Spiritual Fitness

Spiritual Fitness

In our day to day lives we are inundated with products and plans to help us become physically fit. From diets to nutrition plans, we as a society are surrounded with this obsession of becoming “Fit”, or I like to say the healthiest version of ourselves. While there are hundreds of different diet and exercise plans out there, they all have something in common - they require commitment. Just turn on your TV for an hour and you will see so many advertisements for different products. Go to any form of social media and almost every other post will be somehow related to health and fitness, from 21 day fix, the to 30 day squat challenge, to weight watchers. Most of these are designed to help us create positive healthy habits. While we wish it were possible, no one of us is going to reach our weight loss or exercise goals in just a few days. It requires change and commitment in our lives over a sustained period of time.

Spiritual fitness requires the same amount of commitment. Increasing our knowledge of the word and relationship with God requires commitment over a period of time. So what are some aspects of spiritual fitness?

1. Spiritual commitment/spiritual action

Any time you desire to improve in an area of your life, you have to make some sort of commitment. If you want to learn to play the guitar you have to commit to learning finger placement, chords, how to read music. If you want to run a marathon, you have to commit to training for it. The one half marathon I have run I did not just wake up a week before the race and decide to do something like that. I spent months in advance training for it. Our spiritual lives are the same. We must commit to following God in all aspects of our lives.

What does action look like in our spiritual lives?

• Through baptism - Acts 22:16 “And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name” when we are baptized we are committing our lives to God. While the act of baptism only takes a moment, we are committing our lives for eternity.

• Through reading his word - 2 Timothy 3:16-17 “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be equipped for every good work” We must know God’s word to be prepared for the world, through teaching, service, and how we live.

• Through following his commandments - Job 23:12 “I have not departed from the commandment of his lips; I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my portion of food” That’s pretty powerful. Even in the most difficult of situations, Job did not depart from following God’s commandments. Also, How many of us care about God’s word and our knowledge of it more than we can about our next meal? And I am definitely asking myself this question too, because if anyone knows me you know how much I love food! Seriously, I’m always looking for my next place to eat, where to try when we are on vacation, etc etc. Do I hunger for his Word like I do for foo

2. Spiritual Nutrition - They say that 80% of any fitness journey has to do with proper nutrition. We can exercise all we want but if we are not feeding ourselves with healthy food, it will take so much longer to see a change. Our bodies require the physical nourishment of food, our spiritual fitness requires spiritual food.

• Gods word is the bread of life - Matthew 4:4 - It is written, “Man does not live on bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God”. Earthly food isn’t going to get us into heaven, but living our lives by his word will

• Joshua 1:8 - “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success” If we want to follow God, do his word and works, and expect him to work with and through us, we must know His word.

• If we were to depict our spiritual life like a food pyramid, what should/would we include in it?

Because we cannot survive on food alone, we must also remember our spiritual thirst:

• 1 Peter 2:2 -“Like newborn infants, long for the spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation-if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.” Have you ever seen someone who is truly dehydrated? They can be very unfocused, confused, unable to make good decisions because their mind isn't clear. If we are not hydrating ourselves with his word, we can easily by led astray by the world.

3. Spiritual Exercise

We must exercise our faith muscles. What happens when we don’t or can’t use our muscles? They atrophy. I remember my senior year of high school I tore my ACL and had to have surgery. I started physical therapy pretty quickly but couldn’t keep up my usual level of activity. I remember looking down one day and seeing my legs next to each other and the leg that had been operated on was significantly smaller. Why? Because the muscles weren’t being used. So in our spiritual lives our faith muscles can atrophy too if they aren’t being used. How do we prevent that from happening?

• Praise Him! - Psalms 96:2-4 “Sing to the Lord, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples! For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all gods”

• Draw your strength from him - Ephesians 6:10 - Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.” God’s strength sustains us, not our own.

• Proclaim Him - Many times when the hard work someone has put into exercise pays off and they notice how it is making a positive difference in their lives, what do they do? they tell people about it! I know i have shared with a number of people how exercising in the park with other moms has made a huge difference in helping me feel stronger and more healthy post-baby. it should be the same with our spiritual lives. We should desire to share Christ with others and tell them about how we have been spiritually transformed. Continuing in Ephesians 6:18b-20 “To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak”

4. Spiritual endurance

Our relationship with God doesn’t end once we are baptized. It begins with our commitment to God, and the spiritual nutrition and exercise will help us to endure the “marathon of life”. Just as a marathon runner would have trouble completing the race if he or she had not put in the adequate training, we will have difficulty enduring the ups and downs of life without our spiritual nutrition and exercise. We cannot make it through this life without God. How do we maintain our endurance?

• We need his presence - Isaiah 40:28-31 “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary, his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”

• Psalms 73:26 “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” Spiritual endurance is a direct result of going to God, seeking him, spending time with him and knowing him.

• Look ahead, not behind us. What will happen if we keep looking behind us while we are running? We will fall. Instead, we must look to the Father, and run to him. Philippians 3:13-14 says “Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Just as our physical fitness journey requires commitment, good nutrition choices, and exercise, so do our spiritual lives. We must commit to God and to his commandments, we must feed ourselves with his word for knowledge and spiritual renewal to keep our hearts and minds healthy, we must exercise our faith through praise and sharing him with others, and we must keep focused on God to what lies ahead.

What aspect(s) of spiritual fitness do you need to be focusing on in your life? Spent some time talking with God about it and make a plan to prioritize it this week to begin creating healthy spiritual habits.