Do You Work Out?

    Do you work out, run, lift weights, walk, bike, or otherwise get a good dose of exercise? I hope so! If you are not exercising regularly, starting and sticking with it will change your life! Mayo clinic recently put out a report on regular physical exercise, listing seven benefits (controls weight, combats health conditions and diseases, improves mood, promotes better sleep, puts the spark back into your sex life, and can be a lot of fun!)
    Paul says that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19), and that they belong to God. That alone ought to tell us that we have a responsibility to take care of the temples He indwells. It’s a part of our worship. We do not honor him by letting such a wondrous part of His creation deteriorate without our care. Getting and staying physically fit is important. Paul did say, “….bodily exercise profits…” (1 Tim. 4:8 NKJV). There is value in exercise. But if you know that passage in 1 Timothy, you’ll see right away that I left out key components. In its entirety it says, “For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come” (1 Timothy 4:8 NKJV). I believe in physical exercise, which takes discipline. But far more importantly, I want to talk about spiritual exercise, or what we call, “spiritual disciplines.” In the verse just before this, Paul said to Timothy, “Exercise yourself (meaning to train or discipline) toward godliness.” Like physical fitness, spiritual fitness takes discipline and work. But the payoff is really worth it!
    Using Mayo Clinic’s benefits of physical exercise, let’s see how they compare to spiritual exercise.
    Exercise controls weight. A friend once said, “I don’t work out because if I did, I’d get more hungry, and then I’d wind up eating too much and gain weight!” Obviously, he was being sarcastic….poking fun at his own laziness. We all know that exercise burns calories, hence lessens physical weight. Spiritual disciplines (reading God’s Word, focused prayer, acts of love and service for others, corporate worship in the Body of Christ) does as well. There is something about spending concentrated time alone with God, as well as serving others selflessly, and worshipping God corporately, that lightens our load, alleviates our worries, and unburdens our thinking.
    Exercise combats health conditions and diseases. It builds the body’s immune system, as do spiritual disciplines, which gives us the weaponry to feign off temptation and the attacks of Satan.
    Exercise improves mood. When I am helping a depressed person, I immediately get them on a regimented sleep and eating schedule, and get the exercising daily. Exercising gets our juices flowing and elevates dopamine (the pleasure chemical in the brain) making us feel better. I can’t tell you how many times I have struggled emotionally and spiritually, knowing I needed to intense alone time with God. After getting away with Him for a while, I am always refreshed in every way!
    Exercise promotes better sleep. There are a number of reasons for this, not the least of which is it just plain tires us out and gives our bodies the desire for sleep. But spiritual disciplines do more to give me a good night’s rest than anything else. I can wake up in the night with cares and worries just like everyone else. I learned a long time ago that the quickest way back to sleep is to pray! If it was God waking me up, He must want my attention, so I pray. If it’s the devil waking me up, He’s not too pleased with how I’m using my time so he lets me go back to sleep. Reading your Bible before bed, praying through a list of people you care about, as well as your own concerns, is like unloading the worries of your mind and giving them to God, allowing you to sleep in peace.
    Exercise puts the spark back into your sex life. Sorry, I’ve got nothing for this one! Hahaha!
    Finally, Mayo Clinic says that exercise is fun. You never think of discipline in any area to be fun, but it is. The happiest people I know are disciplined people. The most frequently depressed and miserable people I know, are slaves to their own feelings and passions. And essentially, that’s what discipline is, it’s overcoming our feelings and doing what we know we should do, instead of what we feel like doing. God has a way of delivering His peace and joy to those who discipline their lives to focus on Him and are following though with serving Him. In the end, spending time with God, obeying Him, and caring for others is the way to a fulfilled and happy life.
    Do you exercise? I hope so. But more importantly, I hope you exercise your spiritual life. Paul told Timothy it has benefits for today that last into eternity!

Are Your Habits Helping or Hurting?

