“Stewardship of Health”
Emotional Health
Many times we tend to
place more burdens on ourselves than is necessary. We may experience frustration whenever our
priorities are not rightly aligned. For
example, we may have a desire to earn a specific income or acquire a particular
position in our vocation or our church and the failure to do so may cause us to
lose sleep, become depressed, or develop a poor attitude. Browsing the internet and watching snapshots
of other people’s lives and comparing our “insignificant” lives with the
perception of the other person’s success can leave us feeling unfulfilled, inadequate,
or lead us into depression.
Another contributor
to people becoming emotionally drained is the failure to establish proper
boundaries with others. While we should
be available to listen to the problems and concerns of others, there is a point
in which we need to make ourselves unavailable so that we can have an
opportunity to regroup and recover from the burdens of others that we may have
taken on ourselves. Once we have been recharged
we are free to engage them once more. In
John 11:35 we see that Jesus wept as He felt the pain of Mary and the others
who were distressed over the death of Lazarus.
Although He knew that He was about to restore the life of Lazarus, Jesus
still took a moment to express His compassion and to grieve with those who were
grieving. After expressing His sympathy for
those who were hurting, Jesus resumed the mission that He was there to fulfill.
Experiencing poor
emotional health can also be the result of a lack of trust in God. As Jerry Bridges points out in his book, Trusting
God, “If there is a single event in all of the universe that can occur
outside of God’s sovereign control, then we cannot trust Him. His love may be infinite, but if His power is
limited and His purpose can be thwarted, we cannot trust Him.”
In summary, it is
possible to experience emotional instability when we lack balance in our
perspective and when we fail to make Jesus our source. While trusting God requires more than making
an emotional decision, doing so does benefit us EMOTIONALLY. We conclude with one final quote from Jerry’s
book: “Trusting God is not a matter of
my feelings but of my will. I never feel
like trusting God when adversity strikes, but I can choose to do so even when I
don’t feel like it. That act of the
will, though, must be based on belief, and belief must be based on truth.”
