Exercise For The Soul

As I sit at my desk, putting off tasks that were due yesterday, my mind begins to wander. (It has the bad habit of doing that, and then I have to go look for it!)
As Cardiac nurse, I have the joy of watching people recover from what was a near death experience. Many of the patients have the "zipper" down the center of their chest post- bypass surgery. I have noticed something about these who have come through this surgery, they have a different outlook on life. One told me this morning that he is going to go ahead and retire earlier than originally planned, he said there were more important things in life than working that extra year.
Humans have this feeling of invincibleness and when we learn that the very structure of our human being is under attack we feel violated and a little angry. But for most of us, it takes sickness to cause us to began to change our behaviors. We change our behaviours to prevent further problems and to counteract the effects that disease has brought upon us.
I cannot help but see the similarities to our spiritual condition. My pastor in Ky said, "it is crisis that brings us to Christ".
We treat our spiritual health much like our physical, we ignore it until it begins to cry out from the attacks it is enduring. Just as in the physical, we put off seeing someone who can help, we deny we have problems, we try to "doctor" ourselves, but the end result is that our condition worsens.
Finally we come to the realization that if I do not get help I am going to die and we began the search for someone who can cure this spiritual illness. We look for the quick cure all, the shortcut back to immediate good spiritual health but it does not exist. The has to be the application of some principles to start us down the road of spiritual recovery. We have to be willing to listen to someone who can helps us and follow their advice. How many times have I seen people come back to the doctor angry because a medicine did not work only to find out they only took it once or twice. There is no quick fix for the spirit. We have to exercise spiritually: read the Word of God, pray, and seek Godly counsel, these are the prescription for a healthy spirit.
Just as in the natural when you cease to exercise you lose the benefits, it is true of the spirit man as well. To stay healthy we have to keep exercising the soul.