ecently, I became the assistant coach of my youngest son’s basketball team. I must admit, it’s been a learning experience. One of the things that I’m trying to instill in the young players is that it takes more than just shooting like Steph or dunking like LeBron. The truth is that basketball games are not won by shooting alone. Basketball is a full-body sport, and they’re learning that if a player solely focuses on shooting without conditioning, they’re bound to lose. Single-focused thinking doesn’t win games.

This reminds me of how many of us are determined to live. Some of us think that if we focus solely on the spiritual without incorporating the physical, we’ll be fine. I’ve come to learn throughout my pastoral career that it’s more connected than most people think.

This past January, I announced to our congregation at the Oakwood University Church that we would start the New Year under the theme “New Normals.” Like previous years, we were committed to 21 consecutive days of prayer, devotion, and spiritual renewal. But when I announced a “Daniel Fast” and a secular media fast, the sanctuary was engulfed in “pin drop” silence.

This kind of reaction isn’t foreign to me. Often, when we talk about renewal in our church spaces, we focus on spiritual health; there’s less emphasis on the rest. We’ll commit to reading the Bible in a year but ignore moderation when it comes to our favorite donut shop. We’ll plan to have a more consistent prayer life, but we may become stagnant in our physical movement or daily exercise. We’ll make pledges to study or to do faith-based journaling, but we’ll stay up into the wee hours of the morning doomscrolling on our mobile devices.

There is a misconception that even if we abandon our physical and mental health, we’ll be fine as long as we attempt to perfect our spiritual health. Oftentimes, when we are physically or mentally unwell due to our own choices, it’s difficult to sustain the necessary focus to maintain our spiritual health. In the same vein, we can’t spend hours in the gym, eat only healthy foods, run various marathons, and spend little to no time with God throughout the day.

Friends, our total health is important. Daniel 1 teaches us that the right choices in diet can help one physically thrive, while Daniel 3 and Daniel 6 teach us that our determination to serve God can lead to life-saving outcomes.

As we enter the second quarter of 2026, let’s continue our commitment to our whole health; in body, in mind, and in spirit.