What's in the way of Peace? 3 Health Obstacles that Keep Us from Wholeness // In Rest

Have you ever wondered how living in alignment with God's will can bring true peace and fulfillment? In our latest episode of the In Rest Podcast, we explore how prioritizing our spiritual and physical well-being can lead to a life of wholeness. Through personal reflections and the inspiring story of Elijah, we highlight how God encourages self-care as an essential part of our journey towards harmony and serenity. Join me as I share my struggles with health and stress, emphasizing the importance of living a balanced life that aligns with God's purposes for us.

This episode gets real. If you're a parent, you'll totally get it! I am very open about how God is leading me to overcome resentment in exchange for His peace. Please note -- I love my kids, all of them! But life as a parent can be straining. God's peace is available to you, just like it is to me, no matter where you're coming from, or who may be weighing on you today.

Join us as we get into peace and experiencing more of God in this episode!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the In Rest Podcast with Noah James Wiebe. I'm your host, noah, and today we are going to be talking about peace. So peace is basically just the condition of being whole and of having an experience of serenity and of a sense of completeness and fulfillment as a result of that. Wholeness doesn't come as a result of just our performance or our productivity. It comes as a result of us living in alignment with the purpose for which God has made us. So today we're going to be talking about how to take a little step, a next step more into the intentions that God has for you. Let's go, let's go. I hope that you enjoy joining me for the In Rest podcast as we hear how to live the Christian life well and how to live the life God intended you to live. Thank you so much for joining me today on the In Rest podcast as you hear how to live your best in rest in Christ. So today, one of the things that has come to mind for me when thinking about peace, when thinking about the condition of peace, is that some of the things that are in my life and it may be yours as well are not actually in alignment with what God has for us. And so you know, for me one of the things is my health. So you know I'm experiencing high levels of stress. I might not be sleeping very well. One of the things I'm experiencing is a change in my weight. You know I'm not exactly, you know, a large person. I come across, as you know, small. I got, you know, narrow shoulders, whatever. I'm not exactly the champion of masculine physique, but I do have this thing where the constant intake of sugar and stress and extra food to sort of be a comfort ends up going to, you know, different parts of my midsection or my thighs or whatever. And so I start to feel insecure about that. But I was thinking about that the other day, how I've got a dad bod developing, which I don't, you know, I don't despise necessarily, but I don't necessarily like for myself, because it's an indicator that I'm not really living in that way. That's healthy. And I was thinking back to a time over Three years ago or almost three years ago, when I really got the sense that the Lord was calling me to sleep and To exercise, to take care of myself better, all those things. And at first, you know, you might be thinking well, does God really do that? Does God really speak into a person's life and tell them to be more healthy? Well, the reality is yes, he does. He's gonna challenge you to do that.

Speaker 1: 2:31

There's a moment in the Bible where Elijah, the prophet who's like one of the most famous prophets in the Bible is really depressed. He's laying down, he's thinking that you know, all of the other prophets of the Lord have been slain and and now on the last one left, an angel comes to him and instead of saying to him, get up lazy bones, he says get yourself something to eat. The bottom line is like it's not out of God's you know, it's not outside of the realm of possibility for the Lord to speak into you and tell you definitively take care of yourself more. The way that he presented it to me one time, after having heard that he said you're still not taking care of yourself. Now, that's not to say that, like, everything is about self-care and this journey of you know, constant self-improvement. That's not necessarily the vibe that God is trying to communicate in that, but it is important to God that we live in a way that's consistent with his will for us, and the Bible tells us that you know to. The Bible tells us that we are to rejoice, always, pray, continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

Speaker 1: 3:37

Those things happen irrespective of our circumstances, our health condition, whatever, but no matter what it might be to you, or something small like you say, your health okay, which is actually not a small thing when you think about it. You know um nf did this song I think it's the search where he says, yeah, the sales can rise. Doesn't mean much, though when your health declines, things that we think are small actually matters quite a bit to god, and that all kind of comes back to okay, are we living in alignment with the purpose that God has for us with, and are we living in fulfillment of his intentions for us? And so this is like miniature confession time, like I'm not living fully the way that I think God wants me to live. One of the ways I'm doing that also is with anger. Okay, first of all, it's health. Okay, that's my physical health, my emotional health, handling of anger, criticism, rage, whatever, particularly anger, just in the general way. And so when we're looking at our physical health, you know being in alignment with what God's intentions are for us in terms of self-control in terms of managing our bodily health, all those things we do find that, yeah, god does care about that, but then he also looks at the whole picture.

