Letter from the Editor
My fellow missionaries,
You are missionaries. God wants His people to be healthy. He made us in His image. Being missionaries mean to be messengers for God. God wants us to spread His love and the Good News, so His lost children will return to Him. If His children see that the messengers of God do not have healthy lifestyles, how do they know that the messengers’ God is a respectable God? Why would they want to believe in God if God’s messengers are not being positive role models? I am not saying that you are a bad person just because you eat too much junk food. I am saying that we should be healthy like Christ because He has set an example of a healthy lifestyle in all areas and we are called to do the same. We want the lost to know that God is the good Lord of everything in our lives.
You might be thinking, well, our body is not eternal, so why should we take care of it? You are correct, our bodies are not eternal, but keep in mind that our bodies are given by God and that there are many more areas in our lives that need to be healthy.
Being healthy in all six components of health—spiritual, physical, mental, emotional, social, and environmental--will determine if you are really healthy. It’s not just being “fit” in one area of your life. Spiritual health, for Christians, means to keep a harmonizing relationship with God, His people, and all of creation. It also includes living according to what God says in the Bible; His truth, morals, and values should set the standard of how we live. To be spiritually healthy should include reading His Word, meditating on it, and spending time in prayer. As messengers of God, being spiritually healthy will bring us closer to God and make it easier for us to listen to him when He is calling us to do something. Maybe he is calling us to speak to that village who has never heard of Him. Being spiritually healthy can help us listen to how our Heavenly Father wants us to bring the lost back to Him. As missionaries, being spiritually healthy can help us in being healthy in all areas of life. When we go to a place where the food is foreign to us, but that food is our only choice of maintaining our earthly lives, we can pray to God knowing that He will provide physical health to our bodies and environmental health from the food we might eat. Even though you might not have the free time to exercise regularly, you could take a walk with some of the people you are teaching. Also you could play some active sports with those you are teaching just to take some time to relax. Getting even that short soccer match into your schedule will keep you ready for action and your body awake. If you feel like you cannot even fit in a short match of soccer, then pray to God. He will tell you what to do. Sometimes, being missionaries, we will be persecuted and rejected by the community and we feel abandoned, however we should remind ourselves that Jesus Christ was rejected as well and that God is omnipresent, meaning He is everywhere. We are persecuted by the world because we are not of this world, but we were chosen to be out of the world. (John 15:19)
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