The Whole Life
Finding God's Rhythm for Your Spirit, Soul, and Body
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Inspired by 1 Thessalonians 5:23, this new book from Pastor David Stine focuses on the three parts of your being—the spirit, the soul, and the body—and shows how you can experience a balanced and more fulfilled life when you take care of all three.
Pastor David Stine was the head of a growing church in the nation’s capital. He was seeing exponential church growth and reaching hearts and minds for God. But inside, he felt spiritually dry. He was burnt out. His health suffered, and his preaching became uninspired. Then, one day he read 1 Thessalonians 5:23 in a way he never had before. The verse, he now saw, clearly indicated that were three parts to the human self—the spirit, the soul, and the physical body. He had only been focusing on one part and realized his life was seriously out of balance with the way God intended. As soon as Pastor Stine began to focus on his emotional well-being and physical health in addition to his spiritual fitness, everything changed. He began to see that all three elements are interconnected and necessary for a vibrant Christian life.
Divided into three sections, The Whole Life is a practical guide to leading an empowered and balanced life. The Spiritual Formation section discusses the importance of Prayer, the need to read scripture regularly, and the necessity of having a God-sized dream to guide you. The Soul Care section covers your mind, your emotions, and your desires, while the Body Health sections discusses nutrition, exercise, and rest.
In each section, Pastor Stine helps you identify where you are thriving and where you are depriving yourself so that you can achieve a healthy whole body and, in turn, a whole life. Providing practical and inspiring ways to feed and nurture yourself, Pastor Stine guides you to discover how you, too, can have a whole, balanced life in Christ.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his instructive book, Stine (Hearing from God), founding pastor of Metro Church in Washington, D.C., lays out his methods for creating a life of fulfillment through caring for spirit, soul, and body. After struggling with stress and being diagnosed with Graves' disease, Stine realized as he was reading a passage in Thessalonians that he was caring for his body the wrong way. "I pray that God would give you a Whole Life rhythm in your spirit, soul, and body," he writes. He breaks down these three main areas into nine developmental pillars that, he suggests, form the basis of a healthy life. Pragmatically, he makes a "whole life wheel" of these nine segments prayer, Bible reading, and dream; mind, will, and emotions; nutrition, fitness, and rest and asks readers to plot their commitment to each on a chart. The resulting misshapen circle then allows readers to track what parts of their lives need most work as they try to round out the edges of their whole life plan. Each chapter dives into practical instructions, including how to pray, explore the Bible regularly, resolve guilt, remove unsanctified beliefs, make spiritually guided decisions, and design a healthy lifestyle with aerobic exercise as the core focus. Though Stine's health advice lacks the depth and authority of the theological sections, his whole life process will provide Christian readers with a systematic approach for integrating spiritual and physical well-being.