We had Ronnie Roper, a member of our church who also happens to be with the Gideons International, speak Monday night. He shared about his work with the Gideons, and he spoke on being mentally and emotionally fit. I really appreciate what his organization does, sharing God’s word with people all around the world. And I can’t think af any other way of being fit than through the Bible.
The following are my notes on what I took away from Ronnie’s message. We’ll start with a couple of definitions. What are mental and emotional fitness anyway?
mental fitness: emotional and psychological well-being or overall emotion and psychchological condition
emotional fitness: being able to deal with life’s changes in a positive way; owning your choices and actions and the ability to be who you want to be
Now that we’ve got some simple definitions of these two words out of the way, I’d like to leave you with more of what I was able to take away from his message.
The Bridge
Mental fitness and emotional fitness are closely linked. There is a bridge that connects these two areas of our lives, and we have a lot of say in what type of bridge is built. While it’s important to understand that some people are born with issues that limit their ability to control this bridge, most of us do have a say in the way its built.
Let’s look at the bridges.
The Bridge To Death
This bridge is built with our own selfish desires. These desires might include drugs, alcohol, porn, gambling, overeating, music, sports, television, shopping, gaming, or even social media. (I’ll be writing more on social media addiction later.)
Some of the things on the list above can be okay in moderation, while others need to be avoided at all cost. When we overindulge in unhealthy habits, it negatively affects our overall mental health, which is connected to our emotional health. We’ll talk about these habits more in the future, but for now, we just need understand that unhealthy habits diminish mental and emotional health.
The Bridge Of Life
Ronnie mentioned that we need to spend time in God’s word in order to achieve optimal mental/emotional fitness. He shared a verse where Paul was talking to Timothy about the importance of studying scripture. Let’s take a look:
“Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” —2 Timothy 2:15 (KJV)
So there we have it: The best bridge to build is the bridge of life, which comes from the word of God. When we spend time in the Bible, we see our need to have a relationship with Jesus Christ. We also see our need to continue learning about him and what he wants us to do for him.
We should be giving up our selfish ways, those unhealthy habits mentioned above, and becoming more and more like him. In this way, we can become more mentally and emotionally fit.
Questions
- What does your mental/emotional bridge look like?
- What needs to change?
- What are you going to do about it?
Tips
We need to correctly handle the word of truth. The way that we do that is through study, contemplation, and prayer with an open mind, an open heart, and a faithful life to the word of truth.
In closing, I really believe that if each of us would actually read, study, and apply the scriptures to our lives, we would all be more fit in every area of our lives, including the mental and emotional sides of fitness.
That’s all I’ve got for this roundup of night two of our Fitness Revival. Thanks for checking it out! Be sure to come back later in the week to hear more about our revival.
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To Your Fitness!