some fluffy loaf we think of), open your Bible to the passages on the Last Supper or verses remembering that event, pray fervently, and partake of Communion on your own.

Or ask a friend to join you. My husband and I and another couple did just that a couple of weeks ago, as we sat in our living room watching a live stream worship service that included Communion. The pastor encouraged it. And it was a particular joy to celebrate it with dear friends in this continued COVID distancing.

I know. I’m going to get some flack on that one, especially from denominations that believe only a priest is allowed to bless the elements, and that they must be properly blessed before consumption. If you are horrified at what I’ve said, please leave a comment and tell me why you believe that to be true. And please back it up by Bible references, not extra-biblical writing.

Finally, do you have an active prayer life?

After reading and studying His word, this is the primary way to connect with the Savior.

There is nothing like reading Scripture, praying it, praying for yourself, others, the body of Christ, your leaders, your neighbors, your friends and your enemies. And seeing those prayers answered, whether yes or no. It’s life changing. Like walking with God in the cool of the day. Pouring your aching heart out to Him. Getting down and dirty and honest about your life.

It’s how life is won—on your knees.

It gives you unexpected revelations, opens your eyes to truth. Helps you recognize and utilize God’s life-giving power.

It helps you understand just how deeply and profoundly and unconditionally you are loved by the Creator and Savior.

Invitation—

If you’re not using any of these steps to strengthen your spiritual life, I invite—and encourage—you to start now. You can jump into all five of them with both feet, or tread more slowly, selecting one or two to incorporate and pursue. But do pursue them!

And if you have another discipline that helps you strengthen your spiritual life, please share it with us in the Comments box.

And if you don’t yet have a relationship with the Savior and would like to know how to have one, text me at 520-975-6109 and leave a brief message. I’ll be in touch. Or email me at:

andreaarthurowan@gmail.com

Easter is a marvelous time to commit your life to Christ!

NEXT WEEK: As we approach Easter, we’ll look at the importance of the Cross. Without it, there is no Christianity.

Until then, take the next steps to deepen and solidify your spiritual life.

Blessings,

Andrea

“Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, jut as your soul prospers.”


Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a health and fitness pro, speaker, award-winning inspirational writer, memoirist, and senior-ordained chaplain (IFOC). She helps people thrive physically, emotionally and spiritually and recover from grief, loss and trauma.

Devotionals: Do You Live on Spiritual Sound Bites?

Does your spiritual life feel non-existent, bland, or in dire need of a revival?

If you answered yes, one possible reason is that you’re trying to live and nurture your spirit only on daily devotionals—hyper-short, spiritual sound bites that are really nothing more than soul snacks.

It’s become more and more of a problem as we’ve taken the easy way out and become a society of sound bite snackers, a reflection of our current bent in society—microwave and fast food, snippets of entertainment, 15-minute news shows (after you account for the incessant, interrupting commercials), Facebook tidbits, Twitter feeds, and out-of-context, twisted quotes.

And through all of that, statistics show that we’re becoming more disengaged, lonely and frustrated with life.

And our souls are taking a beating for it.

What’s the Problem with Daily Devotionals?

Nothing.

And plenty.

Don’t get me wrong. I like devotionals and even get paid to write them. But they can’t sustain you spiritually, and they shouldn’t be a substitute for nurturing yourself with larger, more satisfying and sustaining meals of full Bible reading and in-depth Bible study.

Devotionals simply don’t—and can’t—provide the deep, sustaining nourishment your spirit desperately needs.

It’s like our physical bodies that need to be fed more complex meals to grow and flourish—proteins, carbs, high quality fats. And even if you do choose to snack your way through the day with complete proteins, good fats and complex carbs, you wouldn’t stay healthy very long if you limited your daily snacking to one, fifteen-minute snack and nothing more.

The same can be said of devotionals. While they may help you focus on a single topic and give your soul a little satisfying taste or sample of God’s word, it’s not long before your soul is famished and craving nourishment again.

In order to have a rich and deep spiritual life, like well-nourished and tended soil a healthy plant flourishes in, you need a better, more soul-nourishing sustenance than devotional snacking gives you.

