by Rev. Blane Young || Executive Director, DCXA
(2) Pursuing Health
I firmly believe that health, holiness, and wholeness are intrinsically connected.
I also love how God is not surprised by my limits and needs. In fact, I tend to be the only caught off guard!
It’s one of the reasons I enjoy talking about the following things on campus, because they’re both ‘felt needs’ and also, close to the heart of God
Sabbath / Rest
Yes / No
For the purpose of this post today, I’ll focus on Yes / No. It’s a simple lesson, really. It’s the principle that every yes is a no to something, and every no is a yes to something else. In other words, it’s recognizing that we don’t have unlimited or infinite capacity!
Just say a simple, ‘Yes, I will,’ or ‘No, I won’t.’
Matthew 5:37a (NLT)
All of this is really counter-cultural in our current world!
We can’t do it all. And isn’t that at the heart of the Gospel itself? We need Jesus and we need others!
On the campuses of American University and Georgetown University specifically, we see students over-committed on a regular basis.
I get that — I struggle with that. But at the core, when I am over-committed, it’s not really about making the most of my time. It’s about operating out of either fear or pride.
It’s true that you can never get too much of Jesus, however, you can have too much seemingly spiritual / Christian activity and busyness.
That’s the reason why we encourage, disciple, and pastor towards students being involved in only one campus ministry and one local church.
It’s not the only reason (hence the blog post series!), but it’s a key one.
See, ministry is sobering, because we reproduce who we are — not simply what we say we believe.
If we aren’t healthy or whole or living in alignment with God’s design for work / rest, then we are going to create more of that in those that we mentor and in those that are watching us.
Healthy students have a life that involves their campus ministry and their local church, but it’s also more multifaceted than that. We should all invest in our families, befriend those in our classes and at work, have hobbies, live with margin for reflection, and also be able to follow Jesus closely without the unintentional crutch of having a million different Christian ministry happenings across two churches and three campus.
Additionally, healthy people serve people.
You’ll never be able to serve or lead others if you are an inch deep in a half-dozen communities. You either won’t be given the opportunity or even if you are given it, you won’t have the time or capacity to say yes.
Thanks for taking time to read this, over the next few days, we’ll have 4-5 more blog posts published in this series.