Welcome to Welling for your spiritual health and growth. Some years ago, I had the privilege of being the most friendly country for tourists in the world, Taiwan. Wonderful people with great Christian presence.
I was invited to speak at a business rather well known in the country called Lead Well Industries. You can actually look it up online if you want. They’re a machinery and tool making company. After the talk, I visited with the business owner, and I said, tell me about why you call this Industry Lead Well.
Because of his Christian conviction, he said, I want to lead well and my people, the workers, the employees, the peers to do well in life. What a great statement as we finish out the series on Well, I want you to do well in life, but I also want you to do life well. This has been a horrendous time in the history of the human race, where we have not done very well.
The world is unwell. The church is unwell. We are unwell. The global search for mental health reached the highest level ever in 2021.
And then it was interesting to know that people also searched on how to comfort someone else, how to care for someone else. It also hit the highest in Google search history. Why? Because mental health situations have soared across the world.
Depression rates have reached double and triple of what they used to be. Recently, our son was in Costa Rica. As he visited with some pastors, he said they were so discouraged, so depressed, they said, we don’t know where we’re going, we don’t know where we’re taking the church, plus we don’t know if we really cared enough to do all that.
In a recent poll, there was a dramatic increase the number of pastors who are thinking about quitting the ministry, and if they did, they can’t care for people well, can they? Spiritual care should be extended to others. However, I want you to experience what John prayed for Gaius. That you will be well personally in every way, even as you’re so as well that in good health and in good being doing, you will also extend the care to others.
That’s what happened to Gaius. He was well– and so John wished his well-being in every way so that he could apply truth and apply love in his life. There is a new movement called self-compassion. No, I don’t think that’s a very wise phrase, because if you show compassion to yourself you become the end of your compassion.
Self-care is good but not self-compassion. Self-care is for the sake of others. Self-care is the means by which you care for others. It’s very much like being on a plane and you hear the announcement of the oxygen mask coming down. If you’re traveling with the child, put the mask on your face first so that you can help the child.
That’s how John approached Gaius. If Gaius were to take care of himself first, that’s why John prayed for Gaius, he can take care of others. Gaius had known that he was simply the means to other people as the ends, even brothers and strangers.
So my friend, how are you doing? How are you? How are you feeling? How it’s been going?
Really, that’s the series. As we finish out Well. I wish at the end of my question you could say not just good. That’s a poor English choice of words, but I don’t want you to say, well, in a noncommittal way, where you’re indecisive. I want you to say it with confidence well.
I want you to do well, my friend, and do life well, my friend. My prayer for you is that you will have a spiritual cure for your life. Having known salvation, your soul already prospers. In your experience of its benefits, your soul will prosper.
But beyond spiritual cure is spiritual core maintenance that you would experience the vitality of the spiritual life and its process. That you will know what it is to love. You will know what it is to walk in the truth. Built on the spiritual core of salvation, the spiritual core of sanctification.
I want you to then move to spiritual care for others. This is your service to others, where there’s applied love and applied truth. To love others is to be generous, to be hospitable. To live in truth is to walk continuously, act faithfully to the truth that you know that we know.
So my prayer for you is that you’re well. That you do well in life and that you do life well. That in every respect, there will be a prosperity based on the fact that your soul is already prospering.
That you will do externally well even as you’re internally well. That you will do well temporally even as you do eternally well. That you will do materially well since you already do spiritually well. I want you to do well in life. That’s because you can do life well.
Well it is well. It as well with our soul.