We all want to feel and look our best. Popular fitness culture provides many, often competing, solutions for physical health and appearance. But what if the goal were not only to look and feel our best, but also to actually BE our best? My colleague, Debra Chew, writing for the January 25, 2016 edition of The Chattanoogan.com, describes a spiritual discipline and lifestyle that she calls “the ultimate spiritual fitness app.” So, read on. Get inspired. Get motivated. Get fit…in every sense of the word. Here’s Deb:
In the first few days of the New Year, much discussion centered around steps walked, hours slept, and heart rates. It seemed almost everyone I knew got a fitness tracker for Christmas. While I found it quite interesting that this device could actually calculate steps walked, calories burned and quality of sleep, I had to wonder: if fitness trackers help us stay motivated and improve our body’s fitness by tracking exercise, food, weight, and sleep, isn’t it equally important to find a way to help us stay motivated and improve our spiritual fitness?
An advertisement for FitBit reads: “Meet the Ultimate Fitness App.” If that’s true, then I suggest the ultimate spiritual fitness app is the Bible.
Spiritual fitness could be defined as having a strong set of spiritual beliefs, principles or values and consistently living them. The Apostle Paul instructed Timothy to keep spiritually fit in I Timothy 4:7: “exercise thyself rather unto godliness.” JB Phillips translates that, “take time and trouble to keep yourselves spiritually fit.” Paul goes on to tell Timothy that “while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.”
Paul isn’t saying we shouldn’t be physically active, but he is stressing the importance of exercising our spiritual sense of things as diligently and regularly as athletes exercise their bodies, so that we can grow spiritually….