Deeper Into Health

1 Corinthians 3:16–17 NIV

Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.

Introduction

For all the parents in the room, what is your favorite stage in the life of a chid?

We all have our favorite stage, right?

For me, let me it’s right about 8-11 months. That’s gold for me. Too little to talk back and getting better at letting you know when they need a diaper change.

As I was raising my boys from newborn, to infant, to baby, to toddler, to kinder and now were getting into the preteen with Jaden, I’ve seen that the only thing my boys need to grow in every season is a healthy environment. As long as they have a healthy environment they will continue to grow. Now their environment has a lot to do with what’s going on internally, and also externally.

And that’s what I want to lead with and I want to give you this statement as we get going.

Healthy Things Grow

Last week we dived into the subject of rest, and I do hope that you go back and listen to that message. With a title like “Deeper into Rest” I don’t expect to get a lot of click bait, but that sermon was packed with things you should do. It also is the foundation to today’s subject, which I prefaced last week. We are going to dive into these three areas of health today - financial, physical and emotional.

These are three areas of health that I believe are linked together. There is a locking of arms of these three areas that I want to talk to you about. As one of these get better, the other areas reap the benefit. So by getting better at one of these, you affect the other. So there’s some compounding that happens with these three and that’s why I am excited to talk about that today.

Deeper Into Financial Health

I want to get us started by talking about Finances and how we must be healthy in our finances. Here’s some concerning statistics about money and finances and why we have to get better here:

The # 1 cause of worry and anxiety is money.

70% of American households, which by the way is the richest country in the word, live from paycheck to paycheck. They are one disaster away from being financial collapse.

57% of marriages end in divorce and they point to financial problems as the primary reason.

Listen, there are even MORE reasons than these that I can talk about when it comes to why we need to get healthy in the area of our finances, but I think we can all agree that we want to be healthy in the area of our finances.

So what do we do?

Trust God with Your Finances

Give the first 10% of all of our income back to God. In the Old Testament we see the principle of the tithe as something that preceded the law. Meaning, this was something we saw Abraham do even before he was directly commanded to do. This eventually was brought into the commands, which as we taught last week, were not a means of salvation but as a code of how saved people lived.

In the New Testament, we see a lifestyle of generosity present in the church. The early believers brought all of their resources into the church to further the mission of taking the gospel to all the world. They were funding the mission of Jesus.

At Lighthouse, we continue the work that began thousands of years ago. Sure, the church has evolved over the years, but the mission is still the same:

We people to Know God, we want for them to Find Freedom, we want them to Discover their Purpose and finally, we want them to go out and Make a Difference.

But let’s get back to you and your health. You cannot say you trust God with your finances and it not show up in your bank account the same way you would say that you believe in health and fitness and your bank account shows otherwise.

Nothing about the money you have spent at the bar and fast food restaurants is telling me that you are all about fitness.

Matthew 6:21 NIV

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

So if we trust God with our finances our tithes and offerings will be the evidence of that.

Steward Your Finances

How do we do this? I’m going to make it very plain - stop treating your money like it is yours to spend, and start treating it like it is God’s to steward.

That is a huge shift for many of you. But if you can make this shift, I believe that it will begin to change the way you treat your money.

If you think that your money is yours to spend that is exactly what you will do. You will spend far more than you invest and once it is spent it is never coming back to you.

Proverbs 27:23 NIV

Be sure you know the condition of your flocks, give careful attention to your herds;

Some of you who like to invest needs to change that word from flocks to stocks. It’s essentially the same.

By stewarding our finances we are going to have a plan (a budget), an agreement with our spouse if we are married, and we are going to tell our money where to go rather than let our money tell us.

Let me go a littler deeper, to manage well is to invest well. I’m not just talking about putting money into your savings accounts, the stock market and your 401k. I’m talking about putting your money in areas of growth.

Invest in your personal growth.

Invest into your family by making epic memories.

Invest into things that bring not just a good return, but an eternal return as well.

Be a Generous Person

Proverbs 11:24–25 NLT

Give freely and become more wealthy; be stingy and lose everything. The generous will prosper; those who refresh others will themselves be refreshed.

