RUN LIKE A CHAMPION

Spiritual Health and Rest
Sammy Tippit: I want to welcome you to today’s daily devotion. We’ve been talking in this segment with Dr. Walt Larimore about health. We’ve come to the place really where we’re talking about the deepest issue, and that is the spiritual issue and how that impacts our health. Walt, thank you again for being here. I want to ask you, for a man, what are some of the deep heart issues a man has that affects his health?
Walt Larimore: You know, for the vast majority of men, it’s to learn how to love and be loved. A person asked the Master, “What are the two greatest principles?” He said, “First, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, all your might. Second, to love others as yourself.” It’s centered on that principle of love.
The apostle Paul talked about faith and love and hope. “…the greatest of these is love.” So loving God involves spending time with him. You know, as a busy businessman, I always wondered, “How do I appropriate that Scripture to pray without ceasing, to always pray?” For me, that’s just talking to God throughout the day. If I get ready to go into a meeting, as I grab that door handle, I’ll just ask myself, “What’s God doing here? What is it he wants me to do?”
It may be bringing my professional competence. It may be bringing compassion in. It may be asking the right question or appropriating one of his principles, learning to talk to God throughout the day and learning to begin and end each day listening to him. As I said before, that’s involved in reading his Word. It’s involved for me memorizing his Word, hiding it in my heart. To love God with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind, to bring him to work with me, to bring him into my family with me, to bring him into my neighbors’ relationships… So love God.
Then to love others as myself. How do I give myself away? Now I sell my time at work, but how do I give myself away? For example, with many men, learning how to volunteer can be life- changing for a man and for his family. It may be through a local ministry. It may be through a food bank. It may be serving dinners at a soup kitchen.
It may be an overseas short-term mission trip. I recommend that to every family. Take your kids overseas. Sammy, you do that. You travel internationally. It changes you. Love God, and love others. If you can do that, it begins that process of healing you in every measurable way.
Sammy: You know, my father (as I mentioned in a previous interview here) wasn’t in the home, but in my earliest memories he was (10 years and younger). I have never doubted my father’s love because when I was a kid, he played basketball with me. He played baseball with me. When I became a Christian later on in life, I didn’t have a hard time understanding God loved me, but I found many of my friends have had that hard time because…
Talk to me a little bit about what the future might bring if we begin to live in this kind of way to the future generations of loving God and loving others and how that would impact our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
Walt: I mean, the Bible could not be clearer. As we begin to make this investment in our physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual health, that spreads out into every sphere in which God has given us influence. Every man has those spheres of influence. The Bible tells us that not only does that affect others around us, but also it affects the generations that follow us.
You mentioned your daddy. I tell men there’s no greater gift you can give your kids than time with you. Our kids have plenty of critics. They have plenty of people beating them down. We need to be our kid’s best cheerleader. I tell dads the A, B, C, Ds of being a good dad are these.
A is affirming your kids. I let my kids know there’s nothing they can do that will make me love them more, and there’s nothing they can do that will make me love them less. Their daddy loves them. I affirm them. I find them doing good things and affirm that. The B is to blamelessly love. “I’ll love you no matter what.”
The C is connecting with them. That’s spending time with them, connecting them to good friends, connecting them to their Creator. That softness of fatherhood has to be balanced with the D, and that’s discipleship and discipline. It’s teaching our kids that there are consequences for wrong decisions. There are mistakes that have to be paid for.
It’s not just disciplining them but also discipling them to realize that the person who is in charge of discipling our family isn’t our pastor. It’s the father who is responsible for discipling the wife and the kids. Those A, B, C, Ds will make a generation for generations to come, not just in our family but in our community and, I think, Sammy, in our country.
Sammy: This is really good stuff. Thank you, Walt, so much. I hope you will take the opportunity to get a copy of 10 Essentials of Highly Healthy People. This book has already been a blessing as you’ve heard on these devotional times, and I think it will be a blessing to you and to your family. Let me encourage you to get that, and we’ll look forward to sharing some more things tomorrow.