Speaker 1: 4:46

Anger has with control, debt or indebtedness and entitlement and so like. When we feel angry, we're struggling with a control problem, where you don't have control over a situation, and so anger is our natural bodily um response to losing control in a situation, and it's meant to call us to action and then dissipate so that we can, you know, get back to health, get back to order and get back to peace and then move away from the angry feeling in exchange for that sense of wholeness. Unfortunately, when we go through seasons of intense stress particularly men this is particularly common with men we're going to experience a lot of anger, and so we're going to be angry a lot because our body is reading that we're not in control, because our emotional health is out of whack. We're stressed, we've got cortisol, which is a hormone that's involved with our stress response in our body, that's pumping through our brain. A lot of the parts of our brain that are involved with stress are in the back of the neck rather than the front of your head, so the front of your head that's like executive functioning, your cerebral cortex. You know we're thinking about, like you know, time concept and you know how am I going to manage my money? Well, and you know good decision making, good judgment, good reasoning, whereas at the back of your neck it's really all about survival. It's about doing what's best for the moment in order to get something, usually sort of gratification or a sense of satisfaction so that we can calm down, which is where a lot of people fall into addiction or other habitual situations to self-medicate instead of experience shalom and peace. Because you know, when we're actually experiencing peace, we're experiencing more than just a shot of dopamine to kind of get us through those feelings of stress. And so you know God is not just looking at your physical health, he's also looking about how your physical health is affected by your emotional health. So my emotional health is suffered significantly by my mismanagement of that control problem of anger. And now it's totally understandable to have anger and the Bible actually says in your anger, do not sin. So it's not that he's saying never be angry, because it's not feasible, but what he is saying is that when you are angry, learn to control it, learn to channel it, learn to bring it to the right avenue rather than express it at the wrong people. And so this is that's confession time for me.

Speaker 1: 7:11

My control problem with anger usually spills out into loving relationships that are, or love relationships that are meant to be, loving, but then turn into controlling. So with my kids I have four kids, I have wonderful boys. There are kids that I have who are adopted, some of who are more challenging than others, and that anger response that I have, you know, a response to stress, comes out as anger. Maybe more yelling happens or whatever. Maybe my form of discipline becomes a bit more harsh than it would have been had I had, you know, kind of tended to that anger and channel it in the right direction. And so then, that's not to say that anger doesn't have a place at the parenting table with regards to, you know, just, our natural response, maybe our knee-jerk reaction to something, is anger, but we still it's our responsibility to channel that right, and so there's control.

Speaker 1: 8:01

Next is indebtedness, and so something that God really challenged me with with regards to parenting specifically that's a nice segue is that he brought up Matthew chapter 18 to me. So Matthew chapter 18 is about this master of a household, or maybe master of a kingdom, who has a lot of servants. One of the servants has approached him and he is, you know, kind of, you know, bringing up his accounts and so on and so forth. I guess this master is a big money lender, anyway. So the servant is there and he owes a lot of money, so much money that he could never possibly pay it back. And the master responds by saying well, because you can't pay back the debt, you're going to have to, you know, pay back in another way, specifically by you being sold into another household and your entire family are going to be sold and all of your stuff is going to be sold to try and pay back this debt. And the guy's, like, no way, uh, like, just give me more time, have mercy on me and I will pay it back. And the master pays back all of his debt.

Speaker 1: 9:09

The servant then goes out and finds his friend, who is another servant, who owes him significantly less than he owed the master. Nonetheless, he chokes him and, I'm assuming, yells at him and, you know, sends him off to jail, basically in order to pay back this very, very small sum. And the master hears of this through some of the other servants who are appalled at this, and he brings him back in to the room and he's like bro, I gave you, like I absorbed the loss of your debt, and you treat another fellow servant like that. That's totally not cool. And eventually this servant then endures all the things that he didn't want to have happen, in addition to torture, I'm pretty sure. So that's a pretty brutal story, but Jesus sums up that story by saying this is how the Father is going to treat you if you do not forgive your brothers who sin against you. So that's pretty intense, you know. It's a pretty intense thing for Jesus to say.

