It’s not how we start but how we finish. Now that’s the hard part. We start getting in shape and thinking of healthy new beginnings, but continuing in it is the struggle.
Exercising our spiritual is as much, if not more important than our physical.
Tests have proved this. Reports have come out and science has proven that attitudes of faith bring about hope in our minds and help us to better function and maintain good health.
In the midst of heavy concerns in this world, how can we remain hopeful and thankful?
The Word of God is a safe and reliable refuge of comfort. God’s Word reminds us immediately of His faithfulness and truth, which in turn nourishes us with increased faith and new strength to hope, and even greater, to love.
For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come 1 Timothy 4:8.
Daily time in the Word changes us.
It seems, many years ago, Isaac Watts struggled with a title to one of his hymns or spiritual songs. It is found to be Hymn 73: Doubts Scattered; or, Spiritual Joy Restored.
How wonderfully expressive is the immediate change of heart and mind when our ears hear what the Spirit says to us. Our Doubts are scattered. Our spiritual joy restored:
Darkness and doubts had veil’d my mind,
And drown’d my head in tears,
Till sovereign grace with shining rays
Dispell’d my gloomy fears.
O what immortal joys I felt,
And raptures all divine,
When Jesus told me, I was his,
And my Beloved mine.
In vain the tempter frights my soul,
And breaks my peace in vain,
One glimpse, dear Saviour, of thy face,
Revives my joys again. Doubts scattered; or, Spiritual joy restored by Isaac Watts.
For God so loves me and you that He gave.
God gives.
Presently. Jesus loves.
God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him John 3:17.
He chose me. And He chose you too. And today, we choose Jesus. Because He first loved us, each individually.
So today, I nourish my heart, soul, and mind with a work-out in 1 John 4:1-12:
Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.
You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us 1 John 4:1-12.
This is a spiritual work-out of 12 rich bites of 1 John 4.
We’re changed because today, we could hear Jesus say, “I was his,
And my Beloved mine.“
