The Path vs. The Meadow

Waking through a garden with children is a wonderful mirror of how we can approach the Gospel of the Kingdom.

There’s the man-made paved walkway that someone else laid based on their perspective at the time, their understanding of the journey and possibly laid over an existing pathway from another man from another time using another material.

This way takes less thought or insight and takes you more or less through the journey and still may take you to the destination, provided you trust the intention of the paver and understand the grilling-layers destiny.

Yet Jesus tells us to accept His kingdom like a child.

Children do not walk the paved path through the dense beauty of a meadow. Children meander and wander through every intricate inch of the flora and splendor of the garden. They take their time, delighted at what they find. Each corner a new possibility, adventure, and treasure. They embrace the uncharted places boldly and trust what has been given them to navigate. They also learn by experience which ways take them where they are going and where they are forced to turn around and recalibrate. Each step sharpening their understanding and logic and reasoning.

If they become lost they know to look to the caregivers and cry out for help and guidance, but it does not snuff out their exploration and curiosity. It actually emboldens them when they are given space to wander but security to cry out and met with help and compassion.

It may take a long time to arrive, but when they find their destination they just know, they stop and take it in, and they rest.

Your Outrage is Making you Sick

In the wake of the past three years, I continue to see a shift in the public narrative around what we all have experienced. There are some reckonings coming to light, and some authentic awakenings happening in the lives of people I pay attention to, both in my private life and in the public space. There was no way any of us were going to emerge from the rubble of the past few years without marked change in some area of your life or thought life. That is just the way God works through things.

Another thing I have seen spike, and had hoped to see wane by now is the outrage and anger regarding the fallout of the pandemic and every other wild agenda that followed it. I myself lingered a little longer than I care to admit in the pit of the belly of anger, but a softening has begun to take root in me over the last 2 years and it has helped me to overcome staying there any longer than I needed to. I am sure all of us have found ourselves pinned to an anger or an outrage at some point, the question is what happens if we remain there? What happens if we cannot surrender this rage that stirs up at all things "unfair"? Surely, you must realize that the great injustices of the Covid-19 pandemic were a tiny little drop of injustice compared to what most of the non-western world has endured for a long, long time. Sometimes our wildly blind and blessed existence here in the west really shows our lack of perspective and ability to endure.

Look if there's one thing that the pandemic of 2020 taught us, it is that humans will absolutely NOT live from "The Golden Rule" when it counts. It really doesn't matter what your stance is on how that was handled, you can absolutely sit on either side of any of those arguments and see that we were not, in fact, all in it together. It was every man or every family or every tribe for themselves, period. That is humanity when it is placed in a space of fear. Whether you were fearful of the virus or fearful of your freedoms and rights: that fear created outrage, anger, resentment and self-centered action. It was a much needed wake up call for me, my soul, and my household.

We humans when left to fear and anxiety, will act out of anger primarily. What studies have found to also be true is that sadness, by contrast, decreases anger in our response. In fact, this fascinating study on the neural basis of fear from 2018 suggests that sadness counteracts the anger response that fear incites in humans.

This supports the teachings found throughout the Bible regarding Fear and what it says about Compassion for Others. It also brings to mind a specific Psalm that directs us to put aside Anger and Wrath, in particular regarding those types of "righteous angers" we might feel qualify as "social justice" for example: We are told to "Love Righteousness" and "Hate Wickedness" (Psalm 45:7) as well as "Hate the deeds" of the wicked (Rev 2:6), and there are countless verses that guide us to turn away or hate sin or wickedness without turning those emotions on the person doing them.

I want to focus on a particular message found in Psalm 37, where the type of emotions being addressed are specifically regarding unjust or unfair gain of the wicked and the call to those who are being oppressed or seeing oppression. This Psalm is thoughtful and poetic but also direct in its warnings. It is a lengthy chapter so I will not add it here, but I encourage you, the reader, to pause and read it in its entirety.

We are instructed:

"Do not get upset because of evildoers, do not be envious of wrongdoers.

Trust in the Lord and do good. Live in the land and cultivate faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust also in Him. Rest in the Lord and wait. Do not get upset by those who succeed in their wicked deeds and schemes.

