Voluntary Hardship

“Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,”

‭‭2 Timothy‬ ‭3:12‬ ‭ESV‬‬

As I move further along in my strength training, I am beginning to see correlations between it and my walk with Christ.  One way is in what Matt Reynolds (founder of Starting Strength Online Coaching) refers to as "voluntary hardship."  Getting under a bar and training for strength is just that, it is no cake walk.  Our life as christians is very much the same.  Paul tells Timothy in his second letter that "all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted."  That sounds a lot like voluntary hardship.  So what's the payoff?  

“Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.”

‭‭James‬ ‭1:12‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Not "a" but "the" crown of life!  Now that sounds like some serious gainz.  Spend some time reading through the whole bible and it's no surprise,  there are lots of scriptures that speak of God refining man by fire (thus we aptly named our gym the Furnace).  But let's face it, refining by fire is not a peaceful process, it's pretty intense.  

Both the Christian life and strength training share in voluntary hardship: you make a choice to go through a refining process knowing that there is benefit and reward on the other side.  Similarly, neither have a finite end point.  Both our genetic strength potential and our ultimate perfection in Christ will never be realized in full on this side of the new creation.  

“Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”

‭‭Philippians‬ ‭3:12‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Let's not look for the quick Jesus fix or the 6 week program to make us like Brian Shaw or the Austrian Oak.  Let's choose to go through a difficult refining process that makes us stronger in faith and in strength that will carry us through future hardships.

The Power of Focused Faith

Yesterday our pastor gave a great message on focused faith, or enduring faith.  The message's main theme was that faith's power lies not in its volume(size, intensity), but rather in its endurance and steadfastness.  We will certainly have periods of "great" faith, but its the faith that weathers the storms that lifts us up and keeps us strong.  I will link the message once it is available, but one of the points that was brought up is what I want to focus on today.  

"Unfocused faith produces unfruitful outcomes" - don't equate fruitfulness with a desirable outcome.

This was a powerful and convicting statement, but one that is very true.  How often do we attribute fruitfulness with an outcome that we desire?  Fruitfulness is an outcome that God desires and one that accomplishes kingdom purposes.  Now sometimes we may have some desirable qualities to it, but we should never limit it to strictly something that is good just for me.   It may even be that the road to the fruit is rough, challenging and undesirable; and yet the end point is the goal.  It is here that I want to make the link and transition to fitness.  

Training, dieting, and overall health maintenance is challenging.  Let's face it, it can be downright "undesirable" at points.  But is it something we do that is supposed to just feel good and be easy and fun the whole way through, or are there times when we will have to endure?  It's a good analogy for our faith.  You may not want to go through the difficulty of lifting the weight, the discipline of saying no to the treat, or the challenge of giving up bum time.  But when we press through on these things, we see a benefit and a purpose in the outcome.  Its the same thing with our faith, when we press in to Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith, we see the fruit and not only us, but more importantly, all those around us benefit from it.  

So lets encourage one another, be of strong endurance.  Keep focused on the end goal pressing forward and not looking back.  Hebrews 12:1-2 says, "and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith."

Don't Waste Your Health

Just the other day I was listening to the Passion City Podcast and caught this wonderful lesson that Louie Giglio taught on not wasting our health.  You can catch it HERE.  I thought it best to share what he covered.  I don't believe in coincidences and it's not random that as I am beginning the Active Nazirite journey that someone does such a wonderful job speaking to health as Christians.  I hope you enjoy.

Iron Sharpens Iron - Unity in Life and the Gym

For any fan of Arnold or the 80's we all know where this image is from.  Two friends with arms bigger than most of our legs, lock arms in a friendly handshake/air arm wrestling match.  Its a competitive show of strength that at some point or another we all find ourselves taking part in some fashion.  Sometimes competition gets a bad light, but it can applied in situations to push us forward, an opportunity for us to motivate each other.  So today I'm starting what will probably end up being a series, focused on unity and encouragement as Christians: in life and in the gym.

Proverbs 27:17 - "As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another."

It's a beautiful scripture that speaks quite clearly for itself.  Paul stresses encouragement and edification in his letters to the early church.  In our walk with God, the enemy is going to bring all kinds of weapons and tactics to bear on us and Christ is there to shield us from Satan's arrows.  He will encourage us through His word and though His presence in our lives.  One aspect in which He is present is in His body, of which we are all part of.  We have been brought in to the body of Christ and as such we are unified in Him and given the opportunity and privilege to encourage, support, edify and build one another up.

We can not accomplish anything on our own, it is a fact that we need to accept in order to receive Christ in the first place.  Our relationship with Him is what makes anything doable and possible in our lives.  In Matthew 19:26 Christ said "With man this is impossible,  but with God all things are possible."  Possibility begins, when we enter in to a relationship with Christ.  It is why He desires His people to be unified, it is when strength and possibility overflow.