    In “Tale of Two Cities”, Charles Dickens tells the story of a physician who was imprisoned in a French penitentiary for twenty years. Unable to practice medicine, but wanting to keep himself useful and occupied, he took up the trade of shoe cobbler while incarcerated, making and fixing shoes for his fellow inmates. For twenty years, he could be heard working away in his cell late at night, tapping away, repairing the shoes of prisoners. Finally, during the French Revolution, he was set free to go home and return to medicine. But the doctor could not handle the change and his new freedom. Returning to his home, he had a servant build a room in his attic identical in size to his prison cell. In the years leading to his death, neighbors could hear him tapping away, making and repairing shoes late at night, never to return to medicine.
    The fact that we are creatures of habit is a good thing. It enables us to be far more productive, and to accomplish many more things than we otherwise could. If we had to think through everything we do daily, we would be hindered in so many ways. But the vast majority of things that we do, we do on autopilot. I’m not thinking at all about the locations of the keys on this keyboard as I am typing. If I had to think about where each letter was located and which finger I would use to type it, this blog would take me hours to finish. As it is, while thinking through some concepts and doing research for what I write, may take a fair amount of time, typing it takes only a few minutes. I’m typing by way of habit and muscle memory. It’s how most of our accomplishments in life come about. We do the busy work by habit, freeing our minds and creative processes to function efficiently.
    But habit can also become a curse. Addictions, habitual life dominating sins, angry reactions to others, etc., are a struggle for us to overcome because of that same tendency for repeated behaviors to become ingrained in our lives as habit. In this case, a man lost not only his years while in prison, but all the years afterward because he could not release himself from the twenty year prison mentality that developed in his mind. Pretty sad.
    Maybe that’s your struggle. The Bible declares that those who are in Christ have been released from the guilt and the reality of their past. Paul says that we are “dead to sin.” But we have trouble getting out of the routine of that old way of living. Changing habitual behavior is hard. Changing a habitual way of thinking is harder still. So in Romans, Paul told the believers to consider their old way of living to be dead, and their new way of living to be life. He said, “You also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions” (Romans 6:11–12).
    Having become followers of our Savior Jesus Christ, we are to consider our old ways of sin, those old nasty habits, to be dead, enabling the power of Jesus’ resurrection to give us a new way of thinking and behaving. You don’t have to be imprisoned any longer! You can become what God initially intended you to be! You’ve been freed! Now live the life of freedom.

What Do You Get Out of Church?

    Yesterday was bill paying day. Isn’t that fun? Hahaha! Actually, with modern technology, I’ve taken a lot of the work out of it. I pay pretty much all of it online, and have as many automatic payments going out as possible. But Linda and I still sit down every two weeks and review our budget, look at the amounts of the checks going out (or auto-withdrawals) and make sure the payments are in line with the bills. While we’ve gone paperless and automatic, it still requires our regular attention. When we finished and I closed the budget spreadsheet, I was in a whiny mood. Who likes sending money out…paying bills?
    But then a thought came to me, as though it were a rebuke from the Lord. “Look at all you get for what you pay!” I have a warm house in the winter; a cool house in the summer. I have two reliable cars, also with heat and air, and I don’t have to feed them! We turn a knob and we get our choice of hot or cold water. We turn another knob and we have fire to cook our food over. We have a cupboard full of food, as well as a fridge full of perishable food that is kept from spoiling (and I never have to chop ice to make it work). We have clean clothes that wash relatively easily, and likewise with our clean dishes. We have access to the world through high speed internet, as well as with a crystal clear image on a television that beams images from around the world in real time.
    You know I could go on and on. The fact that we can take hot showers whenever we want is something we rarely give a grateful thought to, but also something few people in all of history have been able to enjoy. Thinking about these things, and consciously thanking God for the blessings that come from our bills, takes the sting out of paying them. When I remember, I take it a step further and pray for those who may be blessed or whose needs may be met, partially through the bills I am paying. All of a sudden, a distasteful task actually becomes enjoyable.
    Nothing worthwhile comes free. You pay bills because you have much to be thankful for! In fact, the level of satisfaction from any activity or enterprise is directly related to the level of sacrifice made on its behalf. Vince Lombardi said, “I firmly believe that any man's finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is the moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle-victorious.”
    This blog is not so much about paying bills, though I hope it helps your approach to that. But I want you to think about what you get out of church. I’ve heard so many people, leaving really good churches, saying things like, “Well, we just weren’t getting fed.” Sometimes they see me roll my eyes :-). If you have been a believer for any length of time, you shouldn’t be going to church to get fed, anyway! You should be going to feed others! If you’ve been a Christian for more than a couple of years, you will only get out of any church what you put into it. Long-term satisfaction in a church is like anything else, it comes by way of sacrifice. People who sacrificially serve others in their church, with genuine love, enjoy their churches. It may not make logical worldly sense, but those who are not paying attention to what they get out of something, but are more concerned about what they are giving, they get more out of it! This isn’t my principle, this is Jesus’ (Acts 20:35).
    You get what you pay for! How much are you getting out of church? The better question….what sacrifices are you making to serve others through your church? The answer to that question will determine the answer to the one before it.