At this time of the year when we evaluate who we are, how we’re doing and where we’re heading, we invariably examine our bodies and our relationships. To give you a boost on the first, we’ve updated, revised and expanded our power-packed how-tos e-book on Turbo-charged Nutrition for Peak Performance Kids (also available as a 99-cent Kindle book and free audiobook at Amazon.com). Our previous blog post includes a helpful little poem and a new list of our favorite 15 books about how to build a healthier body. And the entire e-book will save you lots of research and time simplifying what are debtor foods and what are profit foods.
For the relational area of our annual evaluation as adults, we think it’s helpful to consider the state of our three most important relationships.
1. With the Lord – our Creator, Redeemer, Healer and coming King.
2. With our spouse.
3. With our children.
Other areas matter greatly (our extended family relationships and our friendships and workplace relationships, too), but none of them can take the place of the big three. Sadly, we often tend to upset these priorities preferring others in place of each or reversing the order.
Definite, unavoidable problems develop when we mix up the order of the Big Three relationships. #1 is the most generally lost relationship, which then deeply negatively affects all of our other relationships. Anything and anyone we put in the place of Him, is a form of debilitating idolatry. God brooks no competition! #2 is often prone to challenges, perhaps because marriage is a living, personal example (for each of us) of the Lord’s loving us and giving Himself for us. How often a spouse is replaced, to some degree – by a mother of the grown-up married person, or by a child, or, perhaps worst of all and the most common threat to a marriage, by affections extended to someone who isn’t even a relative, or to other preoccupations and misplaced focuses in life. All those, to various degrees, are a form of emotional adultery. Children need to be noticed and nurtured. Prized as the gifts they are from God. Not set in front of media screens far too many hours a day.
For more, order our Turbo-charged Nutrition for Peak Performance Kisds 44-page e-Book and Wise Womanly Ways to Grow Your Marriage (a book, or audio book, or e-Book now available in six languages).