When Jesus said that it was more blessed to give than it is to receive he was talking about being generous. I believe that when you Trust God with Your Finances and Steward Your Finances, you will grow in your generosity.

If you are not living a lifestyle of generosity then what is most needed is that you get on this simple plan that I am talking about right here.

It goes back to something I mentioned last week, and that is having margin. If you have no margin in your finances you have no room for generosity. So do the things that are needed in order to create more margin in your life.

Finally, I brought this resource with me today that I want you to put into your hands. This simple, small book called Worry Free Finances will give you a game plan to get your finances healthier.

These are going to be on sale right after service. I am selling them completely at cost to you. We are not making a nickel on this book, and as a matter of fact there is some additional spend that it took to get these books here because we see it as an investment into you.

The reason we are selling them is because if I gave it away you wouldn’t read it. It cost you nothing. I also want you to invest into yourself. If you don’t invest into yourself, don’t be surprised when others do not invest into you.

So this small book is only $3. That is it. And it will be available for you to purchase right after service. Get this book. Read it with your spouse, and let’s not just get our finances in control, but as I said earlier, it’s going to improve your marriage, you are going to stop the paycheck to paycheck lifestyle, and money will not be a source of anxiety for you.

Deeper Into Physical Health

What does the bible say about my physical health?

Proverbs 3:1–2 NIV

My son, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commands in your heart, for they will prolong your life many years and bring you peace and prosperity.

Proverbs 3:8 NIV

This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones.

The writer boils down health to making wise choices. Make a wise decision about what you eat, exercise, and how you care for your body.

Now listen, I get that some of what I am about to say is going to go right in some of your ears and out of the others. Especially for our younger audience today. They can eat an entire Hot-n-Ready from Little Caesars, a bag of Takis and drink a Coke and be hungry again in about 3 hours. Maybe less.

As I mentioned that meal some of you started feeling indigestion settling in. If some of you ate that right now you would end up in Urgent Care.

Let me tell you about my last urgent care story.

So we were hosting Pastor Carlos and Amanda, Pastors of Almacen Church back in March. After church I took them to one of our favorite restaurants Bouna Forchetta in Encinitas. I was feeling like having some meat that day so I ordered the Filet Mignon. That sucker was good. That sucker was GREAT. But what it did to me that night was unforgivable. That sucker put me in the ER with the revelation that I had gall bladder stones. I didn’t know I had them, but apparently those little suckers have been living rent free in my gall bladder. So naturally I asked the doctor what to do and if we needed to get these stones out of me, and he said that this could be managed by changing my diet.

Someone say stewardship.

So needless to say, Pastor Josh still enjoys a good steak, but I have to stick with lean cuts that don’t have the same amount of saturated fat that a filet mignon does. We going with New York’s from now on and my portions are smaller.

You need to start to take care of your health with many of the same principles that you would use with your finances. It begins with stewardship.

So how do we make wise choices when it comes to our physical health?

Know Your Season

As I shared a minute ago, your body is going to change, and as it changes so should your diet. The older you get, the more thought is required as you prepare your meals.

Listen to your body. If your body is feeling a certain way go back to the last thing you put into your body and find out why. One day, you have to stop eating like you are 13 years old. As hard as that is, do it.

Knowing your season is wisdom.

Know Your Goals

“You can’t look like a million bucks eating from the dollar menu.”

For me, my watershed moment with my personal health was when we were having our first kid and I found out it was a boy. That was my lightbulb moment. If you knew me before 2010 you would know that the only competition that I was into was Taco Eating competitions. When Joanna got pregnant everything changed and I knew that I needed to prioritize my health, and so I started running, then I started riding a bike and then I put those two together and started competing in triathlons.

Why? I had a goal.

Goals help us move from where we are to where we want to be.

So if you are not where you want to be, set a goal, make a plan and get after it one step at a time and one day at a time.

Your Physical Health affects your Mental Health

On more than one occasion I have had to counsel someone and my best advice was to get active.

