DIET & EXERCISE:
A Spiritual Perspective ~ Part II
1. Someone once said: “I don’t exercise at all. If God had wanted me to touch my toes He would have put them up higher on my body.”
• My gym teacher told me to touch my toes. I said, "I don’t have that kind of relationship with my feet. Can I just wave?"
• The older you get, the tougher it is to lose weight because by then, your body and your fat are really good friends.
• Every time I get the urge to exercise, I lie down till the feeling passes.
• The only reason I would take up exercising is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.
• A blonde is terribly overweight, so her doctor puts her on a diet. "I want you to eat regularly for two days, then skip a day, and repeat this procedure for two weeks. The next time I see you, you’ll have lost at least five pounds."
When the blonde returns, she’s lost nearly 20 pounds. "Why, that’s amazing!" the doctor says. "Did you follow my instructions?"
The blonde nods. "I’ll tell you, though, I thought I was going to drop dead that third day."
"From hunger, you mean?" asked the doctor.
"No, from skipping."
2. Last Sunday we commenced a 2-Part series on Diet and Exercise from a Spiritual Perspective. We examined the essential components of a healthy diet - the Proteins, the Carbohydrates, and the Fats and a sufficient quantity of Water and then made application to the spiritual ingredients that help build and nourish the Body of Christ and keep the system healthy.
3. Today, for our workout, we are going to examine the three main types of exercise – AEROBIC or ENDURANCE TRAINING, STRENGTH TRAINING, and FLEXIBILITY TRAINING and we will make the application to how these fitness routines work in the Body of Christ to develop spiritual muscle, spiritual flexibility, and spiritual endurance.
4. As I reflected on each of these three types of exercise, just as each of them benefits many different parts of the body and there is obviously some overlapping, each type has a main target or focus.
• AEROBIC or ENDURANCE TRAINING specifically benefits the heart and lungs
• STRENGTH TRAINING zeros in on strengthening the muscles and the bones
• FLEXIBILITY TRAINING targets the joints and lengthens and tones the muscles
5. As we make the spiritual application, we will be doing the same thing by focusing in on the development of a specific Christian characteristic in each area.
6. So we have had our warm up time, and our time of stretching to loosen up our joints and relax our muscles for the workout. Now since a workout is something you DO and not something you sit and listen to – these are simply some basic instructions given to move us into ACTION.
ENDURANCE TRAINING
1. Aerobic or endurance training strengthens the heart and lungs and provides the body with larger amounts of oxygen-rich blood. As we do this type of workout, our heart and lungs are forced to work harder, and our cardiovascular system is strengthened as we breathe faster, pumping more oxygen into our bloodstream that flows into our muscles to produce energy and develop strength.
• Such exercise also helps burn calories to help us lose weight
• It is good to do some form of aerobic exercise every day – like walking, jogging, cycling, playing tennis, swimming, mopping or scrubbing the floor and so on.
• We can keep up this kind of exercise for several minutes or even hours – enough to work up a good sweat.
• Obviously, the more regularly and frequently we do this kind of workout, the fitter we become and the longer we are able to keep going.
2. So what is it that boosts the flow of God’s life and energy through the Body of Christ and that helps build endurance?
• I would say that it is nothing other than Christ-like love – the kind that Paul describes so eloquently in 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7 “Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.”
• This is not your mushy-gushy, oozy-woozy, soft and sentimental kind of love – but it is a gutsy, tough and tenacious, purposefully persistent commitment that chooses to seek the well-being of another in spite of their past failures, in spite of their arrogance or rudeness, their irritability or resentfulness, their jealousy or boastfulness.
• This love responds to the distress of others not out of any personal need to be wanted, liked, appreciated, or rewarded but simply out of the compassion with which God has first loved them.
• And unless we are allowing our bodies to be fed with the right spiritual diet that we spoke about last Sunday, and getting a good daily supply of the water of life, if we think we can muster up enough oomph on our own, then believe me, we’re going to quickly run out of steam and our spiritual muscles will seize up in cramp – not only incapacitating us but making us another invalid to be cared for.
• What gave Jesus the ability to endure all that sinful humanity was able to hurl at Him, including ultimately the humiliation, the loneliness and the suffering of the cross – was that He had consistently allowed the Word and the Witness of the Father to saturate His mind and His heart. It can be no different for us.
3. In order to build our endurance God has brought other people into our lives – some who are just a constant joy and delight to be around, who make us feel good, who always seem to have something positive and encouraging and nurturing to say to us or do for us.
• And then He allows some others to move into our sphere who frequently seem to rub us up the wrong way and bring out in us all the stuff we don’t like – our irritability, our impatience, our anger and annoyance. Don’t run away from them! Don’t try to avoid them. Thank and praise God for His goodness in providing that extra need for exertion to build and strengthen your heart.
• And just by the way, remind yourself that God put you within the sphere of others for the very same reason.
STRENGTH TRAINING
1. Strength training involves contracting muscles against resistance for up to 6 seconds at a time. Holding a contraction for too long can unduly increase blood pressure. While this type of exercise also benefits the heart and the lungs, the main purpose of strength training is to build muscle and strengthen our bones.
• With age we tend to loose muscle mass and bone density and while this form of exercise is valuable from whatever age we start to workout, it is of particular benefit to those in advancing years.