So lets go back to Proverbs and the other words of wisdom that God gave to Solomon.  We briefly described the place of unity and encouragement within the church.  Something unique about the books of wisdom, are their applications to our both our faith but also our lives in general.  Taking this in to the context of a gym or fitness situations, when unified we do "sharpen" one another.  You will hear often, people stating that having a workout buddy is beneficial.  You can read through all of the Psychiatry Today articles and countless books that will go into all manner of scientific exposition on the subject, or you can simply rest on the wisdom and word of God written thousands of years ago, "so one person sharpens another."  It's truth.  My wife and I go to the gym together, sometimes we are working out on our own, sometimes together;  but we are there with one another working to similar goals and supporting each other both in and out of the gym.  Those few times that I've had to go on my own, I never push myself to the same level that I do when she is there.  We encourage one another and help to sharpen each other.

Solomon says this in Ecclesiastes 4:10, "If one falls down, his friend can help him up.  But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!"  Have someone there.  Don't isolate yourself in self effort or trap yourself in feeling alone.  If you can't have someone physically with you, thanks be to God we have the technological means in which to find people who can support us in the things we are doing.  Whether it's life or the gym, there is always someone there to help you up.  Christ loves you too much to allow otherwise.

Fitness Idolatry

“so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman,”

‭‭Deuteronomy‬ ‭4:16‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Fitness can be a slippery slope as a Christian.  Should we be healthy, fit, strong?  I would say it is definitely beneficial and right to be attentive to our health.  It's another thing to idolize it.  Spend some time reading through the Old Testament and you will get an idea about God's thoughts and feelings about us worshiping idols (yes, you can make yourself or your health an idol).  But let's take a look at what happens in an unhealthy lifestyle.  

Let's start at our diet.  On the ground floor of health, our diet works from the inside out.  If that sounds familiar, it is how God's Spirit works in us, it changes us on the inside, and as we let Him work on us we see the manifestation of the Spirit in our actions.  Diet does the same thing, if we eat crap, we feel like crap.  Our body begins to show physical symptoms of the unhealthy diet in us and our actions start to manifest that diet as well.  We become sluggish, lazy, and even become unable to do certain things.  So what about the fitness side of the coin.  Well, laziness as a result of poor diet can restrict, if not even deny us, avenues of fitness, whether it be sport, weight training, yoga, etc.  

So we choose to pursue a healthy diet and opt to take action and step into the gym.  Now we see the fruits our what a good diet and coinciding action produce.  We find ourselves feeling better both physically and mentally, and capable of doing things we might not of before.  It's noteworthy for parents too, as an unhealthy lifestyle like anything, can be passed on to our children whether we want it to or not.

So now we find ourself at a healthy place in life, but what about the idol concept?  In our pursuit of or at the end, when we choose to maintain our goals, we can fall in to a trapping where we focus so much on our health that we lose sight of things of more importance.  First and foremost, God Himself.  Do you spend more time at the temple of body worship (the gym) than you do in prayer, reading the Bible and going to church?  What about our families, the people we wanted to get healthy for?  Do we spend so much time exercising and putting our focus into fitness that we missed our kids baseball game or haven't gone out on a date with our wife or husband?  Dont't lose sight of the important things in life by putting fitness in the highest place.

Grunting, Praying and Worshiping

When I’m at the gym, there are definitely times that get me grunting, sometimes quite loudly.  I always thought it was funny when I would see someone go through his or her whole workout and never make a peep.  Now I’m not judging on this, but it got me thinking today about working out in the physical and faith sense.

When working out, it’s important to push yourself.  Whether you’re a male or female, don’t be ashamed to make some noise due to your effort.  It’s not like you should be trying to announce it to everyone else, but it sure is a sign that you are pushing yourself; and that’s a good thing.  When we try to get stronger, lose weight, pack on muscle, etc, it requires a lot of effort.  Just being in the gym or watching work out videos doesn’t do it for your.  I’m sure a lot of us have heard that before, but let’s take it a step further; just going through the motions doesn’t always get you to your goals.  For sure, lifting some weights or doing some cardio is good (even at a minimum level), but it doesn’t really get you to your goals.  It’s better than doing nothing, but you have to ask yourself, what are you even there for? 

Before we dive into the faith side of this, I’ll briefly use the example of the “kiai” from martial arts that we are probably all familiar with.  There are several traditional reasons you may find for its function, but I’ll focus on two primary points.  The first has to do with energy.  There’s a lot from the eastern beliefs that this dips in to, but lets focus on the raw energy in this sense.  I’ve gone through several martial arts before, and I can attest from experience, when you shout (or perform some “kiai”) during a punch, kick, etc, that move is guaranteed to have more force and power behind it, more energy.  This applies to the grunt/yell at the gym (but let’s not get obnoxious with it).   Just watch good old Arnie from his training days.  The other reason for the “kiai” is declaration of your fighting spirit.  Why do you think man has always had war cries going in to battle?  It intimidates the opponent and reassures, rallies and otherwise bolsters the shouter.

