| Good morning everyone, Our theme for this month: “Take care of yourself” Our Bible verse for today: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” Galatians 5:22-23 (NIV) Our thought for today: “Create the right conditions” In our study of taking good care of ourselves we are now shifting our focus to mental, emotional, and spiritual health. We have an idea of some of the things we can do to take good care of ourselves physically, but how about mentally, emotionally, and spiritually? What does it mean and what does it take to nurture your soul and spirit and how do we do it? To nurture something is to care of it and to create the conditions that promote growth and development. The word also suggests a sense of tender love as the thing is watched over and nudged along in the right direction. Parents nurture their children as they care of them. They create the right conditions to promote good growth and development, and they nudge them along in the right direction – all with a sense of tender love sustained over years and years. Gardeners do the same with their flowers, and that’s how we are to nurture ourselves mentally, emotionally, and spiritually – with tender love and care. Doing so begins with first creating and maintaining the right conditions for such nurture to take place. There are certain conditions which help to promote good mental, emotional, and spiritual health, and there can also be conditions that work against it. We must be intentional about promoting the right conditions and avoiding the bad ones. We also must be intentional about avoiding, or at least limiting and controlling, the things that drain us. Instead, we should embrace those things which give life and fill us. In Galatians 5:22-23 the Apostle Paul paints a verbal picture of what our goal is. The fruit of the Spirit describes the character traits and attributes the Holy Spirit is in the process of developing in us. Think of those attributes as flowers growing in the garden of your heart. The better the soil and the more nurture it is given, the bigger, brighter, and healthier those flowers will be. But for that to happen, the right conditions must exist. The Holy Spirit will do the work and produce the growth, but it is up to us to create the right conditions for that to happen. In the days to come we will think more about how to create the right conditions for nurture and growth to take place. For today, I encourage you to take some time sitting quietly and thinking about where you are mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. How healthy are you in those areas? How healthy would you like to be? God bless, Pastor Jim (If you like what you’re reading in these daily devotionals, and if you would like more content from Oak Hill Baptist Church, join us on Sundays at 10:00, in-person if you are nearby or, if you are geographically distant or if you just can’t make it, online at www.YouTube.com/@oakhillbaptistcrossville |
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