Cease From Anger. Abandon Wrath. Do Not Get Upset - It only leads to evil.

Those who are humble, and who wait on the Lord will inherit the land. "

True Justice can only be carried out by the truly just. There is only one who can carry out justice and is able to be fairly angered and dispense wrath. God is asking us to Trust Him and let Wrath be His. He promises to reward those who can do this.

One important verse I want to note here is verse 8 : "Cease from Anger and Wrath, do not get upset; it leads only to evildoing." God is telling us to let go of anger, rage, wrath and anxiety. We know that these are all symptomatic emotions born of Fear.

If we simply scroll up to verse 5 you can see where he knows this to be true as He is the one who designed us this way "Commit your way to the Lord, Trust also in Him and He will do it." For if we trust in Him, we have no room for fear - and if we have no fear we will have no anger, wrath or anxiety.

So what do we do about what we are learning now regarding sadness? What can we learn about the way God designed us in a way that sadness actually decreases anger in our bodies and minds and counteracts fear?

I would say the answer is Compassion. We need to seek out earnestly compassion for the wicked. Compassion for the oppressors. Not justification or ordaining of their deeds, not enabling of their actions, but compassion for them as people. These are people who are very much deceived, either by those around them, or by the very powers in the air that are bent on their destruction. If we believe God then we know that these people are destined for destruction if they do not turn from their ways, as are each one of us.

If we can see them as lost people in need of truth, we can find sadness in our hearts for them. This goes for everyone: friends, family, enemies, politicians, predators, abusers.

If we can see them for the broken and ruined hearts that they are, we can access sadness for them, we can access compassion for them. If we can manage to do this, our probability of reaching those types of people put into our path greatly increases.

So I am not saying we should all set out to be the Eeyore in the room, instead, we should work our energy away from fear of those who would do us harm and move it towards compassion. At the very least, our benefit is removing the toxic buildup of anger and resentment in our minds and our bodies. How does this relate to our own health?

The Bible talks a lot about how anger impacts the heart - today we know this to be literal and scientifically proven to be true:

1. Damaging to the Heart. “In the two hours after an angry outburst, the chance of having a heart attack doubles,” says Chris Aiken, MD, an instructor in clinical psychiatry at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine and director of the Mood Treatment Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. “Repressed anger — where you express it indirectly or go to great lengths to control it, is associated with heart disease,” says Dr. Aiken. In fact, one study found that people with anger proneness as a personality trait were at twice the risk of coronary disease than their less angry peers.

2. Anger ups your stroke risk. This study found there was a three times higher risk of having a stroke from a blood clot to the brain or bleeding within the brain during the two hours after an angry outburst.

3. Anger problems can make your anxiety worse. In a 2012 study published in the journal Cognitive Behavior Therapy, researchers found that anger can exacerbate symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), a condition characterized by an excessive and uncontrollable worry that interferes with a person’s daily life. Not only were higher levels of anger found in people with GAD, but hostility — along with internalized, unexpressed anger in particular — contributed greatly to the severity of GAD symptoms.

4. It weakens your immune system. If you're mad all the time, you just might find yourself feeling sick more often. In one study, Harvard University scientists found that in healthy people, simply recalling an angry experience from their past caused a six-hour dip in levels of the antibody immunoglobulin A, the cells’ first line of defense against infection.

5. Anger is also linked to depression. “In depression, passive anger — where you ruminate about it but never take action — is common,” says Aiken.

6. Hostility can hurt your lungs. Not a smoker? You still could be hurting your lungs if you're regularly angry. A group of Harvard University scientists studied 670 men over eight years using a hostility scale scoring method to measure anger levels and assessed any changes in the men's lung function. The researchers theorized that an uptick in stress hormones, which are associated with feelings of anger, creates inflammation in the airways.

There is more than enough scientific and medical evidence to convince me that it is more than worth trying to take any residual frustration, outrage or anger at the injustice in this world and turn it into compassion - or at the very least, try to convert it to sadness for the state of things and the state of people who feel they need to treat others this way. Short-term it will help impact your physical and emotional health, and

long-term it could lead to a deeper ability to connect and lead others to really know Love.

A Temple, not an Idol.

