WORKING OUT – An act of Worship
The Christian faith and fitness should work hand in hand. They are mutually beneficial and closely intertwined. This is because man is a spirit, has a soul and lives in a body. These three aspects of man needs to be taken care of to serve God effectively and fulfilling purpose. A man whose spirit is weak cannot serve God effectively. If the body is ill, there is a limit to what can be done for God. If the soul perishes, what then is the essence of existence. Mark 8:36. If one of these aspects of man is off, the others are affected. How we treat them is an act of Worship. Worship isn’t just something we do for 20 minutes on Sunday morning. Rather, it is a lifestyle and it influences everything we do. Everything, even exercise. Our body belongs to God. It is the temple in which His Holy Spirit dwells, and we have been given by God to care for it. Exercising it and feeding it properly becomes an act of worship.
Kierra Sheard, the Gospel Singer said, “How you treat your body is an act of worship! Get your heart where it should be! Cancel out diseases and health issues! #GO.” While God plays his part of healing, we also need to play our part to feed our spirit, soul and eat the right foods and workout. In 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 it states, “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s”. One of the ways to treat the body right is by working out.
Working out helps the body function effectively like it should. A Christian can completely miss the point of working out to worship God if the motive for working out is not right. While some exercise to maintain good health, others do so to show their newly chiseled and slimmed down bodies off to the world. It is important to develop the right motives for working out in order to exalt God with exercise. According to Michelle Spadafora, the president of Faithful workouts, a non-profit ministry that designs faith-centred fitness regimes, “if our sole reason for exercising and eating healthy is to have a great-looking body that will impress others, then our actions are not in line with God’s will and it is not a form of worship. However, if we are taking proper care of our body because we want to be at our best for God’s service, it is absolutely a form of worship. It is not a bad thing to have a healthy, strong-looking body, but that shouldn’t be our main focus.” We need to understand the “why” to make sure we are not doing something other than what God wants us to do with our bodies. Also, most of our motivation for working out should not come from a place of hating our body the way it is. This is not what God desires for us. He doesn’t function out of hate and He is the creator of the body we criticize harshly. Everything he does is out of love and working out should come from that place too, not out of a love for a toned and perfect body, but out of love for Him.
How can we make working out an act of Worship.
1) Using Workout as a means to get closer to Him.
God is pleased with us when we are in close relationship with Him. He desires it so much. One of the ways we can achieve this is by praying and studying the word. Using workout as a means to get closer to Him is possible. While working out, you can decide to throw on some worship music, listen to a message or pray. This helps you draw nearer to God in heart, body, mind, and soul. Worship is an activity of the heart, and when exercise is focused on our relationship with God, it becomes an act of worship itself.
2) An act of gratitude
With workout comes changes in your body. It is an avenue to appreciate God for what the body can do. Seeing and observing the changes the body goes through is a way to appreciate how magnificent God is; how the body begins to express itself in a way that is different from how it used to, how He created the body and arranged each organ to perform certain functions, how the body becomes more flexible and can do the things we thought wasn’t possible, how the brain works and cognition improves, how the body changes in size etc…with these functionalities and changes, you cannot but give thanks to God for His wonderful work.
3) Giving back to Him
Working out could be likened to giving back to God. God gave us the body, we give glory to Him by taking care of it as we ought to. Rom 12:1. It is truly a gift back to Him when we complete a good workout and take care of the very thing He has given to us.
#WorkoutWednesday
#ChurchGist