Speaker 1: 10:15

But when you think about anger, right, here's a servant who is angry at his fellow servant and then treats him with cruelty, and that is one of the ways that we see anger expressed. And so here I am, standing in my kitchen and the Lord is bringing this up to me, and I think part of the reason why he was is because I've been struggling with a particular resentment against my son for so many of the challenges that he's brought into my home. The reason why I was so frustrated with my son is because he came to us. He's adopted, came to us with a significant number of challenges, for himself but also for other family members, which brought a lot of grief and loss our way. That grief and loss came about in complex and simple forms, but specifically just sort of with the loss of what we considered normal and what we considered fun for the rest of the family and also what we considered healthy.

Speaker 1: 11:02

And so that struggle landed with me as eventually building up this debt, that I felt that he was doing something to our family or something and I was holding on to that. You know, I was holding on to that resentment against him. Now, that wasn't to mean to say that I was, you know, neglecting to feed him or, you know, doing anything like that, but there was this level of just extra harshness that when I, you know, deal with some misbehavior, I'm actually in my mind, mentally, in my heart, I'm actually treating him as if he's done seven or 15 misdemeanors rather than one misbehavior, and so every discipline is out of proportion. So God is challenging me. He's facing up to me like dude that's not cool and communicates to me this story this is how the father's going to treat you if you don't forgive, and the reason why he's saying that is because he's forgiven me of such a significant debt, so much more than I could ever possibly forgive my son. And so, and by the way, I mean it's just not cool in general to hold on to resentment against your kid. And so here I was, in the kitchen, full of conviction, and thinking, wow, I am so sorry, I repent of my sin and I release this debt to you.

Speaker 1: 12:17

And so, you know, here's anger in a second facet. So we've got anger as control and anger as indebtedness, and then finally we've got anger, as you know, anger as entitlement, and so, similar to the story of indebtedness that is kind of coming up and the forgiveness of that debt. We're also kind of looking at the servant and the way that he took it upon himself to throw his other fellow servant in jail, even after having been forgiven such a great debt, like what, like who does he think he is to take this other servant, who owed him so much less, and throw him in jail for this? There's clearly some level of entitlement. He felt entitled to do that, and so he acted on that sense of entitlement and moved in that direction.

Speaker 1: 13:05

And so lots of us go through this kind of stuff all the time and we don't realize it. There's stuff with my spouse or with friends of mine or whatever, where I've seen it happen and come up in my own heart, this sense of entitlement, where I feel entitled to say that sarcastic remark or use that really kind of that prickly joke in order to communicate something in the subtext that says I'm displeased, I'm upset, I am angry, I do not like you, I'm criticizing you. And that mindset of entitlement comes up with anger a lot. I mean, when we look at road rage and we look at how people get so over the top angry at other people, even to the point of violence, we look at that and we think, well, that person is crazy. But we're actually all of us holding on to some level of entitlement all the time and it's keeping us from peace. And so this condition of being out of order, being in chaos, is something that prompts us to anger. And yet God has an intent for us to actually experience his shalom and peace in the midst of and in the middle of chaos, so that entitlement, indebtedness and control no longer have to have the say on how we actually respond to life as it hits us. And the thing with entitlement as opposed to indebtedness or control, is that entitlement has to do with the level of status or a condition of being higher than another person.

Speaker 1: 14:28

Entitlement also comes up with criticism, right. So like you're angry about something or someone and you criticize them, you criticize them. Criticize them that might even come up with something where maybe it's at church or with a family member, might be with a friendship group, and you look at and evaluate their life, their situation. You feel angry, even though that situation has nothing to do with you. And secondly, who are you to say anything about them, knowing that you have so much going on in your own life?

Speaker 1: 14:51

So, outside of Matthew 18, jesus speaks about that again in Matthew chapter five. I say again as if it's subsequent, but it happens before, earlier in the book of Matthew, where Jesus is speaking in the Sermon on the Mount. So Matthew chapter five says if you are angry in your heart towards a brother, that is the same as having murderous thoughts against a person and it may as well be the same as being put before the judgment seat because you are putting yourself in the place of judge. He follows that up with Matthew chapter 7 a few chapters later, where he talks about judgment. But so there's criticism, there's entitlement, there's there's anger, but, like jesus is basically saying, you're putting yourself in the position of the person to set a verdict on someone and, as a result, you're actually putting yourself in a position to get a negative verdict from the true judge. So he talks about anger in matthew, chapter 5, way of, you know, really being a wake-up call to the people who are listening and saying whoa, you know, I might not be killing somebody or acting on that violent thought, but I'm having the violent thought nonetheless, which shows that in my heart I have a level of entitlement.