Just like you, I have a lifelong history with my earthly body. This tangible thing that houses our software is so integrated to our being that we often mistake it as part of our identity. This is, in all reality, only a temporal form of our body, and yet for many of us we either tend to give it not nearly the care or thought it requires to function properly, or we can hyper-focus and confuse our body with who we are and churn far too much energy and effort into it's maintenance.

This Sunday morning, as I was walking down my hallway steps, I heard the faint whisper "A Temple, not an idol." This struck me as the perfect simple wording for where the long and rocky road of life has lead me today. I have always sought to take care of my body, and my body has never nodded back to me in agreement. Like, not ever.

I will spare the sordid details of decades of trying to 'fix' and 'correct' everything from my body composition to my thyroid via doctors, self-study, detoxes, diets, regular exercise, full blown holistic wellness programs, functional doctors, etc. If it was a thing, I've tried it. I have even helped develop a health coaching program that garnered tremendous results for clients and friends, yet never fully for myself.

Starting in early 2016 my issues collided to take shape as a monthly migraine that would strike me down for 24-36 hours every month without fail. I had been to countless doctors and specialists along the way. My menstrual cycle was a horrible fiery monster that wrecked me for days at a time and left residual damage sometimes as far out as two weeks. I spent years experimenting, reading and seeking solutions. Blood test after blood test, food sensitivities and adjustments. Some relief would come in small doses, but always fleeting. I was able to make a lot of progress with diet and lifestyle changes, but sleep was one of the key things I had not addressed until recently. I obsessed about this so much, I made it my job, I centered my life and my work around it.

Even after 2 years of correcting my broken sleep cycle and quality, I still was coming up with blood tests showing estrogen dominance, extremely high antibody count in my thyroid and dysfunction.

My migraines did not resolve until I finally surrendered the burden of my body unto the Lord. When I recalibrated my walk to be beside Jesus, something immediately changed in me. A wave of knowing, of peace, and of satiety that I have never previously felt just emerged and rushed over me. I still sit some days in awe of how hard I worked all of that time, and how elusive this was until the day I stopped working. The day I stared trusting.

I have not had a migraine since June of 2022 and that is a monumental change for me. I finally completed the first extended water fast in my life of 14-days and was able to see tremendous results in my bloodwork.

Today I have a healthier outlook on what it means to take care of my Temple rather than chase after the idol of health. Our time here on earth is fleeting, and we should spend most of that time building and seeking and resting in the eternal, yet for us to obey the commands given of endurance so that we may finish the race well, we also need to care for the bodies created and given to us here. I do see a real need of balance in this area, particularly in the western church body. Our fellowship often revolves around food, and there is so much sitting in study, and sermon. There is a reason we are told to fast, most of which is to impact our spirit, but there is also a physical element as well. The One who designed our body also knows exactly the way to tap into the fullest potential that it has.

Fasting has tremendous benefits, both physical and spiritual. There is a clarity, focus and ability to connect with God that is enhanced by fasting. Fasting is mentioned as a means to strengthen prayer (Ezra 8:23), to seek God's guidance (Judges 20:26), to seek deliverance or protection (2 Chron 20:3-4), and to repent and return to God (1 Sam 7:6). There are also incredible longevity, energetic, and kinetic benefits.

If we are to endure and run the race (2 Tim 4:7, Heb 12:2) Faith is required and goes a long way regardless of physicality. However, we are called to be a witness, to be productive for the Kingdom here through our lives. This doesn't mean boasting in physical prowess, but it does mean humbly respecting the vessel which we were given to operate from, that we were given in order that we might invite the Holy Spirit to Dwell in with us and guide us on our walk.

I believe we can take this seriously with reverence without making it an idol in our hearts. Leading by example, there are so many ways which our Creator intended our physical bodies to interact with the rest of His creation. Over the next few posts I would like to take the program that I helped develop in the 'Health and Fitness' community, and discuss it at length from a Biblical point of view.

We have the benefit of scientific advancement to allow us to test and capture data on how our bodies interact with the world around us. The science is clear : The more harmonious we are with the rest of God's creation, the better our bodies respond. The more we adhere to the directives from the Creator, the more optimally our vessels on earth are able to support everything about what we are created to accomplish.