Working Out

You know when you start working out (not that I physically do) how your muscles the days after are all sore and stiff?  Even if you did every step and every thing JUST the way your trainer taught you, you can really be feeling it in the morning. You dread any type of movement because you know what type of pain is going to follow it.  You know that you have to get up, get ready and get on with your every day life.  But movement isn’t always comfortable during those days.  It is especially uncomfortable if you haven’t ever worked out before.  We all know that our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit, and that for health reasons that we need to work out.  Working out gets our heart rate up, it makes our blood flow, makes us sharper, makes us more flexible, makes us stronger, leaner and more attractive. 

So lets look at that in a spiritual way.  We start working out our spiritual muscles.  We have never worked them out before or have taken a break from it.  One day, we dive in and decide, lets get this workout started.  We read our Bible, pray and spend some serious quality time with God.  We ask God to start moving in our life.  And since we asked with a sincere heart and God does hear the prayers of the righteous, he  starts to move and work in our life.

So do we decide that it is okay to keep living the way that we were living before?  When God is moving us in special ways and giving us special direction should we follow it in faith?  Jeremiah 29:11-13, “ ‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.  Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will listen to you.  You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.’ “  So do we say – “you know what Lord, this hurts too much – I can’t stand moving right now because I am too sore, I am just going to quit – I gave it the sophomore effort.”  Or do we say “Lord, I know that you are moving me and making me sore to improve my spiritual muscle tone and clarity – to make me a healthier Christian.  To make my following you easier and make me stronger and better equipped to handle what comes my way.” 

With working out physically – if you do it one time, all it serves to do is to make you sore and possibly loose a little weight.  It is when you stick with it that you see the results- it is when you try your hardest to accomplish your goals that you actually see the fruits of your labor.  I have had a lot of friends say that they hated working out when they first started, but they stuck with it and lo and behold, after about 2 weeks of working out – if they missed a day, they actually missed working out.  They longed to work out every day or every other day- not only because it made them feel better about themselves, but because there was an actual drive to move and groove and get back into physical effort- it is the same way with us. 

It is so easy to say – ummmm, I am not going to “work out” spiritually today – I am just too sore- or I don’t want to start working out because I have tried before and it just lead to trouble.  I am not going to get into my Bible I am happy where I am, maybe not healthy, but happy.  I have been there too – there are days that I just don’t want to crack open a Bible and days that even praying seems hard to do.  It is a struggle to get out of bed and live for Christ, but I know for my emotional, spiritual and eternal life, it is so important.  It is usually on these days that the Lord will speak volumes to you- when you “seek him and find him when you seek Him with all your heart.” 

1 Timothy 4:8 “For Physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.”

And just for the record- we do have the BEST trainer avaiable to us - it is the Bible, and Jesus.  If we follow His example and live our lives with the (how The Way of the Master puts it) concep WDJD- What DID Jesus Do- we can live for Him.