• Our bones adapt to the weight and pull of the muscle during exercise by building more bone cells and thus becoming stronger.
• The kinds of exercise we will do here include weight lifting with free weights as well as resistance training with elastic tubing, or calisthenics – like pushups and sit-ups.
• These exercises demand lots of effort and can only be done for a short time before we need to catch our breath.
2. Making the spiritual application here – in Ephesians 5, Paul writes of Jesus’ commitment to one day present the Church to Himself as “a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or blemish”. And that includes no flabby muscles or weak bones suffering from osteoporosis!
• So to prevent that from happening, God allows us to go through times of tension and stress and pressure on the body, where we have to resist, where we have to carry loads that aren’t comfortable. Where our muscles get flexed and stretched to capacity and even a little beyond so that more muscle tissue and bone mass can get built. Where we sweat and frequently groan under the strain.
3. Peter reminds us in his first letter, chapter 4:12 “Friends, when life gets really difficult, don’t jump to the conclusion that God isn’t on the job. Instead, be glad that you are in the very thick of what Christ experienced. This is a spiritual refining process, with glory just around the corner.”
4. We were all born with muscles and bones but it takes the pressures and stresses of life to strengthen and build them.
• So within the Body of Christ the way in which that growth happens is when we take on responsibilities for carrying some of the body’s loads – we commit to join with the others when we gather as church, to pray, and serve and give, and care.
• We teach a Sunday School class, we chair a Worship Committee, we help serve at the Food Pantry, we serve as Usher and Greeter, we contribute to the monthly Newsletter, we visit those who cannot get to church, we extend invitations to others to join us, we help respond to the crises in various parts of our country and world though UMCOR.
• We are also called to “bear one another’s burdens” – and so in addition to our own responsibilities, sometimes for a short period, we help take on some additional responsibilities when the load becomes too heavy on one part of the body – like driving the extra miles to help care for someone who is in need –like preparing some meals for someone who is ill - like assisting with some extra finances when a member suddenly has too much month left at the end of their income – like teaching a class or taking on someone’s refreshment duty when a legitimate crisis has occurred in their life.
5. While we need to do what we can to increase our strength, there really is only one place that a Christian and the church as a whole can be strong, and that is “in the Lord”. Paul writes in Ephesians 6:10 “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might”.
• Just as there is only one place that an electric appliance can function – being plugged in to the power source – not into a book on electricity or pamphlet from the power company - so there is only one place where you and I can be strong – being plugged into a vital relationship with God through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
FLEXIBILITY TRAINING
1. Flexibility training is essential for preventing injuries and lessening the stiffening that comes with age. It helps maintain good joint movement and helps tone and lengthen the muscles and tendons. Another benefit is that it helps control the harmful effects of stress.
2. Some of the exercises that help with flexibility include walking laps in a pool, balancing on one foot, standing up and sitting down without using the hands. The objective in flexibility exercises is not vigorous workout but a series of gentle and controlled movements where the whole body is used, and joints are moved through their range of motion. Careful attention is paid to breathing and posture.
3. Remaining supple and flexible in our joints and muscles is what enables us to walk and get around and do things and move quickly when necessary without undue pain and discomfort. Those of you who are already battling with arthritis and other degenerative ailments of your bones and muscles know exactly what you most miss!
4. From a Spiritual point of view remaining supple and flexible is vital to our walk with the Lord, so that we might be open to and responsive to new understanding and new challenges.
5. In spite of Abraham’s great age of 99 years he had kept his spirit and his physical and emotional responses sufficiently flexible for God to do a new thing with him at that advanced stage of his life, by giving him Isaac as a son. He did the same thing in the New Testament with Zechariah and Elizabeth as the aged parents of John the Baptist.
6. The first Christians had to be flexible and open to the new understanding of God and His Kingdom and salvation for Jews and Gentiles that Jesus introduced.
7. God had to give dear old Peter the same vision and message from heaven 3 times before he was willing to get out of his traditional rut thinking that the Gospel was only for Jews and allow him to see God pour out His Spirit on the household of Cornelius the Roman centurion.
8. Jesus said in Luke 5:37-38 “No one puts new wine into old wineskins. The new wine would burst the old skins, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. New wine must be put into new wineskins.”
9. If we are to be ongoing recipients of God’s New Wine, then we need to do our part of keeping the vessels of our minds and hearts and attitudes flexible to whatever new things God might want to do in our midst.
• Each of us heard the Gospel initially presented in a style and language and format with which we have become familiar and comfortable. But there is a younger generation and even some in the older crowd out there who have never really heard it and need to hear the eternal Good News in a language and style of word and music with which they are familiar.
• It is easy for us to be accommodating of other people so long as they look much like us, speak like us, think like us – but what if they are different? Where and how will they hear the Good News? If not from us, from whom?
ENDURANCE, STRENGTHENING, and FLEXIBILITY – three essential fitness routines, which coupled with a healthy and balanced diet of the essential spiritual PROTEINS, CARBOHYDRATES and FATS – along with daily and regular quenching our thirst from the WATER OF LIFE will make us a vibrant and vital congregation, filled to overflowing with the life, love, and power of God.
If that vision excites you and you’re willing to do what it takes to make it happen here...then welcome aboard! THAT’S THE WORKOUT INSTRUCTIONS – NOW LET’S GO DO IT!
