Caring in the Area of Spiritual Health

Having Good Religion

Caring For Our Main People – Part 4

It’s easy to live and allow life to happen; that’s normal. My people and the people reading this aren’t normal nor do we want to be. So we do stuff like form plans to impact the spirituality of those closest to us. In other words, we help inspire spiritual growth in the lives of the people we do life with. What are we doing in our home to promote living a spiritual life? How are we being an example to our nuclear-family so that they too are uncommon?

I relate having a lifestyle unlike anyone else to living a spiritual lifestyle. It’s what makes a person uncommon. So here’s a basic question and one we used to hear years ago, do you have good religion? Does your family have good religion? Everyone has religion, but do we have good religion?

“Physical training is good, but training for godliness is much better, promising benefits in this life and in the life to come.” – bible.com/bible/116/1TI.4.8.NLT

The Thought or Concept:
The most important piece of our living is our spiritual health. Pamela and I have learned to apply great attention to this area. Let me explain why. Your being has three parts and all three parts need care: body, soul, and spirit. The most important of the three is spirit. It’s your spirit that has the ability to override either of the other two which receive attention quite often. Not to go into too much more detail on that subject as this is not really the place for that lesson, but rather the lesson on how we care for my people’s spiritually. You see everything needs a plan if you desire to make it better. If you want to grow in an area don’t fool yourself it’s not automatic, it takes a plan of action. So let’s get down to the plans we have for improving our spiritual health, our good religion.

The Practice:
To improve our spiritual health we target four facets. These four areas contribute to us having good religion. 

Side-note: remember we’re people of faith and for those reading this that aren’t, the practices listed below are still worthwhile and will yield life changing results.

1. Prayer and fasting.
   Prayer and fasting in this case doesn’t mean they are always together. We make prayer our normal daily habit. There are many reasons why we pray which I won’t get into, but the Bible says we should pray in all things and pray without ceasing. Since we’re people of faith, we make it our daily habit. Remember, if you plan to change, grow, and improve you must follow a well put together plan then. So I’m going to lay out our plan for prayer and fasting.
   • Every day we start with worship and strategic prayer.
     That means it’s scheduled, we can’t begin our day (nor leave home) before it happens, and we have an agenda for prayer. We’ve built prayer into our daily preparation time. In order for us to take a bath, we must pray. That’s having a plan for it.
   • Every day we pray together over dinner as a family.
     We take turns on who leads prayer at each evening meal.
   • We pray at the start of our morning commute.
     When we’re headed to school in the morning, we pray and use a specific outline (which I hope to share with you soon) for Tamia’s daily prayer.
   • We pray on the 1st Saturday of each month.
     On the 1st Saturday of each month, I attend our local churches Saturday prayer service.
   • We pray with fasting for 21 days in January.
     Each January, we join in with our local church for a 21 day exercise of prayer with fasting.
   • We pray with feasting for 21 days in August.
     Each August, we join in with our local church for a 21 day exercise of prayer (and feasting).
     
     Not only is that a lot of prayer, that’s a plan for prayer. If you don’t have a plan for prayer, you plan to fail at prayer. What’s your thoughts for beginning your plan today?
     
     
2. A Family Prayer List.
   Once you get serious and come to the realization that your life is your business, it’s up to you to make it successful. After years of watching our church pray over its members’ prayer requests, we decided to follow suit. We implemented our on list of prayer requests that’s specific to our family, friends, coworkers, etc. It’s the list of prayer items we have for anyone we know or come into contact who have a prayer need. We live by this motto, if not us then who is praying for the people we know?
   I’d like to share with you an unintended result that comes with praying for others. When you pray for others, your problems become smaller and smaller. This is why having a prayer list, praying for others, is a vital part of how we care for our people.
   Here’s how it works?
   
   
   • We use index cards for each request.
     As a part of the prayer team, we’d receive lists of prayer requests to pray over. Now that this process has changed and we no longer get the lists outside of our prayer services, Pamela and I began populating our own list. We use index cards to place names and situations on a cork-board we have mounted to the bathroom door. (Thanks Mark Pettus for this great idea.) 
   • We date each card.
     We date them to track when we began praying and when the prayer has been answered. Removing a card from this board is quite monumental. You should try it. These prayer cards give us a visual reminder and goal towards our prayer requests. 
   • We pray for someone other than ourselves daily.
     There aren’t many days where we spend the majority of our prayer time praying for ourselves. Most of the time is dedicated to praying for and with others. As a result, we have very few unmet needs and very few unanswered prayers.
     
     
3. Reading Plans.
   When you hear the words spirituality and religion, your first thoughts fall on church. Your spiritual fitness can be and should be more than just going to church and reading your Bible. In fact, those two components are just the beginning. Even reading the Bible and attending church services require a plan. Beyond these two we have reading plans. Our reading plans help us study the topics that’s specific to how we do life, our business. Allow me to let you in on our reading plans.
   
   
   • Books are a large part of our spiritual diets.
     I’m not talking about any kind of books, but specific books from people we relate to and/or can help us grow in the areas we’ve targeted. Because we have a plan, we choose to read books from people who have the beliefs that add value to us spirituality. This is not to say that we don’t read other stuff. For example, we read books on marriage, leadership, finance, business, purpose, etc. This year, I’ve started a reading plan with the goal of completing one book of my choice every 45 days. I want to make sure I read at least 6 or more physical books each year.
   • Bible reading plans.
     We also have a Bible reading plan and this year, along with the YouVersion Bible app reading plans, I’ve chosen to go with a 365 Day Bedtime Bible story reading plan which I’m doing with Tamia. It serves two purpose:
     1) She gets to learn her Bible stories.
     2) I get a refresher on the stories and a high-level view of each that I don’t always get from a One-year Bible reading plan.
   • Daily discussion on reading.
     This goal has paid off more than we could have ever dreamed as it gives us an opportunity as a family to discuss the day’s reading so that we all grow from our spiritual heritage. We engage in asking and answering questions around our Bible reading with a focus on the stories of the Bible.
      
4. Church Attendance.
   Church attendance in the Clark household isn’t optional. It’s one of those things that a person should discuss before marriage; it’s that important. If we do anything in a week, we attend Sunday service. Actually, it’s our goal to attend one service in person and two streaming services from our non-local church pastors.
   We’ve made up our minds that going to a job on Monday is never as important as getting into a church service on Sunday morning. During any given week, Pamela and I are sharing podcasts and YouTube links of other messages we’ve heard. The point is this, having a plan and executing the plan, is so that we get the results we want for our people, our life, our business. And we want the same for you.

Most people (51% or better) neglect their spiritual fitness; it’s just something that’s not commonly discussed. Your spiritual fitness is the key to your physical fitness and mental fitness. They all need a plan. Without a plan you have no guide to what you should be doing or not doing spiritually. Do you have “good religion”?

Today is Friday!
It’s time you took ownership for the spiritual health of your nuclear-family. You’re the only person who can. If not you, I ask then who? Who will you leave your family’s spiritual health in the hands of? No one? Everyone? One Sunday message a week? Your pastor or the person he/she designates to bring a message? How will you be the catalyst for your family’s spiritual health?

Question: What ideas are you having after reading “Caring in the Area of Spiritual Health” as a plan for your spiritual fitness plan?

Leave your comment and thought below. I can’t wait to see what you have to say.

I pray you’ve enjoyed this episode of “Caring For Our Main People.” Thanks for visiting kerryaclark.com and don’t forget I need you to share this message as many times as you can.

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