6 keys to make and keep Christ central in your fitness lifestyle
In 2003 I started Faith & Fitness Magazine with the simple message, to build physical and spiritual strength. It was never about doing a Christian version of fitness. From the beginning God has always wanted this ministry to help people to practice the fit lifestyle by living more fully through a deep and abiding faith in Jesus Christ. Not just to do fitness and add some faith nuances to it so you can be blessed but rather to do faith and fitness intentionally with discipline and proper form.
A few years after the magazine started to drive that kind of influence, I presented a session at the Club Industry conference and expo in Chicago. After that session a woman came up to me and with a certain amount of consternation said, “You should have indicated on the program that you were only going to focus on the ‘spiritual’ practice of Christianity.” In my defense, I had provided a link to the magazine. She had never bothered to look at it. If she had she would have figured it out quickly. Nobody has ever taken even a brief look at the magazine without realizing it focuses on Jesus.
Since then a lot has evolved in what I call the faith and fitness culture. In fact it’s gotten to be a pretty big culture. A lot of good books, programs, services, gyms, ministries and people have filled this space. But unfortunately there has also been a lot of fluff, shallowness, marketing hype and AND outright deceptive teachings and influencer abuses. Bad form hasn’t just developed, it’s being aggressively promoted and broadly embraced. Wear your favorite ‘Jesus’ shirt as you drink your Jesus juice, be positive, hug your sister in Christ, high-five your men of iron brotherhood aaaand, “Let’s have some fun!” I get all that, And, those who are hurting, don’t know Christ and need something more get it too BUT they truly do need AND WANT something more.
It’s become extremely urgent and necessary to articulate what is necessary to do faith and fitness together with proper form. That instruction needs to be consistently available to the public and especially prioritized to every Christian doing “faith and fitness”. Why? Because they should not only genuinely want to be fully engaged in the faith and fitness culture with proper form but also help disciple future generations in how to do it well. Here are 6 keys to make and keep Christ central in your fitness lifestyle. They are:
- Be others-minded
- The Bible is fuel
- Pay attention to God
- Be adaptive to God’s Spirit
- Look for the greater outcomes
- Pursue communion with God
WE’RE TALKING SPIRITUALITY, RIGHT? NO, IT’S ALL ABOUT JESUS!
I mean seriously this is really the simple and uncompromising core concept. I’m not sure why people get it when they go to church but can’t seem to understand and apply that God wants to be in all of your life all of the time.
Even National Public Radio did a segment on Why Working Out Should Be About More Than What You See In The Mirror. They encourage you to, “examine your motivations for getting in shape.” Fitness isn’t just physical but also mental, emotional and spiritual. BUT – Christians should definitely not be taking their lead from NPR.
People all around us want to take their fitness further. That used to mean they want to get stronger, go faster and win. Now though, more than ever before, people want whole fitness – exercise with nutrition sure, but especially their deeper needs being met. Those needs are where faith and fitness, when done with proper form, can deliver transformative supernatural results. Christians need to be prepared to go way beyond ethereal spirituality and solidly deliver the defining difference that only Christ makes. If you’re making a buck in the fitness business and using the name of Jesus but lives are not being significantly transformed that’s nothing short of WHOREable.
WHAT IS ‘CHRISTIAN’ FITNESS?
People have asked this question for years and often presume that the following experiences achieve it:
- Listening to Christian music while exercising.
- Going to a gym that says it puts Christian principles into practice.
- Better understand your feelings and emotions – “Jesus loves me”.
- Being nice to others – “Jesus loves you”.
Now all of those things are good and a good step in the right direction but God has something a lot better. It’s what makes fully infusing the Christian faith into your fitness lifestyle a way of life that is truly more robust and transformative. Take time to read and get introduced to these defining principles. Then seek God on how to make them the proper form in how you do faith and fitness.
BE OTHERS-MINDED
Yes, you want be stronger, faster, leaner, healthier, more full of energy and you want to live longer too and a whole lot more. But in the faith and fitness mindset it’s not about YOU. Instead you need to see those goals and qualities as the potential you bring to others. Faith and fitness done with proper form happens when you physically and spiritually live out Christ’s prayer, “Not my will God but yours be done.” Look around and see who God points out to you.
Who are others? Others are your family and friends. But, others are also your co-workers, classmates, neighbors, people in need, those in your community and beyond. And others are the people you may come in contact with in the moment. Not just the ones you like or who you think are cool. Others can especially be the people who are very different from you. It may be to exercise or play with them. It may be to physically help them. It could be something planned, something spontaneous or the miraculous strength you give in a tragic emergency moment.
How can you know when your faith and fitness are being fueled with a spirit of others-mindedness? You’ll experience the presence of God’s Spirit. You’ll be humbled. AND in some instances you’ll get the opportunity to disciple that person further.
THE BIBLE IS FUEL
OK, think of it this way if you ate the very best, highest protein, lowest fat, fresh and balanced food but only ate a bite here or there it really wouldn’t fuel your workout and facilitate gains. Everyone knows you have to eat full meals regularly to have good health and achieve growth.
It’s the same with feeding on the Bible. You need to do some serious consumption regularly and consistently. So, not just a quick thoughtful verse at the top of the day from K-Love radio or some other devotional. You need to do some serious investment BEFORE the workout, during the day or well before you get sleepy and plan to go to bed. Skip the motivational music for your workout and instead listen to chapters of the Bible – over and over again. Read and study the Bible, getting deeper into it with others at the gym and beyond.
The bottom line is that good biblical nutrition, like healthy eating, requires discipline and persistence. Eat well!
