Are You Physically at Your Peak?

By Stephen Bond

After a yearlong season of conflict, in March 1998 I resigned from my ministry in Wisconsin. I spent the next three months seeking God”s direction before accepting a call to move to Nevada to begin Summit Christian Church. Our family moved in July 1998. Then we took another three months to decompress.

We”d been through a tumultuous year and we desperately needed rest. After we caught our breath, I began to process what life lessons God was trying to teach me through that difficult time. I”ve often said the only thing worse than going through a difficult time is going through a difficult time and not learning anything! Thus, I began to ask myself, and God, what were the take-aways from that experience to help me be more effective in the next season of my life.

One was this realization: I had not taken care of myself physically during my ministry in Wisconsin. Life had gotten busy at church. I faced the increasing demands of raising four children. Somewhere along the line, I stopped exercising altogether. This reduced my effectiveness across the board.

Letting myself go physically affected my thinking process. I wasn”t sharp. It affected my energy level. I didn”t have stamina to keep up. Many times I would sleep several hours on my day off because I was so exhausted. It also took a toll emotionally. Because I was out of shape, I didn”t have the emotional strength to overcome the challenges we faced. If I had continued that unhealthy lifestyle, my wife says I would have died 10 years prematurely.

These insights strengthened my resolve to make rigorous physical exercise an immovable priority in my new schedule. So I began swimming early in the morning several times a week. This was before Summit launched, so I had plenty of free time. But I knew a day was coming when I would be busy again.

To keep swimming as a fixed priority, I decided to build my schedule around it. I”ve done this now for more than eight years. At least three (and sometimes four) times a week, every week, I swim about one mile.

Sacred and Under Submission

Second Timothy 2:15 says, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved. . . .” God wants our very best. God is not mediocre and he doesn”t want us to live mediocre lives. God wants every area of life to bring him honor. He wants us to live sold-out, on-fire, pedal-to-the-metal, white-hot lives for him. Doing this requires taking care of ourselves physically!

First Corinthians 3:16, 17 speaks clearly to this. “Don”t you know that you yourselves are God”s temple and that God”s Spirit lives in you? . . . God”s temple is sacred and you are that temple.” Our physical body is a temple in which the Holy Spirit of God resides. Thus, not taking proper care of our body is tantamount to allowing our church buildings to be covered with graffiti. Stated simply: Being in poor shape dishonors God!

The apostle Paul often uses athletic metaphors to describe our spiritual life. In 1 Corinthians 9 he compares how we run our spiritual race to an athlete training for a sporting event. “Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training” (v. 25). Paul is obviously referring to being passionate and diligent in our spiritual lives, like an athlete training for the Olympic Games. But in verse 27 he adds, “No, I beat my body and make it my slave.” Clearly, Paul understands the relationship between our physical lives and our spiritual lives. So he beats his body.

In other words, Paul brings his body into submission so he can offer God his best. Paul wants to control his body so it can become an instrument for God”s glory. If we don”t control our bodies, then our bodies will control us!

Gordon MacDonald observes, “We are most free when we are under discipline.” This is a paradox most people don”t grasp. Most people fancy the idea that freedom is living without restraints. But living without restraints ultimately leads to the greatest kind of slavery: slavery to selfish bodily passions. The truth is, no one is more free than the person whose mind, body, and soul are conditioned through discipline to bring glory to God.

The road to success is not easy because it requires discipline. Yet discipline is essential to reach our full potential for God”s glory! This side of Heaven, we will not simply wake up one day and be physically fit. Fitness happens only with discipline!

Prescription for Fitness

Fitness is critical today, especially because of the accelerated changes in our society. For most of history, humans were largely agrarian. People lived on farms, and their lives were governed by the sun. They got up early and engaged in hard physical labor. Then, when the sun went down, everybody went inside, shared a meal around the table, and went to bed.

