As I was working out this afternoon I asked God to speak something
to me that I could blog about. Ironically He began to speak to me about the
parallelism between physically working out and spiritually working out. I do
not consider myself a fitness guru although I have been around fitness for
about 9 years. I have worked in plenty of gyms, and at times I was considered a
gym rat. I am also not a spiritual guru either. All I know is what my Father
tells me (John 5:19).
God first
began to speak to me about the breaking down of muscle in our bodies with each
exercise that we do. With each lift of a dumbbell the muscle in our arms begin
to tear away and break down. With each lift the muscle becomes more weak
leading to muscular fatigue. It doesn’t matter how many reps you do or the
weight it is the form in which you do it and the drive that you have to do it
that matters. When working out I like to push myself to limit that my body will
allow me to go. It is no different with me in the Spiritual realm. When I first
started working out I could only rep 135 on bench press, but through time, hard
work, and dedication I progressed to 165 with 20lb resistance bands. We may
start out in prayer at first with just about 5 minutes a day, but as time
progresses and you began to grow that spiritual muscle the time in prayer will
increase. At the start point of working out again I get fatigued quicker than I
usually did when I was working out more recently and this is due to my lack of
endurance. As a runner I started off running a mile here and there, and after
much training and building endurance I was able to run over 14 miles without
ceasing. In Hebrews 12:1 talks about letting us run the race with
endurance. Paul in 1 Corinthians 9:27 speaks of buffeting his body into
submission. We all have a starting point with God and I am not saying that he
cannot take you to a place of the same knowledge as Paul in an instant, but
most of the time it takes the progression and patience of building endurance.
If I would have tried to start out running 14 miles the first day I decided to
run I would have probably hurt myself and would have more than likely failed in
such a lofty goal. I have injured myself running by pushing my body too far for
where my endurance was at. Even though I reached the goal of where I wanted to
go I hurt myself in the process. This is the same in the Spirit. When we try to
do things that are not in our spiritual endurance we can possibly injure
ourselves or others. This could be seen in maybe cutting people down with the
Word instead of exhorting them, or even stepping out in the ministry too soon
only to have people around you wound and tear you down. I have seen and
experienced both of these situations happen. When you get injured it takes time
to heal before you are able to start training for the race again, and it is frustrating
to have to put something off which you long to accomplish. In 2 Corinthians
13:9 Paul states that when we are weak He is strong. Just when we are
working out and weakening our muscles we are doing so that in full knowledge
that they will rebuild and grow stronger. Many of us have trouble weakening
ourselves before the Lord and allowing ourselves to fully trust Him and to be
our strength. Like building our physical bodies our spiritual bodies show
growth over time and with progress. Nobody walks into a gym that has never
worked out and walks out with a perfect physique. We are in a society of
instant gratification and that affects our drive and effort to accomplish
anything. In working out people take supplements, steroids, and fat burners
that in effect destroy your body but show results on the outside. People want
the same thing in the Spirit. Nobody wants to work for what they get anymore.
Building your spiritual muscle takes time. You build this muscle by spending
time with God, and building a relationship with Him. He then in turn begins to
weed out all the impurities of your heart, and shows you things (Revelation
4:1) that help strengthen you.
I like to
have a healthy diet. Do I do it all the time? No, but I try my best to put the
best things into my body that sustains all the hard work that I do to get it in
shape. To build muscle it is no secret
that you must intake good sources of protein whether it be fish, shakes, peanut
butter, or turkey to name a few. Having a body that is in shape does not only
require working out, but proper diet as well. This is also no different than
with our spiritual bodies. In John 6:54 Jesus stated that whoever eats
of His flesh and drinks of His blood will be raised up in the last day. I had
read this scripture last night and really laughed at such a statement, because
I am sure the ones He spoke it to thought He was mad. They probably wondered
why the heck am I going to eat Your flesh and drink Your blood. I love how
Jesus challenged people’s minds and did so by making no sense in the natural,
but caused them to pursue the knowledge of God instead of man. Concerning
physical fitness the flesh would be meat or protein and the blood would be
water. To gain the optimal results with physical fitness you need to eat healthy
protein and fats, and cut all sugary drink and stick to water. In the Spirit
the flesh is His Word and the blood is His presence. If we along with weakening
ourselves dive into the Word, and spend time in His presence our Spirit man
becomes fit for ministry. Psalms 34:8 says to taste and see that the
Lord is good. We are to intake His Word as food for our Spirit to feed our
Spirit and to drink of His presence so that it does not become parched. When we
are focused on the excellent things or food of God we begin to forget the bad
things that we used to consume. As I cut
my sugar and fatty foods that I used to love to eat and got more focused on
eating healthy and working out I began to lose my desire for those things that
brought my body toxins. The closer we get to God and the more we hunger and
thirst for more of Him (Matthew 5:6) the less we are interested in the
same pleasures we used to indulge ourselves in that kept us from knowing God.
The closer you get to God the less the good things of this world mean to you.
In good things I am not necessarily saying that they are sinful things, but
that they defer the anointing and do not draw you closer to Him. There are
times when I indulge myself in permissible pleasures as a time of leisure, but
shortly I realize that it doesn’t satisfy my Spirit like time with Him does.
The same goes with my eating habits. At times I allow myself to delve into a
plate of friend chicken or something else that is not good for my body, but
then realize afterward that it does not satisfy my body or make it feel any
better. In fact, in doing so I realize it makes my body feel worse. There are
people that I know that look to be in excellent physical shape or are skinny,
but the garbage that they put in their body is in turn ruining the inside of
their bodies. The people in the fitness world believe it or not are some of the
unhealthiest people you will ever meet. I know this by firsthand experience.
Some of the people in gyms do more cocaine, drink more alcohol, smoke more cigarettes,
and eat more fried food then the people working hard to change their bodies.
The outside of a man is not what God sees, because He only sees a person’s
heart (Luke 12:34). You can look good on the outside, but have clogged
arteries, high blood pressure, and diabetes on the inside. The people in the
church sometimes try so hard to save face to show everyone how holy they are by
showing up on Sunday, but when they leave they are worse than most of the
nonbelievers. This is why most people hate Christians, because like personal
trainers we are the biggest hypocrites in the world. We want to flex the
muscles on the outside, but show nobody the fat dying blob of a spirit on the
inside. It matters not to me what people are showing me what they are doing on
the outside, because it is what is in your heart that God really cares about.
You can go to church every day and read the Word, but if you have no revelation
of Word or no intimate relationship with God your heart is not changed. It is
time to get out of a religious mindset of showing how great you are by your
head knowledge and your big outward muscle, and it is an hour to learn meekness
from Jesus and learn how to build your spiritual muscle through intimacy with
Christ.
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