Proclaiming God's Praises And Displaying His Virtues in the Borough of Broxbourne
ATTAINING AND MAINTAINING SPIRITUAL FITNESS
Care For Your Body
Have you ever considered how necessary it is for you to take care of your body - to clean and to feed it everyday. For example, if you were to go without brushing your teeth or cleaning your body for a day - just one day - you immediately begin to feel, and in some cases see, that something is wrong. Your mouth, eyes, nose, hair and skin begin to show in different ways that your body needs attention. Even, if you choose to neglect it, more than likely, somebody will bring that fact to your attention! The need for us to take care of our body is so obvious that even when it is not convenient for us to do it, we make the effort. Likewise, if you have not eaten or taken a drink for a while, your body begins to talk to you and if you fail to give it the attention it requires it begins to disintegrate - you start to feel uncomfortable and look worn-down.
How About Your Spirit?
Now think what will happen if you do not daily clean up, feed or exercise yourself spiritually. Imagine what your spiritual state would be like?
Look, there may already be symptoms that something is not quite right - maybe you cannot control your temper; you and your wife cannot see eye to eye; you cannot sleep well at night; you feel your health is slipping away; you cannot hear from God; you feel useless; you don’t know what to do; you cannot give up on a habit that is causing you shame and grief; you start every project with great zeal but you never finish it; you can never seem to relax; you are wondering whether there should not be more to life than this. Just like when you are thirsty you know you need water, and when you are hungry you know you need food, these signs have come to tell you that you are low on spiritual nourishment, that you need more of God.
Vital Ingredient For Wholesome Living
You can start to deal with the issues of life by giving attention to the word of God - life's vital ingredient. Since man is not just body, but a spirit with a soul living in a body, nourishing our spirits and souls by relating to God, our creator, is necessary for wholesome living. The word of Jesus in Matthew 4:4 confirms this: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God."
How The Bible Rates Spiritual Fitness
Most of us know how valuable physical exercise is to physical fitness. In addition to good diet and lifesyle, regular, systematic physical exercise is crucial to maintaining good physical fitness.
But do you know that the Bible rates spiritual exercise to be even far more important than physical exercise for a good balanced life?
1 Timothy 4:8 "Bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come."
Twenty Signs of Spiritual Fitness
Here are twenty signs to help you assess your spiritual fitness.
* Self control
* Peace
* Courage
* Boldness
* Vigilance
* Endurance
* Discernment
* Dynamic prayer life
* Effectiveness in prayer
* Effectiveness in ministry
* Strong faith
* Regularly hearing from God
* Willingness to obey God
* Obedience to God
* Vigorous resistance to sinful temptations
* Stong commitment to vision
* Effective exercise of authority over the devil
* Perseverance
* Focus
* Security
Get A Spiritual Fitness Rating
You may probably have found that when you put a number to something, you begin to understand it in a more precise way - for example a speedometer let's you know if you are within the speed limit for the road you are travelling on, Body Mass Index (BMI) lets you know whether you are underweight, overweight or within a healthy weight range, and a gas meter registers the volume of gas you have used and indicates your next bill amount.
To give us a rough spiritual fitness measurement, let us assign scores to ratings as follows:
Rating Definition
Rating score
Never 1
Rarely 2
Sometimes 3
Usually 4
Always 5
Rating And Interpretation
Under this rating definition, a score of 5 for self-control would indicate that you always exercise self-control; 3 would indicate that you sometimes exercise self-control and 1 would indicate that you never exercise self control . The maximum scores attainable is 100 (20*5) and the minimum is 20 (20*1).
Now, if you were to rate each of the twenty signs above on a scale of 1 to 5, what would your total score be?
Whatever your score is can be used to describe your current level of spiritual fitness. Try to be as honest with yourself as you can with your rating. Try it now! It may also be a good idea to get a very close friend or someone who knows you well to rate you and where your ratings differ widely try to understand the reason for the difference.
In any case, the important thing is not so much as what your current level of spiritual fitness is, but whether there is something you can do to attain your desired level of fitness and to maintain it? The good news is there is! Just like the level of physical fitness can be influenced by regular, systematic exercise, so can the level of one's spiritual fitness.
Let me stress at this point that the idea of spiritual fitness rating is not to give us something to brag about, to nurse anyone’s ego, or to put anyone down and make him/her feel inadequate. Nor is it to initiate or fuel a debate about who is spiritually fitter, but to give us goals for spiritual development in specific areas and a simple way to assess our progress over a period of time.
Being fit now does not guarantee fitness in future unless we continue to feed on the word of God, clean up and exercise appropriately. If anyone is in doubt of the wisdom of this, please remember this counsel from the word of God: “Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he falls.” – 1 Corinthians 10:12. I pray that you will not fall in the name of Jesus.
Examples of spiritual exercises that you can engage in to improve your fitness level are shown in the following section.:
Spiritual Exercises
* Meditating in the word of God
* Exposure to sound preaching and teaching of the word of God
* Acting in obedience to the word of God
* Praising and worshipping God
* Praying in the spirit
* Praying with the mind
* Adding fasting to prayer
* Preaching the word of God
* Teaching the word of God
* Healing the sick
* Casting out demons
* Evangelistic witnessing
* Enduring stress or trials
* Resisting temptations and attacks
* Serving people cheerfully
General Advice on Attaining and Maintaining Spiritual Fitness
If you want to attain spiritual fitness or maintain your fitness then a good spirit-filled and word loving Church to which you can be committed is necessary. In such an environment you will be able to participate regularly in appropriate activities that you need for your personal upbuilding and you will have opportunity to serve and minister to other people and make reliable friends. Through interaction with people, you will also be exposed to challenges that will help you to test and develop your endurance level!
Get Help To Start Building Up Your SF Today!
At Praise Church, our church programs are especially planned to help individuals attain and maintain spiritual fitness. After a few months of regularly attending our meetings and applying yourself to what you are learning, you will find that your SF (Spiritual Fitness) will start going up. If you have not been active spiritually for a while or you have sustained some spriritual wounds, or feel particulary vulnerable to attacks, then it is even more crucial that you get into fellowship quickly with experienced believers where you can be given the right type and level of support to start building up your SF.
We'd be very delighted to hear from you today, so please get in touch now and we will be glad to advise you of the next step forward to a new balanced you!
Peace from God, and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen, and thank you for listening.
Rev Ola Stevens
Email: pastorola@praise-church.com
Phone: +44(0)1992 461 166