Dear Family, Friends, and Customers,
In January, the farms of Azure are buried under snow, so now is the time for learning and studying, reading and planning. One thing I’m pondering in this slower season is health and wellness.
Our bodies have a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspect to health that needs to be kept up to date. It’s not like a car where if there’s gas in the tank and the mechanics are running smoothly then you’re good. But we are a little like cars in that, like cars that have to run on certain fuels, what we feed our bodies makes a huge difference on how we function mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
Our physical state influences our mental, emotional, and spiritual states, and vice versa. If we’re really sick, and our head is pounding, and every bone aches, it’s a lot harder to feel emotionally cheerful. On the other hand, if our mental health is declining, and we feel depressed, lethargic, or lonely, or we are not in a good place with God, then we are much more inclined to feel bad physically. Our mentaland spiritual health can directly influence whether we get certain diseases, and even increase our risk of cancer.
Azure has really been called to work hard on the physical and food side of health. We’re able to educate people on how to have a nutrient dense lifestyle, how to grow a great garden, and how to avoid toxic chemicals. This is a huge piece of the puzzle, but it doesn’t directly address those struggling with emotional stress, depression, and other things, which churches should be the guardians of the nation’s health on a spiritual and psychological side.
Churches are the ones directly supporting people and especially families in tough times. By itself, the church can put people in a really good place, but if they eat really poorly — don’t get enough nutrients and ingest a lot of chemicals in their diet and beauty products and their cleaners — it makes living abundantly almost impossible, even if they have all the support of their church community.
If they're feeling terrible physically, it's a lot harder to have a positive and productive mindset from a spiritual side. So you get the pastor does all the work to get somebody in a really good place and then they're sick all the time; that person can feel like God's just not shining down upon them. We really need to be doing both at the same time.
If Azure is there for the physical side
and the church should be there for the spiritual side,
Azure should be supporting churches,
and churches should be supporting Azure.
This is why Azure Around the Table is a focused collaboration between Azure, church leaders, and church members. It’s a win-win-win, for the people, for the church, and for Azure. The people who come to the drop and the church nurture their physical and spiritual health and can invite their neighbors into the flock. The church is donated the money that Azure would have spent on advertising to reach the people that the church has through the drop and gains new, like-minded members through the drop.
And since many churches have big buildings and large parking lots, it’s easier to get a delivery truck there for a drop point. If people will simply share the goodness of Azure amongst the church members and talk about the drop, and buy for the drop, they're supporting the church at some level. We're able to have a great place to drop in the community.
Through this three-way collaboration, we can all maximize the health of families across the nation. Azure currently has the strictest quality standards of any food company in existence, so pastors and families who do not have the time to vet each product don’t even have to worry about it in the first place. At the same time, we can hopefully bring new people to those churches through the advertising that we do to the outside world, and bring them into the church drops for physical and spiritual nourishment.
We want to keep as many families out of the divided, quick- fix pharmacy as we possibly can, because most of the time people are prescribed drugs for both physical and spiritual ailments. Doctors prescribe medicines, and these can have some serious, harmful side effects. And on the emotional side, a psychiatrist can prescribe drugs as well. The treatment by the world for both physical and spiritual problems is basically the same thing — it's drugging people and altering our minds and bodies with artificial chemicals.
But we want our bodies and minds to be renewed by the God who made them. We need to look to God first and to what He has created to heal us. God-given healing is always better than man-made medicines. There is certainly a better way, which is to take care of our “temples of the Holy Spirit” both physically and spiritually. There's literally no reason you shouldn’t!
If you’re a pastor, the Azure Around the Table program could revitalize your church and promote revival. If you’re a layperson, let your pastor, priest, elder, or other church official know about the program.
Sincerely, David Stelzer
Founder and CEO of Azure Standard
To learn more about Azure Around the Table visit - www.azurearoundthertable.com
Together, we can unite as one nation, in health, under God.
“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your
spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will
of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Romans 12:1-2, ESV