Speaker 1: 16:03

So in Matthew, chapter 7, when he's talking about do not judge, he's not actually speaking about don't ever evaluate anything or never be a critical thinker. It's not that he's telling us never to use critical thought. What he's saying is they were not allowed, or not not to put ourselves into a position where we think of ourselves as better than someone else and therefore judge them by treating them differently, based on our own negative verdict on them. He says just don't do that at all, because you're not the judge of their life. But he follows that up with if you are going to correct someone or evaluate something and say this guy, I mean this is something ain't right here, we got to deal with this. He says who are you to say to your brother, take the speck out of your eye if you have a plank in your own. The word choice is literally like a beam, like a you know, a joist, you know, like a massive beam that you'd use for house building in that day. And so what Jesus is saying is like dude, you have a seriously glaring problem in your own life, which means you are not in a position to help them deal with their own problem. Position to help them deal with their own problem. And, frankly, you're not supposed to be in a position of judge over them, to project a verdict on them, but neither are you to evaluate or rebuke them if you yourself have the same problem and you're doing the exact same thing. And so Jesus is very, very clear, very sharp on that, on those details.

Speaker 1: 17:26

And so when we look at anger coming up in ourselves, we have to deal with it on those levels. And so what does that have to do with physical health, emotional health, peace, shalom, the whole thing? Well, we can't have an experience of peace and shalom if somewhere in us we're out of place. In our heart Now, that might come up as lust, that might come up as a desire for food that then leads us into addiction. Maybe that there is actual addiction or substance abuse in us where we're going to other things for comfort to medicate us. Maybe those things in our heart really come up with how we deal with our spouse and our marriage, how we make decisions.

Speaker 1: 18:04

In any case, it's not just a matter of the physical health or, like this, the outward appearance of things, because lots of things can seem and look peaceful but very much not be. So we really got to get and get at and look at the heart of what's going on in a person and in yourself, in yourself, what's going on in your heart and your soul and your spirit and your heart and your mind and your will. And so that's what god has been looking at in in me and what he's looking at in you. He's not just looking at, you know, peace from the perspective of your inner serenity, but also looking at the peace in terms of, okay, something's wrong in your heart and your emotional health is suffering and I care about that. You know, god cares about your physical health, god cares about your emotional health. He certainly number one cares about your spiritual health.

Speaker 1: 18:50

Now there's stuff in your relationship with God that's gonna be affected by your emotional and your physical health the way that you handle your mental health, the way that you handle your health in your relationships like God cares about all of that, and some of those things can cause a ruptures in our relationship with God and our fellowship with him. And for those of us who never put our faith in Jesus, we have a serious problem with the fact that we are not in right relationship with him at all. But those of us who are Christians, who might have right relationship with him as being members of his household, who are sons and daughters, we also have a problem with wrong relationship with God. Like we don't have full right relationship with God if we're entertaining thoughts in us that he does not approve of, and the reason he doesn't approve of it is because it's not in congruency with love, and so if we're entertaining thoughts that are not of love, then we've got a problem. We don't have right relationship with God. So we deal with that, and that spiritual health is actually indicated sometimes by our emotional and our physical health.

Speaker 1: 19:46

Now, again, it's not that peace lives out in the open only you know it does. But really the outward expression of peace in the Christian life should really be more of an expression of what's going on in the inside. And even if things might be messy on the outside, that doesn't mean your heart is in the wrong place. Just because your house is a mess and your kids might not always behave well doesn't mean that you are not in right relationship with God or that you have, you know, bad emotional health or you have bad physical health. Like God does care about your outside appearance in a sense, but he really doesn't as much as people do. People care way more about that stuff. The Bible tells us in 1 Samuel, chapter 16, man or human beings look at the outward appearance, but God sees the heart. That's what he really cares about.

