I’ve showed up at spin classes for over a month now. Regularly.
And it still hurts. A lot. But it’s so good.
I had finally arrived at the conclusion that if I don’t take the time to work at being healthy, plain and simple, I’m not going to be healthy. Distractions keep me from healthy, stress keeps me from healthy, work keeps me from healthy, even ‘doing good’ keeps me from healthy. Emotions too and even pain provides comfort to excuse getting healthy.
It came down to choice. Do I want to be healthy… or not? Am I fighting for it or just shadowboxing?
So let’s get real with ourselves…the same applies to spiritual health. It’s a choice.
Do you sometimes go through the motions “of” God and “for” God without ever considering a heart encounter with God? Does your life in the seen and the unseen regularly align? Do you reach for His Word in a panicky moment to find strength, yet crowd out the living rooms of our hearts with so much flabbiness that God barely fits?
We complain God has failed us and hasn’t come through when we wanted…
or could it be the other way around?
Do our hollow excuses reach heaven?
Hollow excuses grapple for cheap grace, and that’s not the grace God wants to wash you in. He has rich, lavish, oceanic grace waiting for you.
Get real with God by getting real with yourself. Make the commitment to just do it. It might hurt a bit and it takes commitment, realigning schedules and priorities, and that difficult word…discipline. For crying out loud, even the word sends guilt waves in me.
But it’s so good.
Don’t you realize that in a race everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize? So run to win! All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. So I run with purpose in every step. I am not just shadowboxing. I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified. 1 Corinthians 9.24–27