This week’s posts have been all health centered and how maintaining health and reaching physical fitness goals is actually a continued pursuit of serving God.
First was the development of a New Year’s goal, to look better naked, into a more worthy pursuit of fitness, because serving God requires using all your heart, mind and soul you cannot build your foundation on “looking better naked” you must seek to instead: to build a body worthy of housing God, because God has given me this body, and he deserves my best effort.
Following that, the Bible provides examples of fit men that we should aspire to. This is because they found “favor with God” through the use of their bodies. However, not everyone is able-bodied, yet still God has divined purpose even for them. Showing us that our physical body is not everything, but it is important.
Then it was all rounded out by taking a look at a spiritual purpose for fasting from food. The main argument being that if we are not hungry we will not seek the Lord’s easement in our lives.
Which leads to today’s topic about how, you may be body building, but what are you building your body on?
Often times, at least in my own life, when I set a goal I am immediately gung-ho on doing anything and everything I can to get there as quickly as possible. Often, ignoring the journey and the joy that comes along with hitting milestones for whatever the goal may be. Perhaps you are like this, or perhaps you have trouble starting at all and the vision of the goal falls short in your mind.
When we make goals, especially in regards to health, we have certain expectations of how we want to, look and feel. At times, we fall short of our expectations for ourselves. Turning our goals that once seemed doable into something monstrously difficult until we shirk it and commitments made to ourselves or others and slink back into obscurity; unable to face the shame, a failure.
Failure in fact is a large expectation of most people today. A Google search for ‘fail culture’ generates 18.2 million views and a search for “fail culture” nets 22,800 results. Many people have become enamored with failure, because as long as they’re ‘trying’ they deem all their actions as worthy. They may post about their gym venture on social media or brag about having a salad for lunch. These small actions are not indicative of a successful attitude however.
This culture of failure seems to permeate every facet of our lives, marching dauntlessly ahead, because to fail is to live! Sure, maybe, but success tastes that much sweeter. What is so interesting about this advocacy for failure is it propagates the arrogance of man; pushing a policy of self-reliance and sole self-improvement, but that cannot last. We cannot establish a strong foundation upon ourselves. That must be done in God and on His word.
Putting forth an effort is a perquisite to achieving failure or success, of course. These qualities of action are immutable. These tries though are based solely in man’s understanding of the problem and his actions to achieve success. An inconsistency in the perception of what success takes.
David puts it to words eloquently when he says in Proverbs 3:5-6 “… lean not on your own understanding”, David the great king of Israel reminds us in a couple lines that we cannot find success, ever, in our own understanding of the problem. For wisdom we must defer to God. This failure culture that broadcasts a message of “go your own way” will not withstand the test of time, because it is based on man alone.
Rather all things that have found root in God and His word exist to this day in the communities that have fully embraced them. This is the case for all things we try to build, our families, bodies, communities, companies, and anything else that we are able to and blessed to create. If we expect these things to last we must build them on the foundation of God. Why? Well God is the only consistency in this universe that we can know.
From our birth to death, God is with us and yes even in our fitness journey when it doesn’t feel like it. We are reminded in two verses Hebrews 13:8 “Jesus Christ [the body] is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Even when we feel defeated in our pursuit of physical betterment we can call upon Jesus to join us in our suffering and He will be there every time! It’s wonderful to know we have an ally even if we don’t have a gym partner. Then we look at the end of the Bible Revelation 22:13 “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” This shows us that God is with us through all suffering, unchangingly from the beginning to the end. He is the foundation you must build your house upon. He is the foundation you must build your goals and body upon.
Failure may be fine for some, but as for me; I will build my body upon the Lord our God.
Thanks for reading.
-Kyle