Abiding in every area of life
Jun 28, 2017Do you ever find yourself lacking motivation to eat healthy and stay fit? Throughout my high school years, I struggled to eat well and stay fit even though I had played sports all my life. I struggled most with eating unhealthy foods that caused weight gain and health issues. Even when I did begin to change my eating habits, the change was brought about for the wrong reasons—like solely staying in shape because of self-consciousness about my body image. Not to say that it’s wrong to want to look good, but if it’s our primary motivation, then it will become our obsession and eventually an idol.
Before I really began walking with Jesus, I would compartmentalize my workouts as something separate from my walk with Christ. By compartmentalizing, I wasn’t able to have God’s perspective for working out and for stewarding my body. When the Holy Spirit gave me God’s perspective was when staying fit stopped being an obligation and started being worship.
We must ask ourselves why we are staying fit…If it is for the wrong reasons then we will get trapped in a cycle of highs and lows all of our life rather that exponential growth. God wants us to go from glory to glory in every single thing in our life, but why? If it is for ourselves then it is rooted in pride, instead it must be rooted in Christ. We go from glory to glory to bring him more glory. Period. This is the mindset of everything we do. If your workouts are not primarily for his glory – stop... until your perspective is changed, any other mindset cannot lead to anything honorable. Stewardship is an overflow of our hearts. Instead of one step forward and three steps back, we can substitute a life of inconsistency for a life of consistent growth.
Being led by the Holy Spirit is not just about things we consider “spiritual,” but about every aspect of our lives. God does not want us to compartmentalize our life, He desires to lead us in everything we do. Therefore, we have a personal trainer every time we work out; the Holy Spirit… And He is very personal. He sees and knows exactly what we need to work on and how we need to work it, Jesus said in Mathew 16 that he would send a “helper” that would lead and guide us… The Holy Spirit bears witness and reveals Jesus so if we are being led by the Holy spirit then Jesus will be revealed and honored through us working out. The Holy Spirit wants to reveal to us all that Jesus desires to do in and through our lives every day.
Exercising during the week is a lot of work and it is a great sacrifice of time. For most, this is not sustainable… I believe the reason for this is that people have their workouts founded in the wrong things. This is why people dread working out and just want to get it over with and end up rushing through and not getting any better…believe me, I don’t always FEEL like getting up early and lifting heavy weights and I used to dread it, until god changed my perspective.
If you take anything away from reading this post let it be this: Your workouts are just an extended time for you to spend time with the Lord. If we look at our workouts as a time that God wants to strengthen us, speak to us, and reveal the things that he has for our lives, then it no longer becomes this heavy time where we are alone and out of breath. Every thought and revelation in this post the Lord spoke to me while I was working out. As we let him renew our minds and see fully his perspective we will go from glory to glory like never before and we will sustain that for a lifetime.
As you go today ask the lord to give you fresh revelation of what He has for your life in this area. God desires to see every goal met and every bondage broken. As we have the right motive and right perspective there is nothing that God won’t give us the strength to do.
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