That basic lifestyle remained in place for most of human history. It provided sufficient exercise, time for healthy social interaction, and allowed for adequate rest at night.

Now, everything has changed. People get up at all different times. We drive everywhere and walk almost nowhere. Many of us sit at desks all day and get little exercise.

After work we face countless distractions that keep us from healthy interactions with other people. Those same distractions keep us up too late at night preventing the rest we need.

The result is we”ve become a society filled with people who settle for less than their God-given potential! The only way to reverse this trend is by using discipline!

I”ve found three guidelines crucial for fitness.

1. Commit to fitness for the right motive.

The fitness challenge is not about becoming “body beautiful.” At the deepest level, it”s not about losing weight, shedding inches, or developing a “six-pack” abdomen. When those things become our focus, we”re looking in the wrong direction.

Instead, do it for God! Remember: it”s not about us! The Bible says we are not our own. We”ve been bought at a price. We belong to God! Because of that, we need to take care of what he”s entrusted to us. The bottom line is this: physical fitness is a spiritual discipline!

Proper motivation makes all the difference. In his book The 8th Habit Steven Covey tells about an overweight, out-of-shape friend who changed his lifestyle. He committed to being healthy because his family said, “We want you to be around for awhile.” Covey”s friend explained how this new motivation gave him willpower to transform his life to include regular exercise, healthy eating, and sufficient rest.

While doing this for our family might be more motivating than doing it for ourselves, an even higher motivation for committing to fitness is to honor God. When we are in excellent physical shape we honor God with our “temple,” thus rendering God our very best!

2. Commit to fitness by establishing good habits.

I recently heard a health authority suggest that 95 percent of our behaviors are habits. Think of your early morning routines. We do almost everything by habit. So a key to becoming physically fit is establishing good habits as unfailing anchor points in our routines. In my case, swimming is an immovable point in my schedule.

Today I am quite busy. Several days a week I leave the house by 6:30 AM and most days I don”t get home until 6:00 PM. My days are chock-full and I could think of a hundred reasons on any given day why I don”t have time to swim. But I don”t even entertain that notion. It”s not an option because my commitment to being physically fit is now a habit as natural to me as breathing.

To stay at it the rest of your life, your commitment to fitness must become a permanently ingrained habit in your lifestyle.

3. Get sufficient rest.

Health experts suggest that sleep deficit is epidemic in our society. This causes people to function far below their full potential. Try investing an hour in prayer when you”re sleep deprived! You know what happens? You”ll be asleep within minutes!

To function at our best most of us need at least eight hours of sleep. Getting sufficient rest is a critical aspect of being a good steward of our God-given “temple.”

When I was just out of seminary I was a hard-charging young buck. I was also proud””too proud””of the fact that I got only about six hours of sleep every night. One evening our senior pastor and one of my faith heroes, Ben Merold, came for dinner. Ben served in one of the largest churches in our fellowship and was in demand as a speaker all over the nation.

Ben sat down on our couch, took off his shoes, and put his feet up on our coffee table. Then, he looked me in the eye and asked how much sleep I got at night. I preened like a rooster, crowing that I got along with about six hours. But Ben looked back in shock and said, “Steve, I don”t know how you do it! I need at least eight and sometimes nine hours of sleep!” Right then I learned an important lesson: Sleep is a gift from God, and we don”t need to apologize about it! Being good stewards of our bodies requires getting sufficient rest.

Incredible!

Jesus came that we might have life and have it to the full. God wants us to live an abundant life! But to experience this requires personal responsibility. We have to do our part.

Developing a lifelong habit of rigorous physical exercise is not easy. But the payoff is indescribable. Today I”m in better shape physically than when I was 30 years old. Twice I”ve done the 2.7-mile, end-to-end swim at Donner Lake. I think more clearly than ever. My emotional balance is at an all-time high. And I feel great!

How about you? Are you physically at your peak?

 

 

Steve Bond ministers with Summit Christian Church, Sparks, Nevada.