Pattern Six is Operate on Yourself and Chapter 18 is The Art of Strengthening Yourself in the Lord. The old phrase is “Physician heal thyself.”. I have no idea where it comes from, but I think it some. The author references the exploits of a real-life doctor who took out his own appendix. That took some guts, or rather an appendix, but he was not trying to prove “If you want something done right, do it yourself.” He was trying to improve medicine and prove putting a patient to sleep for an operation was not always necessary. I know I do not want to be put to sleep if not necessary.
I had a dream last night and it was either a message from God to write a book or an overactive imagination. I guess it could be both. My mentor has encouraged me lately to take more time to listen for God to speak with me. I am trying, but maybe I need some help hearing.
In the book, we get a picture of our lives being infected by unhealthy attitudes, toxic habits, and infectious sins. We are exposed to spiritual contamination with can lead to depression, anger, anxiety, discouragement, bitterness, and we cannot even recognize our own behavior as such. Sometimes we need parents, friends, pastors, mentors, counselors, or someone outside ourselves to point out the issue or to help us overcome. But sometimes, we need to use the tools God gave us to fix ourselves.
Our example is David and how in 1 Samuel 23, Jonathan helps him “find strength in God, and in 1 Samuel 30 he “strengthened himself in the Lord”. Three pieces here. One, I like how the author takes two passages and weaves them together. Sometimes I do not see two things lining up that are apart. The second is that Jonathan helped his friend who was in need, by turning to God. Having other Christians in our lives helps us make our lives better and we are to be that for others. Granted it can sometimes be hard to see with a plank in our own eye, but if we cannot see the plank… The third, David learned. David was the man after God’s won heart, but he had one pitfall after another as he led his life and he just kept getting back up and repenting and trying to do better.
The author presents this art of strengthening oneself in the Lord as the greatest spiritual discipline. He breaks it down as opening ourselves up, taking a look, improving ourselves, talking to ourselves, encouraging ourselves, make our own changes, removing an infected attitude or an inflamed habit, and helping ourselves become healthier. As an example, my study of 1 Peter has shown his purposes as encouraging, therefore, to encourage myself, I can read 1 Peter and remind myself of God’s faithfulness.
The tool in all this is the Bible and the action is to read and apply what you read. God has given us the Holy Spirit to help and we can lean on His Word and His Holy Spirit to guide us through the process.
The chapter has more, but I will keep that for another piece.
little d is reading the Harry Potter Books now and is flying through them. We talked about reading the other day and compared reading the Bible to reading Harry Potter or other similar novels. I can read a work of non-fiction pretty quick. My wife takes quite a while to read a novel. (I buy her one or tow a year and they are mostly read on vacation.) I encouraged little d to read the bible and mentioned that I am reading it again and expect to finish in about three years. A novel a weekend or the Bible in three years. Quite a difference.
Big D’s boyfriend was around for some discussion on the pace of our men’s Bible study and when he learned we had covered two verses in six meetings, he said he would need something a little faster. We encouraged him to also read the Bible straight through and I had to explain the cause of my pace. The Bible is hard for me to just sit and read as I have read it through before and studied many smaller pieces and the concepts buried in the action remind me of so many things, I can barely push through a chapter without getting distracted. I am reading to see how the pieces fit in with everything I have learned since the last time I read it through. Not just to see how fast I can read it. The purpose of our Bible study is also not to study 1 Peter so much as use it as a guide to let us dig into the deeper aspects of being a Christian and how we can improve our thoughts and behaviors to align with living our lives for Christ.
The most important aspect of anyone’s life is whether they become a Christian and spend eternity in heaven or not. Christians do not have to behave a certain way after they become a Christian. Unlike other false religions, there is no earning your way in. You cannot undo becoming a Christian by bad behavior, but neither can you gain salvation by being good or better or best or anything short of perfect, and only Christ could be perfect. We do good, we seek to become better, we strive to be the best, not to be Christian, but to be a better Christian.
Hopefully, some good comes from this. Everyone is at a different stage and needs something different, but it all comes from listening to God’s Word and aligning ourselves to it.