To Your Health…Life on New Terms by Pastor Shanna Neal

I was able to read something that Pastor Shanna Neal posted on her Facebook today and I couldn’t help but borrow her title for today’s post. This is exactly what I have been trying to convey this week, after working this message around and around in my head for weeks. If we are going to live life to its’ fullest; if we are going to have good health; we are going to have to live our lives on “new terms!”

Most of us live our lives in ways that are familiar to us. I;m reminded of the story of the woman who always cut the end off of her ham before she put it in the oven. Her daughter, now grown and married, was about to cook a ham one day and she asked her mother why did you cut the ham before you cooked it? Her mother answered, because I saw my mother do it. Long story short, upon more investigation it was discovered that the grandmother cut the ham before she cooked it because she didn’t have a pan big enough to put it in!

How many of us do things that we saw our parents do and don’t really know why. I have shared repeatedly of things that I have gone through that came largely as a by-product of the way and the environment that I grew up in. Only by engaging in consistent reflection, or the prompting of the Holy Spirit, will we ever really notice the things that we do, that we’ve never given thought as to why we do them.

I love it when the psalmist declares:

Psalm 34:6
This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.

God is a deliverer and He will deliver us from all the power of the enemy over our lives. But there is even better news for us:

4 For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives.
Romans 6:4 (NLT)

The promise of the Father is by being buried with Christ, we also come alive as Christ did by the “glorious power of the Father”, not to live the same life, the same way – but to “live new lives!” Even after conversion, even after baptism, even after being filled with the Spirit – it is essential that we do a routine health check – for greater revelation and insight into the ways of God enable us to live by a higher standard, the contract is not changed – we’re still dead to our sins and heaven bound – but we can re-negotiate the in-between time – live a more glorious life through Christ Jesus!

God Bless You,
Maria