Positive Faith in Scripture: God Protects

Don’t fear, because I am with you;

don’t be afraid, for I am your God.

I will strengthen you,

I will surely help you;

I will hold you

with my righteous strong hand.

Isaiah 41:10, CEB

Yesterday we started unpacking some of God’s positive attributes (compassion, mercy, patience, love)- knowing these things is really going to inform and shape our ability to have a “positive faith.”

Another of these traits is God’s protection and his desire to help. In a culture that has talked way too much about the bad things God wants to do to you (not true, by the way), it’s hard to imagine that God’s desire, truly, is to be helpful.

Time and again scripture speaks to God’s desire to strengthen his people, to work through them when they’re too exhausted to do the work themselves, to hold them up when they can’t stand.

He is not a God who desires to harm- nor is he distant. His desire is to give his people everything they need to keep moving in the direction of compassion, mercy, patience, and love.

Exercise the Stress Away!

Once I started paying attention, I realized that I had gotten into my 60's without knowing that I needed to stop my body's stress cycle. I had strategies for survival. I learned how to distract when tensions rose, avoid groping hands without making a scene, navigate families fighting at funerals and more more more. These are excellent survival strategies but they do not deal with the stress itself.

Thanks to our body we have a source of intelligence that allows us access to knowledge about how to complete the stress cycle. When the pandemic hit, Pete and I were so anxious. We made a commitment to walk together every day. It was essential for us to be able to sleep at night and walking helped. Once the weather got nasty we were less willing to walk through rain, sleet or snow; we converted one of our bedrooms to a gym. We worked out religiously.

Little did we know that we were doing the single most effective strategy for completing the stress response cycle! Hurray for us! Here's the deal with exercise: We should complete between 20 and 60 minutes of exercise a day to discharge the daily stress that accumulates. I know we all want buns of steel and six-pack abs, but I am telling you, the most important part of exercise is this: it completes the stress response cycle.

So yes, I had a breakdown. But I also exercised every day and that kept me afloat. I was not myself, no where close to it, but I was able to do a few things that were also helpful in reclaiming my sanity because the exercise was mitigating the effects of stress.

Are you walking? Dancing? Playing pickle ball? Get moving friends!