Keys To A Healthy Body

Keys to a Healthy Body

Various Scriptures

(May 20, 2001)

Introduction

How many here made a New Year’s Resolution to take better care of yourself this year?

Gonna eat right, exercise, and all that?

Since I don’t want to bring too much negative into the message this morning, I’m not going to ask how you are doing on those resolutions.

Last we talked at length about taking care of the Body of Christ. We mentioned that our church is part of the Body, and that other churches are part of the body.

We also mentioned that while our church is part of the body, the body is made up of individuals.

As I was praying about what God wanted me to talk to you about this week, I was impressed to continue in this theme about the Body of Christ.

And I thought that the best route would be to move from, in a sense, identifying that Body of Christ as being made up of us as well as others, to looking to how we could promote a healthy Body of Christ.

You know from last week how I feel about cooperating with other members of the Body of Christ.

We have our differences in theology, but we agree on the main things: the inspiration of Scripture, the death, resurrection, and second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, the deity of Christ, and so forth.

And so I am of the opinion that not only can we get along with brothers and sisters of other denominations and churches, but we can actually do bigger things together than we can ever do alone and isolated.

So I would like to give you three things to keep in mind that will go a long way to promoting a healthy Body, and the first of these is to…

I. Promote Healthy Habits.

You will see that I had a verse printed out for you here, and I want to read it to you as the main point of this section.

After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church.

My point here is that just as we are supposed to take care of our physical bodies, so we are to take care of the Body of Christ.

And how do we do that, you ask? Well, just like your physical body, you need to…

A. Eat Right.

Okay, Brian, just how do we do that?

The main ways we eat right in the body of Christ are to worship and fellowship together.

Listen to this very familiar passage from Hebrews 10:24-25

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

The writer here describes not a healthy habit, but an unhealthy one – not meeting together for worship and fellowship.

And if not getting together is not healthy, then it stands to reason that getting together is a healthy habit.

Some would say they don’t need church – they just worship themselves.

Think that if you want. It’s not scriptural. We need each other, and there is nothing like getting together with like-minded believers to celebrate the love of God as we worship together.

So we need to eat right by breaking the bread of fellowship and worship.

Next, we need to…

B. Exercise.

Sometimes when we think of exercise, we think of the maintaining of our present health. But I want to focus on another aspect of exercise.

When we exercise, we take our bodies beyond what they are used to, in order to get them into shape

What I mean by this is that we need to do something our body is not used to doing.

We need to move out of our comfort zones, whether in our spiritual development as a body, or in our ministry as a body.

Also, it’s been said that faith is like a muscle. It grows with exercise. And as we step out in faith to impact the area for Christ, He will increase our faith to do even more for Him.

If I were a betting man, I’d lay money on it. As the Lord opens opportunities, let’s go for it and see what He does.

I am extremely encouraged by your LBA. We are getting ready to discuss some ideas for outreach and visitation, and in all of our discussions, never once have I heard, “Well, we’ve never done it that way before.”

The attitude is, “Let’s give it a shot and see if God blesses it.”

That is a great attitude that allows us to exercise our faith as a body.