The other day, while I was brushing my teeth, I thought about the studies showing that cleaning your mouth reduces your risk of disease—besides gum and teeth diseases. If that is really the case, it’s sad to think that people who otherwise take care of their bodies can still end up with heart disease or arthritis simply because they didn’t take the time to brush their teeth. The same point can be made about many different things: If you don’t take care of wounds they can get infected, if you don’t regularly bathe you can end up with skin problems, stay out in the sun too long without protection and you will get sunburned and possibly, down the road, skin cancer, etc.
What’s worse is that many Christians make the same mistakes in their spiritual lives. All too often, we neglect something in our daily “hygiene”. Prayer, reading and meditating on the Bible, and other things are all necessary; stop doing one of them and you will be “overtaken in a fault” (believe me, I know it). It doesn’t matter what else you are doing and taking care of, if you don’t take care of everything something will go wrong. Other times, we get an “injury” or an “illness”. If we ignore these problems they will eventually catch up to us, even if we are healthy in every other area; Steve Jobs proved that.
Proverbs 4:26 says “Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established.” Once you neglect part of your daily hygiene routine or get hurt or ill, your feet start going down a different path, away from the Great Physician. Please take a spiritual physical; if you don’t pass make an appointment with the Doctor.