Preventitive Health Maintenance and the Life More Abundant

My friend has malaria. She spent the summer in Kenya on a mission trip and while there apparently became lunch for a foul mosquito. After several days in the hospital and starting some antimalarial drugs, she's starting to feel a little less terrible. I went to see her tonight with soup and tea and a silly book. She looked a little pale but better than I expected. How odd it seems that in this day and age someone might get malaria. But people in Africa die of it by the thousands each day. How odd. How odd because we have the medical and pharmacological technology to prevent things like people dying of malaria.

People shouldn't die of things that we can cure or prevent, like pertussis, chicken pox, the flu, meningococcal meningitis, tetnus, and malaria. I'm a health professional; I know how to prevent these illnesses. And when I talk to my patients about their immunizations or preventitive health practices I speak with authority and can easily explain why they need what I have to offer.I'm always amazed when I meet people who don't want their children immunized. My children are all immunized against the illnesses that they are suseptible to. It's what we refer to in the health promotion field as "compliance". I wouldn't have it any other way.

I know how to promote a healthy spiritual life as well. I am more intimate with this than I am of the above mentioned illnesses, because of those, I, personally, have had only 3 (chicken pox, pertussis, and the flu) and recovered quickly from all 3. But I have had a dead spirit for much of my life.

"Abundant life" was not something I received immediately when I "asked Jesus into my heart" at the tender age of 4. That's because the abundant life comes with obedience. And when there is unconfessed sin in our lives (my stronghold was/is/has always been/continues to be "pride") we cannot have the abundant here and now life that Jesus promises.

So until I am intimate with confession, repentance, obedience, and the abundant life that they bring, I cannot speak with authority to others about how to receive it. My spiritual "preventitive health maintenance" recommendations (or "witness" as we S.B. like to call it) is no more appealing than a dirty, moldy, stinky, wet dishrag. I have nothing to offer. It's like me telling a patient they need immunized against the flu when I refuse to be immunized myself.

The immunization against a dead life? It's called confession of sin, repentance (where I actally make a real turn from the offense), and obedience. The result? abundant life. I comply with the recommendations and you'll want what I have. I won't even have to try to convince you.