So where does our faith come in to grunting and shouting?  Well, probably the most overt example of this comes from the fall of Jericho.  Joshua 6:20 (NIV) – “When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a shout, the wall collapse; so everyone charged in, and they took the city.”  That was a shout that had the power of God behind it and the goal (Jericho) was attained.  Now we aren’t told to go around shouting at things; you’d honestly look real odd, real fast.  But there is a sound we make as Christian’s.  It’s our cry out to God in prayer and our praises that we sing in worship.  Prayer is an essential part of being Christian.  It’s an opportunity in which we can choose to speak into our faith, to go before our Father and thank Him for all that He has done and to ask Him for what we need, for His comfort, for wisdom, guidance, etc.  We can go through the motions of just attending Sunday service, but just like the gym, how much does that really accomplish.  Make a sound, speak to God, have the relationship with Him that He is openly offering to you. 

Worship, sing praises to our Father and Creator of everything.  The story of when David was chastised by Michal for his singing and dancing is one of my favorites.  David’s response to her in 2 Samuel 6:21 speaks volumes (no pun intended) to the shout of praise we should be giving our Lord: David said to Michal, “It was before the Lord, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when He appointed me ruler of the Lord’s people Israel – I will celebrate before the Lord.”  We are chosen by God, no one else chose us, He did, it’s time to celebrate before Him and give thanks for all that He has done.  It’s time to make a noise.

Jesus explained prayer in Matthew chapter six, it entails the outline of the Lord’s Prayer that we are all familiar with.  There is a small point there that I wanted to bring out.  In verse 5 He says “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corner to be seen by men.”  Nothing we do sure ever be done for show or to look good or appear a certain way; prayer and worship more than anything.  The same goes for the gym, don’t make noise to make it or to appear to be working, let it come naturally as you press in to your exercise.  Prayer and worship come naturally when you press in to your faith.  When you do, the desire to sing praises and speak to your Father will overwhelm you, don’t be afraid to just let it out. 

So What Are We All Doing Here?

Not here on earth, but here at this site.  I thought that it would be prudent of me to take the time in my first post and see if I could maybe answer some questions that you may be having about what the heck is the Active Nazirite all about.

-  So who is the Active Nazirite?

Well, me for one.  My name is Ben.  Why the name? Well I'm here about fitness for one, thus the "active."  The "Nazirite" is in relation to the Christian side of what I am doing here.  A nazirite was one who either devoted themselves, or were devoted by others (think parents) in service to the Lord.  I am definitely devoted to serving Christ, and this site is in part, an extension of that service.  Thus we find ourselves at the name Active Nazirite.

-  Is this going to be all about health and fitness?

The word "all" is a big word, but no, not in its entirety.  Though I believe that physical health and fitness are a very important part of our lives, it is not the most important.  Unfortunately, most health and fitness magazines, websites, blogs, etc, really push the idea that your physical image, fitness and health should be sought with a rather zealous fervor.  Over time I hope to cover a lot of these issues that maybe cause problems in our walk with God and help both you and me to find where this can all fit healthily in our faith.  

-  So its a Christian website and blog?

Again, I don't like branding.  My faith in Christ comes first and foremost, before all things.  So I hope to convey that importance as we all move on from here.  Now thats not to say there won't be posts, videos, etc dealing with food tips, exercise ideas, and other such things.  I'm just letting you know up front, this is going to have a strong focus on Christ and how to apply our faith to fitness and health, without letting the latter become an idol.  Let's be honest, we've all been there, we seek a little too much body worship (FYI, I'm writing this as the Rio Olympics are midway through, so there's lots of that going around).

-  What can I expect to find here, in terms of health and fitness?

On the health side of things, we'll cover some of the basics such as diet and even lifestyle choices we make and how they can help or hurt our health.  In terms of fitness, I'll be covering a broader spectrum of exercise.  I believe that in all things, health and fitness, its moderation is very important, to much of any one thing can end up causing problems.  With that said, I myself am currently working towards adding some muscle mass, so personally, I am focusing a bit more on straight up strength training.  I'll be up front in that I currently have no certifications (such as ACE), but I will always be sure to defer to those who have degrees, certifications, or just flat out have more experience in areas that I feel that I am lacking.

I hope that answers some of the basic questions about what I'm aiming for.  I look forward to this journey and I hope that you are too.  I will always be in prayer and seeking God's wisdom, guidance, and insight as to where He wants me going with The Active Nazirite and how He wants it done.