A Spiritual Workout

Until about seven months ago, I had a problem that God was really dealing with me about.  I had smoked for more than 15 years, and after the birth of my daughter and a heartfelt prayer for God to re-open the door into ministry, God seemed to be saying, " Enough is enough."  So, my wife and I began the process of kicking the habit; however, ridding myself of the habit was simply not enough.  I wanted to do more than break the habit, I wanted to begin to undo some of the damage that the habit had caused; so, I eventually took up running.  Now to say that I simply "took up running" is an over-simplification. To begin with, I had to talk myself back into the gym.  Once that was done (and trust me, it took some time) I began a "couch-to-5k" program that, after the first week, left me wheezing, coughing, out of breath, and, for the most part, completely miserable.  During the second week, I began to curse the treadmill, the gym, the gym owners, and anyone who seemed to be enjoying themselves in this inane and torturous activity.  And then, the strangest thing happened:  I began to feel better.  My energy levels went up, my weight went down, my strength and endurance have increased, and now, after several weeks, I can actually run for nearly two miles without stopping.  Trust Papa (God, if that makes you more comfortable) to quickly pop that bubble of pride.  

Yesterday, week six, day two of my couch-to-5k program, I am plodding along and wanting nothing more than to quit, when Papa uses the fact that I have no choice but to be quiet (considering that I cannot breathe) to point out a startling and simple fact.  He said, "You know, this works with your spiritual muscles, too."  In my exhausted state, I had just enough time to think, “What muscles would those be?” before He provided me with an answer.  Everyone knows the verse - 2 Peter 1:5-7: add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance, etc. etc.   Exhausted, sweating, and utterly irritable, I left the gym wondering what in the world that had to do with my spiritual muscle. That was until, with a divine chuckle in the background, I looked up the same verse in the Amplified Bible.  This is how it reads:

(5) For this very reason, adding your diligence [to the divine promises], employ every effort in exercising your faith to develop virtue (excellence, resolution, Christian energy), and in [exercising] virtue [develop] knowledge (intelligence),(6) And in [exercising] knowledge [develop] self-control, and in [exercising] self-control [develop] steadfastness (patience, endurance), and in [exercising] steadfastness [develop] godliness (piety),(7) And in [exercising] godliness [develop] brotherly affection, and in [exercising] brotherly affection [develop] Christian love.

“Oh!  So this is where we were going!”  Just that quickly, Papa managed to highlight a problem with my thinking.  Rather than a list of qualities that I was supposed to pick-up on my journey with him, I was presented with a set of spiritual muscles that needed exercising.  This was not a list of things which I should be concerned about simply “adding,” but steady progression of exercises that would lead to strengthening my ability fulfill the commandment of Christ:  to love.

Much like fad diets, futuristic machines, and funky food programs promise quick results with very little effort; however, the modern Christian seems to want a Slim-FastTM faith: a shake on Sunday morning, Sunday night, and maybe Wednesday, and then a sensible lifestyle.  The fact of the matter is that our faith requires just as much, if not more, work than our body does in order to keep it fit and healthy.  We must exercise our faith.  We must exercise our self-control.  We must exercise our brotherly affection.  If we do not, then we can expect the cellulite of the Christian character to quickly develop: impatience, fear, anger, envy, etc. Paul, in his first letter to Timothy, goes so far as to note that “bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.”   We are not called to blessed lifestyle that requires nothing from us, nor are we called to be bench (pew) warmers, seated on the sidelines while there is a race to be run.  In every epistle, in every gospel, in every story passed down to us from the beginning, there has been that element of struggle, that moment of truth, that shining example of exercised faith.  We are called to take up our crosses, as heavy as they may be, to forget those things that are behind us, and to “press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

And remember: Exercise, whether physical or spiritual, never takes more than it gives back.

Crucified Twice

I was sitting in my Sunday evening bible study class, a class that I truly enjoy, when the leader of the bible study made a fairly innocuous statement that has settled around my shoulders like a weight.  The topic had shifted, slightly, from our discussion of Grace to the predominant worldview of the day, when  Randy, our Sunday night teacher made a comparison between the way that the world views Christ now, and the way that the world viewed him nearly two-thousand years ago.  As soon as the statement was out of his mouth, I was certain of the truth it contained and startled at the revelation that it brought: we have crucified Christ twice!

Think back to the sentiment of the people immediately prior to the crucifixion.  They had finally caught him; this man who had the audacity to name himself the son of God was now in the hands of the government and the church.  Finally, they would see justice done.  This man had shaken the very foundation of their comfortable system of beliefs.  He had challenged long-standing traditions.  He dared to call the religious leaders of the day “hypocrites,” and even “vipers.”  Finally, this man who obviously cast out devils by the prince of devils would be punished for his crimes.  All this they said of a man who would walk silently to the cross with a prayer of forgiveness on his lips. 

Now, two-thousand years later, we find ourselves surrounded by an angry mob, fists clenched in fury, voices raised in a defiant cry of “Crucify him!”  We have come full circle to a place where the teachings of Christ interfere with, rather than inform, the decisions of the people.  People shout down anyone that dares to speak the name of Jesus aloud, and those who follow him, much like Peter, follow “afar off.”  The church, in many instances, has wandered away, inadvertently causing much of the world’s attitude; in an attempt to increase membership, appeal to a particular demographic, or to improve Sunday morning turn-out, the church has made itself look more like the world that Christ came to save.  We either turn Christ’s message of love into a sinful free-for-all where anything goes (as long as we show up for church on Sunday), or we twist that message into one of hate where, rather than loving the sinner while hating the sin, we appear to hate everything equally. 

