The Family Disciple Me Podcast // Discipleship Starts With a Conversation

DESTINATION DECISIONS | Convo #3: Bad Habits or Good Health

• Tosha Williams for FDM

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What if your daily habits are quietly deciding your destination—long before you ever notice the outcome?

In DESTINATION DECISIONS: Bad Habits or Good Health, we step into a Scripture that often surprises people: God cares about your body, not just your soul. Rooted in 3 John 1:2, this conversation explores the idea of life as a “prosperous journey” - - - one shaped by the small, repeated choices we make every day.

This episode doesn’t preach perfection or promote a one-size-fits-all health plan. Instead, it invites an honest look at how our habits—food, sleep, substances, sexuality, rest, and movement—either support the life God desires for us or slowly pull us off course. We talk candidly about how easy it is to squander good health through unexamined routines, and why Scripture consistently connects holiness, wisdom, and embodied living.

You’ll hear a real-life story of chronic health struggle that led to a humble pivot: fewer extremes, more prayer, and simple, sustainable habits practiced over time. From a short sugar fast that became a family rhythm to small changes that produced surprising clarity and consistency, this episode highlights how direction matters more than intensity.

We also name what must be held with care: not all illness is preventable, and suffering always deserves compassion, prayer, and community—not judgment. Still, God invites us to steward what He has given us, using His resources for both His glory and our good.

If you’re ready to take a gracious inventory—without shame—and make one small change that aligns your body and soul, this conversation is for you. Because every habit is a decision… and every decision leads somewhere.

The devotion-driven discipleship guide that goes along with this conversation can be found in the Family Disciple Me app. 

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The Family Disciple Me ministry exists to catalyze devotion driven discipleship in our homes and around the world. We believe that discipleship starts with a conversation, and FDM provides free, easily-accessible, biblical resources to encourage these meaningful conversations along life's way. Sign up through our website to be "the first to know" about upcoming releases and resources (including the FDM App - coming soon!!!) You can also follow Family Disciple Me on social media.

Family Disciple Me is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit ministry, and all donations are tax deductible. More information, blogs, statement of faith and contact info can be found at familydiscipleme.org

SPEAKER_00:

