All are under sin, whether under law or barbarians, and apart from Law we are all in need of righteousness. Not one of us can stand before God righteous apart from Christ in us as our righteousness. God does have a covenant with Israel as His chosen race and we as believers are grafted onto chosen race by grace. This is where there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free for we are all in Christ, and there is a level playing field for all mankind who are made partakers of divine nature.

A healthy lifestyle is holistic. You cannot look at just physical side of healthy living and negate our responsibility to nurture spiritual side, and vice versa.

God created us as physical and spiritual beings. He created us as physical when He made us from dust of earth and gave us bodies, breathing life into us. He created us as mortal, finite beings - but He also created us as spiritual beings, to live or die eternally.

So because God created us to live in tension with ourselves, balancing spiritual and physical, healthy living is to look after both areas of our life, to live a holistic lifestyle. More often than not we hear teaching on nurturing of our spiritual lives, discipleship – what it means to live a truly Christian life as a disciple of Jesus, and so on, but not very often do we hear teaching on looking after our physical bodies.

It is my belief that if we take just as much care of our physical bodies – way we dress, way we eat, exercise and rest – as we do of our spiritual state, we will set a precedent amongst non-believers. They will see Christ in way we live our lives.

So that is what this article is about – physical side of healthy living, looking after our bodies. However please realise that although this is what I am focusing on, I am in no way ignoring spiritual.

Some time ago, I felt challenged to a healthy lifestyle. A scripture He gave me was Hebrews 3:4-11. I know you have probably only ever heard this passage in context of spiritual rest, but there are a few key principles that I want to draw out in regards to healthy living.

“(For every house is built by someone; but builder of all things is God.) Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to things that would be spoken later. Christ, however, was faithful over God’s house as a Son, and we are His house if we hold firm confidence and pride that belong to Hope.

Therefore, as Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in rebellion, as on day of testing in wilderness, where your ancestors put me to test, though they had seen my works for forty years. Therefore I was angry with that generation, and I said, ‘They always go astray in their hearts, and they have not known my ways.’ As in my anger I swore, ‘They shall not enter my rest.’” (NRSV)

Principle 1: DO NOT STRIVE (v4) God is builder, not us. He is one who makes everything happen. Striving doesn’t help anyone – or anything – least of all you. Life, ministry etc, doesn’t depend on us. God is more concerned about us than He is about work. He has many vessels through which He can work. It is folly to think that we are only person who can do task. DO NOT STRIVE. IT DOES NOT DEPEND ON US. GOD IS THE BUILDER.