Spirituality is a broad concept with room for many perspectives but for Christians it includes a sense of connection to God the creator and sustainer of life and Jesus the Son of God. Spirituality is about searching for meaning in life, connection with God and with others, and learning to live a healthy alive connected life. Here are ten ways of attending to your spiritual health.
Prayer
Prayer silence and solitude is the back bone of a lively relationship with God. Prayer is learning how to talk to God and how to hear back! Pete Greig the founder of the 24/7 Prayer movement says “I am convinced that prayer is not only our greatest privilege, but also our greatest source of power.” – Pete Greig. Learning to time in God’s presence, with or without words, is a privilege but it also empowers us. Our culture is not at ease with silence and solitude, but our spiritual health depends on it.
Listening
Learning how to listen to God is essential for spiritual health. How to we listen to a silent voice? Spiritual journaling can help. We learn to tune into the inner voice of the Holy Spirit, we try to pay attention to what may seem as quiet as a whisper. Writing down prayers, thoughts, questions, longings and hopes proves meaningful to many people of faith.
Worship
Both private and corporate worship draws our attention away from ourselves to God’s presence, power and plans. Many people find worship reframes their perspective and re-orders their inner world. Praising God opens us to the Holy Spirit, reorders our priorities and redirects our paths. Worship connects us to God on a wholistic level and learning how to worship can take a life time!
Bible
The bible is a unique book, no other book in all of human history has so influenced and shaped people’s lives as the bible has. The writer Ann Voskamp says this about the bible:
“He does have surprising, secret purposes. I open a Bible, and His plans, startling, lie there barefaced. It’s hard to believe it, when I read it, and I have to come back to it many times, feel long across those words, make sure they are real. His love letter forever silences any doubts: “His secret purpose framed from the very beginning is to bring us to our full glory” (1 Corinthians 2:7 NEB).”
Meditating on God’s Word keeps us focused on God, and put our problems and preoccupations into perspective. Meditating on the bible is not easy and takes determination but our spiritual health depends on it, we need to read to allow God to speak to us and guide us personally.
Obedience
Not a popular word in the 21st century? But the bible calls us to obey the commands of God in order to have freedom and life. Psalm 119 puts it like this: ‘I run in the path of your commands for you have set my heart free’.
Putting our faith into practice increases our joy. This is one of the paradoxes of faith: when we submit ourselves to God, we find ourselves freer than when we are ruling our own lives.
Love
Is your aim to live a life of love? Most of us would see that as a good goal in life but we may struggle to put it into practice. Jesus said that loving God and our neighbours as ourselves is the basis of God’s liberating law - ‘do this and you will live’ he says. Surrendering to God leads us to a life of love. God is love, and when we live and serve in Christ, we experience love ourselves. It may not be easy and may require great sacrifices but loving is good for our health!
Trust
Learning to trust the teachings of Jesus and God the Father in the bible, learning to step out in faith when urged to do something by the inner voice of the Holy Spirit, is a sign of spiritual growth and health. It obviously needs wisdom to grow too, and sometimes we need to go on a journey of healing in order to learn to trust. Trusting in God’s guidance strengthens our faith. When we dare to step out in faith, we learn that God is with us wherever we go and that God is more powerful than our fear.
Fasting
Fasting from food for spiritual growth is an ancient spiritual practice that many have found helps them to clear their minds and hearts of clutter and distraction. Some people fast from other things too to make time for spiritual growth. Finding time or space to pay attention to God by giving up something else blesses us beyond measure. We need to guard our hearts as well as our time from distractions.
Service
Reorienting our attitude away from self keeps us on the right track. Following Jesus in serving others heightens our own experience of grace.
Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another's pain, life is not in vain.
- Helen Keller
Family
The bible teaches that fellowship with other believers is core to spiritual health. Church is a place where the family of God meets regularly to encourage and strengthen one another. Spiritual health cannot really be maintained as a solitary journey, or with just like-minded friends; we are meant to be together with those that are different to us, older or younger than us, those that have different gifts to us. Building and being part of a Christian community equips us for sharing and caring, within and beyond that community. The values of God’s kingdom are different than those of the world, so we need the support and encouragement of other believers in order to truly live as Christians in our daily lives.