How did you do on your spiritual fitness assessment? Are you spiritually flabby? Do you need to add a few more exercises to help build up your spiritual muscles? Like physical fitness, if you want to grow stronger, spiritually, you’ll need to be intentional in your “workouts”. But why?
Why should believers care about being spiritually fit?
Because we live in a postmodern world. Postmodern or post modernism is a philosophy that says there are no absolutes (no rules / no truth) and that all viewpoints are equally valid. Such thinking reduces all religion to the level of opinion. With that thinking, the basic tenets of the Christian faith are dismissed and rejected including the Bible as the authoritative Word of God and Jesus Christ as the only way to salvation. And what is left to guide the human soul? Truth is determined by the individual’s viewpoint or “spiritual bentness”—the degree to which one ascribes to the worldview on how life is to be lived and away from God’s instructions for holy living. It’s a matter of personal belief and personal choice. But remember Jeremiah’s warning: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9)
Why do believers need to be spiritually fit?
First, being spiritually fit determines the believer’s outlook on life. The cry of believers living in a postmodern world dominated by materialism, sexual immorality, and wickedness is “how are we to live?” (2 Pet. 3:11) The Apostle Peter describes us as “peculiar people” (1 Pet. 2:9). That means we don’t look like the world. Our worldview is shaped by “who we are” and “whose we are”. Believers live according to the authoritative Word of God—every “jot and tittle” and we know that by no other name, under heaven or earth, can one be saved but by Jesus Christ (Acts 4:11-12). Bottom-line, the believer’s outlook is shaped by God, from whom we derive our meaning and our reality.
Secondly, being spiritually fit determines the believer’s output in life. As believers we know that our lives were purchased for a price and we live as the redeemed of God (Ps. 107:2). We no longer live for ourselves, existing only to gratify our fleshly needs like the world. Our purpose and all our efforts are directed by the Holy Spirit. It is in Him that we live and move and have our meaning (Act 17:28). We know that the things of this life are fading away. Therefore believers focus their energies on those things that have eternal value and benefit (2 Cor. 4:17-18; Matt. 7:24-29).
Finally, being spiritually fit determines the believer’s outcome after life. Whether people believe in God or not does not dismiss the reality of existence beyond our life on planet earth. It is called eternity. The choices made in this life will result in where one will spend eternity. As believers become more spiritually fit and mature, they realize that the time in which they currently live is set in the framework of eternity. As we become daily transformed by the Word of God and conformed to the image of Christ, our priorities and desires shift from this passing world to things above where Christ dwells (Col. 3:1-2). We proclaim like Paul, “For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21).
Join us next week as we answer the question, “What does spiritual fitness look like?”
I will continue to work on spiritual fitness.
Absolutely! We take it one day–one hour–one moment at a time. But He (God) who began a good work in you is able to make it happen (Phil. 1:6; 2:13)