Speaker 1: 20:33

So what's going on in your heart right now? Where in your heart are you experiencing a lack of peace? Do you need to have confession, like I have had to do, where I've had to just fess up and be real? Like you know what, lord, I'm not living in full submission to you right now, god, I'm angry. I'm holding on to resentment, I'm feeling convicted because I'm not treating my wife with, with kindness or whatever. You know, I had to have that moment with my wife yesterday and I said, hey, listen, like I just want to say sorry. I was feeling, you know, I felt like that word that I said earlier in the day kind of came across as critical and I just apologize. This is not how I want to roll, and you know it might just be as simple as that. But you know, evaluate. You know what's going on that's disrupting me from a condition of Shalom, a condition of wholeness, the way that God wants it to be experienced in my life, the way that he wants it in me. And so, you know, evaluate that, take a look and evaluate your life, see, because and also, if you're having a hard time seeing it, the fact is is that we're not always perfectly self-aware, self-aware that they'd be able to identify every single problem in their life.

Speaker 1: 21:36

David said in the Psalms who can know their sin? He's like you know, forgive me, lord, of my hidden faults because who can know, you know, who could possibly know it all. And so, you know, ask God if there's. You know, search me and know me. Psalm 139, search me and know me, test my anxious thoughts, see if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the everlasting way.

Speaker 1: 22:01

And that prayer is not that God has to like learn what's going on in you. He knows full well, but he wants to bring it like. He wants you to ask him to bring it out, like test me, you know, see, like bring it out and look at it, lord, and tell me about it. You know that's really hard, it's not easy, it's difficult, it's probably one of the most difficult parts of the christian life.

Speaker 1: 22:23

Um, but there was I don't know if the saint benedict or saint ignatius or whatever, but somebody, some monk or some christian guy, way back in the day. He was asked you know, if there was one spiritual practice that you would do, and if you had done no other spiritual practice that day, what would be the number one you would never drop? And he said it probably this practice of examine. The practice of examine. No, don't get me wrong. Examine is not about an exam. Okay, it's, it is where we get the word exam.

Speaker 1: 22:50

But exam is really an evaluation, and it's a prayerful evaluation. It's really a dialogue between you and the lord, asking god, god, what was good, what was bad, what was ugly about this day and how do you want to meet me in it? It's really that, simple Lord. What was the good, what was the bad, what was the ugly? What do you want to address in me? How do you want me to change and what are you trying to communicate to me today? So you know, take this afternoon, take this morning, take the end of your day at night before you go to sleep and practice, examine God, see if there's any offensive way in me.

Speaker 1: 23:24

What do I need to drop right now? What am I holding on to that you really want me to release to you and to receive, you know, freedom from this burden. You know, what do you want to speak into me today and what was really good about today? What made you happy? What made you happy? What was something that I did or said that made you, just just made you delight in me in a special way or a unique way? And what was something today that you really want to correct, convict, change, remove from me. And is there a burden in my life, a pain that you want to address? Is there some level of healing that I need? Life, a pain that you want to address? Is there some level of healing that I need.

Speaker 1: 24:00

And besides, examine, I would also encourage you to practice confession. You know, practice confessing to your sins to others. You know, like I had a miniature confession time in this thing Confess your sins to God, absolutely. Paul the psalmist said, hey, heal there. Yeah, the psalmist said, heal me, for I've sinned against you. But he also said, also said, you know, I confess my sins to god and he, he helped me, let my strength was sapped, as in the heat of summer, you know. And then I confessed my sins to the lord and he healed me and restored me right. But like also, chapter five of james says confess your sins to one another and pray for each other. Don't forget that part, um, so you may be healed.

Speaker 1: 24:35

So find someone that you can trust. And if you can't find someone you can trust, pray and ask God to give you someone you can talk to, and you might be surprised at who he brings your way to deal with that. So how do you want to experience peace? Well, figure it out and figure out what's getting in the way today. Define reality even if it's one of the hardest things you're going to do today and experience more of God's shalom as he introduces you to more of his healing, love, hope and wholeness.

Speaker 1: 25:00

All right, hey, listen. If you want to keep connecting with InRest Podcast, keep doing that. Follow, like, subscribe. Check us out on Instagram inrestinsta. Check us out on Facebook facebookcom slash inrestinstitute. If there's a way that you want prayer, know, reach out on the facebook page or on the instagram, dms, in the comment section. I want to pray for you, but in any case, I want to say thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for watching. If you're on spotify, please do us a favor and um rate this podcast five stars, okay, even if it wasn't. You know, be honest, but also be favorable. You know what I'm saying. Be kind. Jesus loves you and never forget his love for you that he has hope, healing and wholeness waiting for you on the other side of some really helpful practices. God bless, bye.