Surprisingly Exhausting

THE PROBLEM WITH CHASING OUR OWN WELL-BEING

Let’s consider for a moment just how much of our day is spent thinking about ourselves. We think about the meals we’re going to have for the week, whether or not we’re getting enough exercise, and how our personal relationships are doing. While we’re at it, we obsess over our physical appearance, the future of our education or career, and the current state of our mental health. Is all of this concern helpful, or is it exhausting?

On one hand, it’s a good thing to take care of the body, mind, and soul God has given us. It would be wrong to be intentionally lazy about our health and hygiene. However, if we perpetually overindulge in ourselves, we start to give off a spiritually selfish stench.  This condition is lethal because, “Self-focus,” author Sharon Hodde Miller writes in her book Free of Me, “hurts our relationships, shrinks our faith, kills our confidence, and ultimately steals our joy.”¹

Our own well-being is most satisfied when God consumes our thoughts, and sincere joy comes from uplifting others.

Ironically, God says that the best way to take care of ourselves is to put Him first and others second. “Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’” (Matthew 22:37-39, NKJV). Our own well-being is most satisfied when God consumes our thoughts, and sincere joy comes from uplifting others. But because our default setting is selfishness, it takes serious effort to reorient our thinking.

The tension between taking care of ourselves and not obsessing over it can be tricky. Hodde Miller continues, “Thankfully we don’t have to choose between fulfillment and self-forgetfulness or between abundant life and the obedient one. We can have both in Christ.” We accomplish this not by carefully balancing all the cares of our life, worshipping God, and loving other people like stacking a house of cards. Rather, all we have to be concerned with is one piece: putting Jesus first. He promises that when we “seek first the kingdom of heaven of God and His righteousness all of these things shall be added to you” (Matthew 6:33, NKJV).

Putting God first is not like a vending machine where we put in the right amount of devotion and in return receive perfect health, great relationships, and our dream career. Those things may happen or they may not. Rather, the well-being we’ll really receive is the forgiveness of our sins and a close, incredibly real relationship with Jesus. If we don’t have that, nothing else matters.

¹ Miller, H. S. (2017). Free of Me: Why Life Is Better When It’s Not about You. Baker Books.