Another problem with a devotional is that the Bible verse associated with it is too easily forgotten. And the verse is often not connected with the broader context of the passage it was plucked from.

You miss deeper meanings. You miss full understanding. You miss the life-giving, life-changing, life growing “meat.”

It’s also like joining a group of people who’ve been in deep conversation about a topic for a while and having to quickly get brought up to speed with the discussion by asking the others what you missed, in order to hang in with them as they chat on. You get the elevator speech, but you usually never feel as though you’ve fully connected to the discussion.

Devotionals + More Nourishing Spiritual Food—

If you want to get to know something or a subject well, you spend time reading about it, researching it. Mulling it over. Going to source material to study it from eyewitness accounts.

If you want to get to know someone well, you spend time with her; get to know her intimately over tea, telephone conversations, heart-sharing moments. You ask her questions about her life history, her likes and dislikes, hopes and dreams. You watch her as she interacts with others. You listen intently to what she says and how she says it.

Like our ancestors knew a hundred years ago, you sit on the front porch with a friend and enjoy an iced tea or checkers and chat. Cell phone off or put away.

Love Devotionals?

If you love using devotionals, keep using them. But consider them snacks, short pick-me-ups in your day, not the main course. They’re appetizers for a larger, more satisfying fare—the whole word and picture of God and His Son, Jesus Christ.

Living off devotionals is spiritually risky. But there are rich, eternal rewards for taking time to immerse your mind, heart and soul in God’s word

Don’t miss out on the five-star meal!

Invitation—

Turn the devotional snack into a meal by opening your Bible and reading the entire chapter the verse was taken from. Learn the context, the before and after. The bigger picture and deeper meaning.

It’s good soul food.

Remember: Living on devotional snacks leaves your soul anemic and sick. If you want to have a satisfied soul and healthy spiritual life, dig in to the whole word of God, every day.

NEXT WEEK: More encouragement on how to have a richer spiritual life than daily devotionals can give.

Until then, make time in your schedule for enjoying the spiritual appetizers AND the main course!

Blessings,

Andrea

“Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, jut as your soul prospers.”


Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a health and fitness pro, speaker, award-winning inspirational writer, memoirist, and senior-ordained chaplain (IFOC). She helps people thrive physically, emotionally and spiritually and recover from grief, loss and trauma.

How to Make the Most Out of Life: Building Friendships

Want to broaden and strengthen your friendships and relationships? It could be one of the most important things you do to make you physically, emotionally and spiritually healthier.

Last month we started a series on developing and building friendships, something all of us need. Even the most righteous and Spirit-filled believer needs someone with skin on her. Even our Lord had His special twelve, and his intimate three. Why would we think we could go it alone?

Last week we looked at taking the first step on that journey: taking your whole person into account. Rather than take a shotgun or dart-throwing approach to friendship building, we need to know ourselves—our strengths, weaknesses, desires and needs—as we embark on friendship finding and building. In a nutshell, we need to discriminate based on that list.

Getting practical and proactive in friendship building—

After you’ve taken your whole person into account and made a thorough personal assessment, you can move forward. Today we’ll look at two suggestions for friendship building.

Get yourself out there!

You won’t make too many friends, or strengthen old friendships, if you don’t get busy and get visible. Some of the best ways are to:

Try something new—a painting or drawing class, taking music lessons, joining an exercise class that gives you the opportunity to interact with others.
Volunteer—join a board that works to achieve something you hold near and dear to your heart. When I volunteered at the local food bank, I had the pleasure of meeting all sorts of interesting people and even having the opportunity to interact with some of them outside of the volunteer setting.
A friend of mine who recently moved to another state got busy joining the local Newcomers Club, a church and one of its small groups, and Bible study. She also has a knack for talking to nearly every new person she meets, so she quickly racked up new friends and opportunities.
Join a hobby group—our younger son, who is 24, recently commented to my husband that he realized the one thing that was missing from his life was a hobby. My husband laughed, probably because he has too many hobbies going. “I really need a hobby,” Cory said. He correctly views a healthy hobby as one that helps him release work stress and engage his mind in different ways than his work does. It’s a win-win physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Find a place to gather with others.

