11. My spiritual activities, (laws, disciplines, and practices), work to improve my spirituality, my spiritual health and my relationship with Jesus.

(Before looking at the questions below, take a few minutes to think about this statement. Invite Jesus to speak to you about what He would like you to notice.) 

Take some time to reflect on your physical, emotional, and spiritual health. How do you evaluate these areas of your life?

When you think of the three areas of health in your life, physical, emotional, and spiritual, is there one area that tends to be more important than the others? Is there one the controls the others?

To maintain our physical health we have doctors, therapists, nutritionists, and trainers. People work at their emotional health with counselors, medications, meditation apps, yoga classes, and self-help plans. Who or what helps you maintain and grow your spiritual health?

How do you think our health, affects our relationships with others, with God?

We typically do our spiritual activities with a purpose in mind. The two primary purposes we usually identify are enjoying God and our relationship with Him and growing into Christlikeness. But what does this growth look like? To answer this question, it will help to clarify what we mean by four terms: personality, emotional health, spirituality, and spiritual health. 

Our personality is the way that we are created, our unique tendencies in how we relate to others. Terms like introvert, extrovert, perfectionist, peacemaker, and so on. Our personality is never without flaws; we can be extreme or unhealthy as an introvert, extrovert, perfectionist, etc. The strengths and weaknesses of our personality can affect our emotional health. Emotional health (or non-health) includes descriptions like, co-dependent, non-anxious, differentiated, over-performing, depressed, stressed, and so on. When we combine the two categories we come up with possible combinations like; co-dependent introvert, over-performing perfectionist, differentiated extrovert, or non-anxious peacemaker. The list is nearly endless. 

Our personality and our emotional health are essential to our ability to hold meaningful relationships with others. The good news is that our personality and emotional health can grow and improve, we can become better and healthier in our relationships with others. 

Similar to our personality and emotional health, we also have a spirituality, which are those unique tendencies that we were created with to help us connect with God, and we have our spiritual health. Spirituality tendencies can include descriptions like contemplative, charismatic, one who connects with God in nature, or one who connects with God in social action, or one who connects with God in Scripture. 

Spiritual health, or non-health, can be described with descriptions like, one who is attached to feelings of God, one who knows a lot but fails to live out what they know, one who experiences peace and joy in their spiritual life, one who  works to earn God’s approval, and so on. When we combine one’s spirituality and spiritual health, we can have an unlimited number of combinations that describe a person; a contemplative who is attached to feelings of God, an activist who works for self-image, a charismatic who is full of peace and joy, a nature-lover who never has enough experiences of God, or a person who reads their Bible to earn God’s approval. 

Just as our personality and emotional health are not perfect, we have flaws and weaknesses in our spirituality and our spiritual health. This is where our spiritual activities become essential. Our spiritual activities connect us to God, to the Spirit, and allow for the Spirit to grow and improve our spirituality and our spiritual health. Without spiritual activities, we will be limited in our spiritual health. 

The good news is that we can grow, the Spirit is willing to lead us in growth, and when the Spirit guides us into health, it will be not only our spirituality and spiritual health that He breathes into us but we will also experience growth in our personality and emotional health. In summary, our spiritual activities are essential for our overall health and wholeness and as our health improves, the quality of our relationship with God and with others will improve also.