In 3 John 1 2, John wrote to his friend Gaius, Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health as it goes well with your soul. You know, those phrases go well and goes well in this verse come from a Greek word yatao, which means to have a good, successful journey. That seems to go really well with our destination series. And so this week we're going to use this as our theme verse as we talk about destinations, bad habits, or good health. You see, God isn't just focused on our eternity, He cares about our today. And in this podcast, as we continue our destination series, this is exactly what we're going to talk about. Hi, my name is Tasha Williams, and I love what's in this week's scripture because I want to share with you what God has done in my life regarding bad habits and good health. About 17 years ago, I was in really bad health. I was in my 30s and I was struggling with gut issues I had had ever since college. I would have attacks that would incapacitate me for hours. Normally they would start with not like pain, but more like a premonition, a knowing that I was about to experience excruciating pain in about 8 to 12 hours. By nightfall, severe pain would step in. Nothing could stop it, nothing would help it. I went to multiple doctors, had multiple tests, all sorts of medications, tried so many different things, and really what it boiled down to in that season is that when I was in such excruciating pain, I would just get in a tub of hot water and stay in that for hours until the pain started to subside. About that time, 17 years ago, we had four children. They were aged about one to six. We had moved to a fixer upper and began renovation, which we were naive to how hard that would be. And it was literally constant work. So here I was in terrible health. I had four children aged six and under, and I was also doing a renovation on our house that was just a disaster. That August of 2005, my husband Kelly proclaimed that he wasn't going to eat sugar for a month. Now, what is extraordinary about that is that he comes from a long line of men that love dessert. And I certainly come from a family that loves dessert. On our very first date, I knew I liked him when he took me out to one restaurant for dinner and then an entirely different restaurant for dessert. I knew he was my guy. Anyway, we had always enjoyed sweets, but that August, Kelly said, I'm not eating sugar. And because he wasn't eating sugar, I didn't eat so much of it, and the kids didn't either. It was a pretty tough month. I had never gone a day, much less a month, without sugar. Well, we got through that August, and that fall I continued to have all the abdominal issues. The constant work from the renovation continued. Life was insane. I continued to go to doctors and have tests done and try to figure out what was wrong with my body. And I remember the final doctor I went to told me that I had abdominal migraines. You've got to be kidding me, I thought. You're telling me that my stomach has a headache. With that, I just threw up my hands. I was so sick of trying to figure out what was going on, and I was even more sick of paying doctors money for ridiculous diagnoses. Still the countless nights in agony continued, and for every night in agony, there was at least one wasted day. It was such a hard season. Finally, there was this moment where my pastor husband said, I think that you should go to the elders for prayer. You know, it's so funny that we didn't think of it till then. We'd been in ministry for years, and all of a sudden the promise of James five, fourteen through sixteen became something that we needed to claim because honestly I didn't know how much longer I could endure it. I submitted to the elders, I received their prayers and their anointing oil, and after that I heard God begin to speak to me. And he said in an entirely inaudible voice, but in a way that I still remember it, he said to me, I will heal you, but you must participate in the healing. I will heal you, but you must participate in the healing. And that began what for me was a trajectory shift because I had to change some of my bad habits in order to go the destination of good health. It's not that my family was living an altogether unhealthy lifestyle or never ate good things that were natural and nutritious for us. It's that I needed to get down even deeper into the details of what good health looked like. I had some bad habits to change and some new habits to start. I needed to learn to say no to things that had been lifelong yeses. I had to learn that just because it tastes good doesn't mean it is good. I had to learn that just because society says it's healthy or harmless doesn't mean that's true. And as I began to live different, I'm telling you, I began to experience healing. By the next August, our whole family joined Kelly for a month-long sugar fast. That was 2006, and we have continued our August sugar fast to this day. It is one of the best traditions my family has, one of the best things we've done as a family, and believe it or not, my kids will say the same thing. But all that to say, today, I can attest to you that I am so much healthier physically than I was in my twenties or thirties. And my sincere prayer for you is that you will experience the very same thing. The apostle John prayed for his friend Gaius, and I pray for you, beloved. I pray that all may go well with you, and that you may be in good health as it goes well with your soul. The fact that God allowed this verse, this prayer to be included in the canon of Scripture shows that not only is he concerned about the eternal state of our soul, he's also concerned about our physical lives along the way. Second Peter one three says His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. God is so good to have created a world with not just some things, but all things that we need. He created healthy food, clean water sources, essential oils, fresh air, natural beauty, all these things to give us life. And not only does he give us all these physical things, he also gives us internal strength, tenacity, courage, determination, character to use these physical things well when we rely on him. So the question is, will we go his way toward good health? Or will we indulge in the bad habits that our society promotes? Now, granted, sometimes bad things happen, like when unpreventable disease harms or even destroys our health, and I'm well aware that so many people struggle with this. And if that's you, I am so sad that you are struggling with that, and I encourage you to continue to battle through it and to ask the elders of your church to pray for you and surround yourself with a band of people that will cover you with intercessory prayers for your healing. Yes, sometimes disease rips through our broken, fallen world. However, the thing that I really want us to lean into in this discipleship conversation is that other times we squander our good health by our bad habits. Instead of taking care of the bodies that God gives us, instead of using all these amazing things that He created for us, we eat unhealthy food. We abuse harmful substances, we live promiscuously, or we engage just whatever our physical lusts desire. These bad habits lead the opposite destination of good health. God's path is for us to take care of our bodies in purity and in holiness, and these things lead to the good health God has for us, whatever that looks like in each of our lives. And so, friend, this discipleship conversation is not a message of condemnation in any way. Rather, I encourage you to see it as an inventory to look through the different aspects of your life, your diet, your sleep, your sexuality, your exercise, the way you engage, rest, and work, all these different areas of your life. Are you living with good health? Are you going in that direction? Or do you have some bad habits you need to take care of? And then as you seek the Lord about these things in your life, then this discipleship conversation is an invitation to lean into conversations about this with those entrusted to you. That's what my family does every year when we do the sugar fast in August. We don't do that because all of a sudden we don't like sugar. We don't do that because all of a sudden we turn off the switch and no longer enjoy dessert. We do that annual tradition because we want to get a grip on our bad habits and make sure that we're veering back toward the destination of good health. And oh my goodness, this has been one of the most powerful things in my family's life. It has impacted all of us so deeply. I probably should bring some of my kids on a podcast episode and interview them about how it has affected them. I promise you, it will affect your family too. And here's the thing as we have intentional, meaningful, deliberate, biblical discipleship conversations with our kids about their good health, it helps them to know that God doesn't just see them as some spiritual soul where his only goal is eternity. No, God wants to walk with us now, today. He wants to walk with us to the refrigerator before we get our next bite. He wants to go with us to the gym where we're starting to get healthy and exercise. He is with us when we engage in something that's harmful to our bodies. He sees that and he grieves over that. He is with us when we're struggling with sleep and wanting to give us rest in him. Our God sees us as a whole person. And I don't know about you, but that is so encouraging to me. So, friends, as we close this podcast and we get ready to go out and have discipleship conversations about this, I just want to pray the blessing for you that your journey will have good success, not just your soul's journey in eternity, but your physical life's journey today, tomorrow, and in the days to come. God bless you, friend. I'm praying that he will encourage you and strengthen you today, even as you set your face toward him to seek him in this area, too. Go with him.