PAY ATTENTION TO GOD
If you’ve ever had a personal trainer you know that you’ve got to pay attention. A trainers jobs is to help you have proper form, avoid injuries and achieve the outcomes you’ve both agreed to reach. Doing faith and fitness together has to be more than just you being encouraged, inspired and being in the presence of God or others.
Attentiveness is active listening, maintaining focus and committing to achieve the outcomes you and God have for you and others. Faith and fitness exercises spiritual muscles so that you and others can resist temptations, persist through challenges, be patient, extend grace, practice compassion. It’s about taking cues from God to become through him a better you. It’s about being obedient to God’s Spirit. It is serving God by serving others, bringing God’s goodness in the moment and having a God-fueled passion to shape the culture for Christ.
Paying attention to God is about having a transformed mindset – a spirit that is freed from what the world says you typically should do. When that happens God will do more through you.
BE ADAPTIVE TO GOD’S SPIRIT
In the realm of exercise you may have heard of ‘adaptive fitness’. It is training for people with both temporary and permanent disabilities, adapted to the needs of the individual. On a faith and fitness level it means realizing that God switches things up and thus you continually need to adjust to what God is doing. It’s digging deeper into having the mindset that none of us can ever fully know the mind of God. God doesn’t want you to just accept that truth, He wants your life to be a celebration of that – be eager to see where God leads you next and have full confidence in him. It is realizing that we can only see part of God’s grand plan. He reveals more in time.
The creative and new nature of God is the real powerful force behind switching things up. You may have heard of muscle confusion. David G. Behm, Ph.D., a university research professor at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, tells SELF, “Fitness improvements are dependent on the body adapting to handle a new training stimulus. Once it adapts to handle a stimulus, it doesn’t have the need to adapt any further.” That results in what is known as a workout plateau.
Suffice it to say – there are no spiritual plateaus with God. God wants to take you and others further – ALWAYS! So proper faith and fitness form is to both be attentive to God and then adapt with God. It’s the where YOU lead me I will FOLLOW mindset. God does it more than you might expect. It totally blows out of the water attitudes that God is old fashioned, stifling and not progressive. The real truth is that we can never catch up to all the innovations God wants to accomplish in us and through us.
LOOK FOR THE GREATER OUTCOMES
So think about what people typically identify as successful fitness outcomes – what they want to achieve:
- Reduce or eliminate obesity
- Gain muscle and be stronger
- Live longer and better
- Be more active with less pain and exhaustion
- Look better
Faith and fitness outcomes are similar but on a spiritual level. Excess spiritual fat has a negative effect on your relationship with God and others. Those who successfully reduce obesity in their life sre the ones who focus on a combination of strategies like getting better rest, exercising more and then planning and sticking to a good and healthy diet that works especially for her or him. That sometimes includes some sort of fasting.
Spiritual obesity, weather that be from the total lack of spiritual health to the other extreme of being engorged on legalistic doctrines and piety, is a spiritual killer. A combination of spiritually healthy practices along with spiritually guided fasting is necessary to overcome your spiritual obesity.
The greater outcome in ‘getting stronger’ happens when you and others become stronger in spiritual disciplines. That strength transforms all areas of life not just the physical and produces eternal value.
Living longer and better becomes transformed by a Christ-centered perspective. It’s about a deeper journey in God’s Spirit. That means you realize that the length of your life is in God’s control – the exact measure of His fullness. Your pursuit of a continually ‘better life’ gives way to God’s definition, which may seem like anything but ‘better’, in fact it may seem worse, but ultimately it’s everything God wants for you. That may seem upside down – and it is – in a very good way.
Faith and fitness with proper form results in you seeing very different outcomes. The world’s usual matrix and standards pale to all that God can achieve in you and through you for others. This ultimately leads to being more active – more active daily for the cause of Christ.
Physical good looks give way to being spiritually attractive so that others won’t just see God in you but see a fuller view of God and start to see what it can look like to have God in their own life. Want to look like a model. When you pursue after God’s greater outcomes you become an influencer on a God-blessed level.
PURSUE COMMUNION WITH GOD
Those who exercise frequently put in their earbuds or headphones and tune out to others. So the gym or exercise experience, which could be a very positive social environment, tends to be very antisocial and intimidating – the opposite of community and fellowship.
Furthermore, fitness for obvious reasons, is often considered by many to be narcissistic. Fitness enthusiasts spend money – a lot of money on self-care and self-celebration. If the origins of the word narcissism are true that the beautiful youth in Greek mythology, Narkissos, fell in love with his own reflection in the water then there are a lot of modern day Narkissos in the gym. Their not looking into spring water their looking into mirrors – lots of mirrors. Often their not doing that for the real reason the mirrors are there, to help people achieve and maintain proper form. Instead, like Narkissos, they are actively doing self-worship, boasting and have lustful thoughts. At it’s worst fitness can be a masquerade of vanity and conceit.
More often it’s all about just doin’ my thing. We get it and nobody’s saying you shouldn’t focus on the pump. But fitness with good form and faith and fitness with good form are 2 different things. They’re certainly not mutually exclusive but to the extent you should do physical exercise well you should also do spiritual exercise well.
The proper form to faith and fitness requires you to desire and practice a much deeper communion with God. And yeah, that can actually be the practice of taking communion before or after a workout. But it’s especially about getting with God to get yourself into the right mindset. Being in the presence of God positions you to think and be like Christ.
IS THE PROPER FORM TO FAITH AND FITNESS REALLY POSSIBLE?
Yes, it really is. If you feel like you’ve got a long way to go to get there, that’s good, really good. We all have a long way to go in desiring God more fully. “Never Satisfied” is the mantra you’re encouraged to have in today’s fitness culture. Instead be satisfied in Christ alone. That’s a kind of push you can truly celebrate.
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