Team #Naturalhair and developing your spiritual regimen

Written by On Monday, 12 November 2018 17:27
Team #Naturalhair and developing your spiritual regimen

I decided to keep my hair natural after I had a bit of a mishap in high school. In Form Two I experimented with relaxers without my mother’s approval but I quickly realized that I did not have the money to maintain this experiment. My hair fell off and I literally had to start from scratch. Ever since, I decided to stick to what my good Lord gave me with very minimal interference except for the blow drying here and there.

I was also quite slow to get on to the #naturalhair bandwagon until about a year ago when I learned about how much more I could do to take better care of my hair. Any naturalista will tell you that the first thing you do when you start the journey is understand your hair and develop a regimen that you will follow to help your hair flourish.

One year later and I can honestly say that it has been a worthwhile journey.

A natural hair regimen simply means deciding; 

  1. how often you will moisturize your hair,
  2. how to moisturize so that your hair locks in the moisture [the technique], 
  3. how often to treat your hair and which treatment for that matter,
  4. how long to keep a protective style and choosing the right protective style and not to mention
  5. choosing from all the natural hair products available in the market . 

It’s crazy and can be overwhelming to begin with but it gets easier along the way.

An important aspect in this journey is knowing what your end game is. While some chase length, others simply want to have healthy hair while others want to increase the volume of hair. Knowing this helps you figure out what regimen you will work with.

So, where I’m I going with this?

There’s something to be said about the compounding effect of routinely doing something that is good for you or in order to achieve an end goal. Have you seen the kind of routines that some of the best athletes go through to be in tip top shape? Or the kind of schedule that students are put through especially when they have an important exam to sit for? The human mind and the human body are somehow wired to respond to some extremes to achieve the best results. Well, guess what? Our spirits function in the exact same way.

The more we exercise our spirits, the more we are able to walk in the power that God intended for us to walk in. It is the reason that one of the simplest instructions we receive when we first come to the faith is:

Read your bible, pray every day.

So simple, a five year old can follow it.

However, the longer we stay in the faith we realize that for us to actually grow in spirit there are other exercises that we can and should incorporate in spiritual regimen to experience the best of what God has for us.

So, we know that we should be reading our bibles every day and we should pray every day right? Right.

I am going to add three more exercises that you can add to your spiritual regimen if you don’t do them already.

Fasting

If you read the book of Acts you will realize that for the early believers, prayer was synonymous with fasting especially when they were seeking direction about a specific issue or when they had a huge assignment before them. Fasting helps you to awaken your spiritual antennae so that you can be more attuned to the spiritual world. You hear God more clearly because you shut out the worldly and fleshly noises.

 

Praying in the Spirit.

It’s not enough that we pray, we want to make sure that we pray in the Holy Spirit. Paul in Romans reminds us that we ourselves don’t know how we ought to pray; this is because many times we pray selfishly and we pray outside the will of God. Wouldn’t it be great if we knew that whatever we were praying for is exactly what God wanted for us? Well, God made sure that we knew how to do that by empowering us with the Holy Spirit. I think it is a shame that many believers who are gifted with the gift of tongues do not actually use it yet this is one way to make sure that we are actually praying the will of God. If you have this gift, use it; if you don’t, desire it and pray in faith that our God my freely give it to you. Not only do you edify (build up) your spirit but you also pray effectively.

 

Obedience.

It IS better than sacrifice, Ask King Saul. He learned that the hard way. It seems like such a simple thing right? So why do believers get it so wrong? Ask yourself this simple question. What was the last thing that God asked you to do? Did you do it? In my walk of faith I have learned that the next instruction or “word” from God is usually right after I accomplish his last instruction. Are you the kind of person that God can entrust with Kingdom instructions? If you are faithful with the little that you will be entrusted with much more.

 

Just one more thing before you leave:

While we must never exchange the quality of our efforts for quantity, there is something to be said about the time spent exerting ourselves in these spiritual exercises. Maybe you always pray and you read your bible every day, but you can only manage it for 30 minutes a day or you have never fasted more than one meal a day. Is it possible that you can exert yourself a little more so that you can experience more of God? Of course we shouldn’t pray for one hour just so that we can tick it off as an accomplishment but we must also remember that an athlete does not prepare for a marathon by doing 15min laps a day. There is room for us to exert ourselves to walk in God’s power. Your spiritual regimen in not just about what you do but also how often you do it and understanding why you do it.

I challenge you to take up an additional aspect to enrich your spiritual regimen and see what God has for you on the other side.

What does your spiritual regimen look like?

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