We have crucified him twice, and no one seems to realize.  We have crucified him twice, once on a tree, and once on the cross of popular opinion.  We have crucified him twice, and still he stands, arms outstretched, all at once inviting us into a relationship with him and holding back the wrath of the father that we so rightly deserve.  We have crucified him twice, and still he prays, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

The Sacrifice of Separation

We have lost a part of who we are as a faith in the fast-paced hustle-and-bustle of a world to which were were never meant to belong.  Becoming a (faithful) follower of Christ demands that we separate ourselves from a world that has been and continues to be ruled by "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life"  Separation, however, is no small thing; distancing one's self from the sinful lifestyles of colleagues, friends, and even family members requires a certain amount of sacrifice.  We must be willing to lose it all in order to gain Christ.

To understand the fundamental sacrifice of separation, one must first come to fully understand the concept of separation.  First, through the process of salvation, a born-again Christian is separated to God.  In the book of 1 Peter 2:9-10 the Bible states:

(9) Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath call you out of darkness into his marvelous light. (10)  Which in times past were not a people, but are now the people of God; which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.

Outside all expectation and beyond all hope, God chose to extend his hand to a heathen people - a people who, prior to Christ's sacrifice, had no hope of a reunion with their creator.  It follows, then, that our separation to God carries with it a weight and a responsibility that, too often times, is given short shrift in modern church services.  This gift of salvation, once received, makes the believer a part of a "royal priesthood"  separated unto God for a specific work.  This calls to mind the two most prominent priests of the Old Testament:  the Levites, who were born into their service of God; and the Nazarites, who chose to serve Him;  both of these find their parallel in the modern believer, and we must recognize that, even then, the priests had to undergo elements of both separation and sacrifice in order to prepare themselves for service to God (see Lev. 22:2; Num 6). We must not, however, focus solely on our separation to God; we must also consider the fact that we are to remain separate from anything that is contrary to the mind of God.

Paul's second letter to the church at Corinth notes in chapter 6, verses 14 - 18:

(14)Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?  (15)  And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?  (16)  And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.  (17)  Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you,  (18)  And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.

This separation from the things of the world flows quite naturally from the fact that we have been separated to God.  We are designed for his purpose and then provided with the tools needed to fulfill that purpose.  We cannot, however, begin to walk as God would have us to walk, nor can we allow the light of Christ to shine through us, if we continue to flirt with the things of this world. In order for the believer to carry out the perfect will of God, he must be centered, sanctified, and separated.  This world has been given over to the devil himself, and, for some odd reason, we have convinced ourselves that, in our brief time here, we need to accumulate a certain amount of wealth and find our place in certain circles, so that we can advance an agenda that God never intended.  Indeed, all of this should be secondary to our role as a "peculiar people;" we are the children of God, received as his sons and daughters, and it is our duty to proclaim the love of Christ to a world that is all too willing to follow the satanic principles of "force, greed, selfishness, ambition, pleasure, and lust"  (Scofield Study Bible).  This is where the sacrifice of separation appears.  Christ's road was difficult, dangerous, and lonely.  He was a hunted man who had been dropped behind enemy lines with a specific mission:  to save all of mankind.  If to be Christian means to be "Christ-like,"  how can we expect our lives to be any different?   This is not to say that God is not ready and willing to fully bless his people and endow them with the tools needed to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth.  The danger comes in when we confuse the blessings of God with success as measured by the world.  Remember, "my beloved brethren, has not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he has promised to them that love him?" (James 2:5)  

Separation and sacrifice in scripture often appear hand-in-hand.  Again, this is not surprising.  As we begin to separate from a world given over to the basest of sins, it stands to reason that we must sacrifice those things that the world deems important.  We sacrifice force for meekness, greed for grace, selfishness for selflessness, ambition for service, pleasure for presence, and lust for a hunger te move closer to God, and in so doing, we no longer look, act, or think like those around us.  Romans 12:1-2 says:

(1) I beeseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. (2) And be not conformed to rhis world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.  

This separation will make our brothers and sisters nod in agreement with a path well-chosen and will make other stare in shock and confusion as we respond to life from a perspective that, according to this world, cannot work.  The faithful follower of Christ must take care not to take this concept of separation to a place where God never intended for it to be.  We must separate ourselves in "desire, motive, and act" (Scofield Study Bible) from a world that is not our home; we must separate ourselves from false teachers, and be on constant guard for the spirit of antichrist; but we must not separate ourselves from all contact with evil and sin in the world.  We must ground ourselves in our faith, sacrifice conformity with the world and complicity with sin for a close, personal relationship with Christ and carry that relationship to a world in desperate need of change.  Unless our congregations are going above and beyond in reaching out to the surrounding community (and many times even if they are), the lost are not flocking to our churches.  They remain, as they ever have, on the highways and byways, the bars and the ballfields, the streets and the stripclubs, and we must find a way to reach them where they are.  In the heart of his ministry, Christ spent little time teaching in the temple, but focused on teaching those who walked with him to go "into all the word and preach the gospel to every creature."