People tend to like having a place to go to meet others, and it needs to be a comfortable place. Your local Mexican restaurant is likely not it. Why? That type of environment is too noisy and too busy to be able to focus on others and share your heart. Some places that make gathering locales are:

Library activity rooms—a writers group I belong to meets every Friday in a nearby library. It has been a fabulous place to meet others and make some new friends.
Quiet coffee shops
Parks
Community Centers
Meet-up Groups
Church rooms available for meetings
House rotation—have others over for tea, lunch or dinner and then ask others to host at their homes, if they are able. That way one person doesn’t feel burdened with hosting every time. We rotate between homes in one of my writing groups. And if someone needs to bow out at the last minute for some reason, another member quickly jumps in to fill that roll. There are only five of us, so it’s a close-knit group.

Think of other places you can meet, or groups you might want to start.

In response to a prompting I felt from the Lord, I started a small women’s group about a decade ago. We met at my home the second Saturday of every month and arranged occasional get-togethers with the family members in our backyard. Grilling, swimming and dining on S’mores made over an outdoor fire pit are quick ways to form friendships! The group last seven to eight years, and we opened our hearts to one another and formed special bonds. We studied the Bible together and prayed fervently for one another. When one of us had family issues or faced illnesses or death, we circled the wagons around one another for support.

As you read this post, does anything come to mind that you’d enjoy or think you’d like to start? Pray about it and about the people you think the Lord would like you to be-friend or gather with.

He knows best what your needs are.

Next week we’ll look at two more ways to bolster friendship building.

Until then, check library bulletin boards, community center activities pages, and Google search for meet-up groups in your area. You’ll probably be surprised to find the number of activities that will spark your interest.

Blessings,

Andrea


Andrea Arthur Owan is an award-winning inspirational writer, fitness pro and chaplain. She writes and works to help people live their best lives—physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

How to Build Friendships: Taking the Whole Person Into Account

In this over-saturated, social media-driven world, we are finding ourselves lost, lonely, depressed and needing to return to the basics of life. (Anyone remember the song with that title by 4Him? I’ll supply the link at the end of this post.)

Building friendships and having a rich life—

First things first—

When you’re looking to make new friendships, deepen old ones, or considering whether or not a friendship has run its course (yes, that does happen), the first thing you can examine is you.

Take your whole person into account.

You’ll want to take a deep, introspective look at the five components of you, as a human being. Those components are:

Physical
Intellectual
Emotional
Social
Spiritual

These five components are needs you have. Needs that—when addressed and enriched—can provide you with a healthy, well-balanced and happy life.

To get started, you might ask yourself the following questions?

What is my current physical (health) state, and what do I need to do to improve or maintain it? What kind of physical activities do I enjoy and does my body respond positively to? What physical activities enhance my other needs?
How can I stimulate my intellectual side and keep my brain and cognitive functions active and as young as possible? (Physical activity is important for this too.) Would I like to learn a new language? Learn to play a musical instrument? Take a gourmet cooking class? An art class?
Would I make new friends and receive more social stimulation if I join a fitness class or a local hiking or cycling group? Would museum memberships or outings stimulate my brain? What about book clubs, or newcomers club if I’ve recently moved to a new area?
Is there a fellowship or Bible study group I could join that would enrich me in multiple areas—intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual? A volunteer position?
Is there something you and a current friend can do together? A friend of mine has a weekly, standing lunch date with another friend of hers. Sometimes they sit for hours and chat while eating. Gathering around a meal is one of the best ways to learn about one another and deepen friendships.

This same friend and I had a marvelous day at the zoo on the first day of spring this year. I’d been lamenting the fact that my boys were grown and gone, and we would no longer celebrate the first day of spring together with a “spring fling” day, when I’d give them the day off from home schooling, and we’d hit the zoo and swings at a local park.

But while languishing in my self-pity, the Lord reminded me that I wasn’t dead yet and that I could still celebrate spring fling day with a friend. We had a glorious time together, and ALL of the animals (except the rhino) were out on full, happy display for us on the gorgeous first day of spring. It was truly a day made in heaven! I even took pictures and texted them to the boys. “You’re at the ZOO!” came the return texts. Sharing the day with them that way resurrected some sweet memories for them. And I made a precious new one with a special friend!