I had one young man tell me he had insomnia. When I asked him about his daily routines there was zero exercise in there. So, his prescription was to start exercising daily, and at a certain time of day so that when the evening rolled around his body would be ready to sleep. He happened to live at the top of a hill so I prescribed him hill repeats. Needless to say, insomnia fixed! If you are in a seated position all day and you do not get the blood flowing throughout your body you will have imbalances to your physical health. The lack of blood flow and using your body to get your endorphins going will absolutely affect your mood.

On another occasion a young man was being prescribed antidepressants. So for Christmas I bought him some running shoes so that we could get him training and maybe occasionally experiencing what is called a runners high. How many of you have ever heard of this?

It’s a real thing that is the result of the body producing endorphins while running that becomes a natural dopamine hit to your body.

And even if you don’t get to this state, exercise will reduce anxiety and produce feelings of calm. How many of you can use less anxiety and more calm in your life?

So on that note, let me transition over to our Emotional Health.

Deeper into Emotional and Mental Health

In the interest of time, the two things that I want to tackle head on is anxiety and depression. When it comes to mental health, anxiety and depression have absolutely skyrocketed in recent years. We know this because the pandemic was a big trigger to these two.

What I’ve learned about mental health in recent years, and let me say first and foremost I am a Pastor. I have spent far more time studying the bible than any other book, and theology more than any other subject. What we do with Pastors is we expect them to know far more than what we are actually taught in schools. So let me say that most of my information is through reading, and not in an academic environment. So I’m reading the writings of those in an academic environment, but I myself have not gone to academia for what I am going to talk about.

Of the 7 leading causes of depression and anxiety, only 2 of them are a medical condition.

So my advise from the word of God is only to those 5. If your cause is one of those 2 that are medical, please get professional help. Get the help that you need and know that we love you, we believe in you and we are praying for you.

So rather than get into every cause and possible solution, because we would never leave, let me hit you with what you need to be doing to push back against depression and anxiety.

Life Imbalances

“We were never designed for the sedentary, indoor, socially isolated, fast-food laden, sleep-deprived frenzied pace of modern life.” - Stephen Ilardi, The Depression Cure

We talked about this last week, so I won’t dive too far into this one, but you have got to balance out your life, and get some rest! Some of your issues are the pace of your life. Let me hit you with this verse that I love from Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiastes 4:6 NIV

Better one handful with tranquillity than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.

Less can be more. Unhurry your life, create more margin and get the rest you need.

Isolation and Loneliness

We were not meant to do life alone. That’s why Connect Groups and the Dream Team are such a big part of what we do at Lighthouse Church. We want you to find a family in this church. Now, you can’t be everyone’s friends, but you can be someones friends. You need to find some people here and do life together with them.

Let me give you something to think about when it comes to isolation.

Think about creation. When God was creating everything, he would and admire his work and the bible says, “and he saw that it was good.” But when God created Adam, the bible says that God saw him alone and then said, “it is not good for man to be alone.” Did you catch that? The first thing that wasn’t good wasn’t even the first sin, it was loneliness. God created Adam and right away knew that he needed someone.

Comparing Ourselves with Others

I hope that for those of you who went on a social media fast, you are seeing what it is doing to your mood. Because so many people get into a rut simply by comparing themselves to other people. You are comparing your life with their highlight reel.

You know that is exactly what social media is, right? It’s someone’s highlight reel.

These filters that people put on themselves. These apps that people use to make themselves look thinner, face clearer, teeth whiter, etc.

Now, you do you…

But just remember that you can’t compare your every day life with someone’s highlight reel. Theodore Rosevelt said that “Comparison is the thief of joy.”

I was reading in Philippians when Paul talks about learning how to be content. Being content is something that you learn. It’s something that you need to work at. It’s not automatic, but you should learn how to do it. When you are content with what you have becuase it is what God gave you, you will never get caught up in comparing yourselves to other people and striving for something that is not real.

Conclusion

Now, imagine what this church would look like if everyone started getting healthy in these areas. What kind of person Would you become? how would this affect your family? How would your children change? How would this church change?

2022 can be your year, but you need a plan. Get resources into your hands. Get an exercise app or join a gym. Get in a group and get some accountability I your life.