Are You Idolizing Your Health?
Raise your hand if you have a hope, a goal, or a resolution for 2024. Does it have something to do with your health?
In the past, I set health goals for myself, mapped them out and was determined to take action. I even succeeded in some of them.
But a lot of the time it was ugly. Frustrating. Draining. Icky.
The goals didn’t all come from a place of peace or hope. (Some did, and those felt great!)
I was so focused on my goals that I was holding onto them with a death-grip, terrified to lose control in case everything fell apart. In other words, I wasn’t letting God be part of it at all. I was more concerned with what I wanted than with what He wanted. I was idolizing the goal or the end result I was looking for.
I’m willing to bet that most, if not all of us, often use the new calendar year (or a new school year) as a chance to start over, to fix things, or to better ourselves.
Wanting to improve, to do better, to grow and learn isn’t a bad thing. The point of this post isn’t to discourage you from setting goals or New Year’s Resolutions. It’s to start the conversation about idolizing our health and to help you hopefully avoid it yourself.
As Christians, we’re called to keep God first, to put Him above all things. Surrounded by a culture that idolizes ideal weights, body types, fitness practices and the like, we need to be aware of when we might be making an idol of our own health.
What it means to idolize your health
When we idolize something, we lift it up as a false god, placing it above the one, true God Who we are called to worship. We stop listening for God’s voice. We try to control all the outcomes. We obsess over it or make excuses for our actions
We let desperation or selfishness or pride guide our actions instead of relying on God and trusting in His goodness.
When you’ve made an idol of your health
I don’t claim to have a “3 step process” to stop idolizing your health, but what I do know though, is that it’s vital to bring everything back to the Lord. We need to be open to God and what He wants to do in our lives, not be so focused on us and what we want. (This is one reason why prayer is such a key part of my coaching!)
Pray about your goals. Bring your concerns about this idol to Jesus. Ask His help in refocusing on Him. Ask Him to guide you to a sacred self-image and to orient the work you’re doing for your health towards Him. Dive into Scripture. Some great verses to pray with are:
1 Samuel 16:7
Psalm 139
Jeremiah 29:11-13
1 Corinthians 6:19-20
Galatians 5:1
1 John 4:18
It’s also good to take a look at…
1) your motivation and 2) how you’re living it out
Let’s take the example of trying to lose weight. You’re feeling extra fluffy after the holidays and so set a goal for the new year to lose 10 pounds. You decide on a diet, or exercise program or plan that you’re going to use to lose the weight. You feel gross in your body, don’t like the way your clothes fit and just want to be thinner like your friend that just seems to effortlessly stay skinny. It’s a good goal, but perhaps for a slightly wrong reason.
In this example, your motivation is coming from jealousy, pride or a need for control. How can you turn your motivation around, back towards honoring God with your body? How can you have this goal come from a place of self-love and wanting to care for the beautiful body God gave you?
You start off the year strong, feeling good, but after a few weeks, you start getting cranky. You miss your favorite foods. You don’t enjoy the exercise. You might even start to resent your family for their snacks or harbor jealousy against your skinny friend. You decide to push aside your morning prayer in favor of a workout. How you’re living out this goal is leading to some less-than-desirable results.
Again, wanting to improve your weight to better care for your body isn’t a bad thing, but as you see with this example, losing weight has become an idol. It’s become distracting, pushing God aside, and isn’t bearing good fruit (resentment and jealousy). How might you pause and assess your goal and its impact on your behavior and attitude? What might need to change?
Start 2024 off with your priorities in order
God is always first. Easy to say, challenging to do!
If you’d like a bit of extra accountability to ground some healthy habits in the Lord, I invite you to join the January 2024 Healthy Habits Reset.
You don’t have to focus on daily prayer, but there is a prayer each morning in the group thread to help keep us all focused on what’s most important. I hope to see you there!