It was a stimulating day physically, (3 weeks post-surgery, I hobbled around in a knee brace), emotionally, intellectually, socially, and spiritually.

A win-win all around!

Your turn—

Spend some time this week meditating on which areas/needs you’re not meeting and jotting down some ideas that could get you going in meeting them. Really take your whole person into account.

And here’s that YouTube video of the song—

Next week we’ll talk about getting out there and finding places to gather.

Blessings,

Andrea

Are Your Standards Higher than God’s?

Most of the stories the group members relayed were full of anguish and turmoil. Pain heaped upon pain. And as I listened to them tell their stories, a couple of thoughts crossed my mind.

It was clear that some had told their stories before. Many times. And a few of them seemed to enjoy telling their stories. I wasn’t sure if they went on and on because they were nervous, or they wanted or needed to be heard, or they had gotten so accustomed to the attention they received when telling the story that they craved it, had become addicted to it.

Certainly, being Christians, they expressed joy in the Lord, and gratefulness for His salvation. But the peace He promises seemed to be missing.

And then there was the shame. The deep, profound feeling of shame they projected over their weaknesses, failures and hurts they’d caused others. Some had confessed their sins and turned from their evil ways decades ago, and yet they still wept over their behavior.

They seemed to focus more on their shame and sins than they did on the dismantling and destruction of their chains. Their cleansing.

They still struggled with feelings of unworthiness.

While they possessed the head knowledge of their new lives in Christ, they clung to the pain and sins of their old lives. They identified them.

They didn’t focus on being a new creature.

They forgot that when God forgives sins, He will remember them no more. As far as the east is from the west is the distance God has removed our transgressions from us.

They didn’t seem to want to let go.

They weren’t going through the process of renewing their minds.

And they were beating themselves up about it.

In short, it comes down to what Dr. David Jeremiah told a young lady who just couldn’t get from the God-forgiving-her-stage, to forgiving herself,

“So your standards are higher and better than God’s?”

Wow! That’s looking at through a different lens, isn’t it? And He’s right. When you stop and think about it, it’s ludicrous what we project onto our loving, tender, long-suffering and forgiving God.

Does all of that sound too familiar?

Can you picture this scenario?

Jesus tells you: “Your sin is forgiven, but I’m going to be banging you in the head over it for the rest of your life. Just so you don’t forget how awful you are and awful your sin was, and how much you owe me for My sacrifice and salvation.”

Can you imagine Him doing that to you?

Well, he doesn’t and He wouldn’t.

So why do we act as thought He does?

It’s becoming more painfully clear to me that so much of our mental, emotional, spiritual and sometimes physical anguish is self-inflicted. And it shouldn’t be that way. In fact, I think it grieves our Saviors heart to watch how we punish ourselves, and others who have also asked for and received forgiveness for their confessed sins.

How about you?

Are you stuck in the self-infliction pattern?
Have you set higher standards than God has for you?
Are you continuing to beat yourself up over some failure you confessed and know you’ve received forgiveness for?
Is your behavior threatening your mental, emotional, spiritual and physical health?
If so, what will you do to change your attitude and behavior this year?
Do you need to confess to Him that you’ve been punishing yourself and seek forgiveness for self-harm?
Do you know anyone who needs encouragement and maybe some enlightenment and correction in this area?

My prayer is that we can all take the Savior at His word, rest in His peace and joy, walk through life with a light step, and reject the self-incrimination that can bind our hearts, minds, emotions and actions.

Let’s make sure we allow God to set the standards for our lives!

Blessings,

Andrea

“Certainly there was an Eden….We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it.” —J.R.R. Tolkien

BLOG SCHEDULE NOTE: As 2019 has dawned, it became clear that, in order to complete my memoir manuscript this year and prepare it for publication, and complete all of the writing set before me, that I would have to reduce my blog posting schedule.

To accomplish that, Free-for-All Fridays will be reduced to once-a-month posts, which will be published on the first Friday of each month.

So I’ll see you back here the first Friday of February, which happens to be the 1^st!

Until then, walk lightly, and be forgiving—of yourself and others.