PUBLISHER’S LETTER
Take it off — take it all off. Time to strip away the things that cover what we don’t want anyone else to see. We’ve all become expert Haute couture designers. Like the tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes our skimpy efforts honestly cover nothing. Your modesty is risqué if you don’t first get intimate with God. Time to put on the garment of praise and get robed in righteousness. Don’t wear your faith on your sleeve. Dare to adorn your body with nothing but a beauty that only God can reveal.
I don’t know of many subjects that make people including “good Christian folk” squirm more than when you talk about the human body. For nearly a decade this is what I’ve been doing with Faith & Fitness Magazine. Yet you, the reader, seem to be handling it just fine. In fact I get a lot of positive feedback that you totally get it and find it to be on target as you seek to grow physically and spiritually. So this issue I’m taking it up a notch (or stripping it down another layer – depending on how you look at it).
Do something that is far more revealing than professional athletes posing nude for the ESPN Magazine – get spiritually naked.
The Gymnos department of this magazine is designed to be the place where you can find content that helps you to get naked. No, not physically, I don’t have any plans to do anything that comes even close to the ESPN Magazine’s annual “The Body Issue”. Here in this magazine I invite you to do something that is far more revealing – get spiritually naked. Couples are doing that in churches as Daniel Lovelace reports. To help you get started doing that here are a few Bible passages that are revealing:
If you’re wondering why Peter was fishing in the nude and why the Bible bothers to mentions this, you are not alone. At least one preacher has attempted to “uncover” the details and offer some perspective.
This is a lot of biblical nudity and it serves an important purpose in this introduction to our magazine issue that focuses on the theme of intimate apparel. This is an important conversation, not because you need to come to terms with, understand and appreciate your naked body. No, this is critical to your spirit because you know both good and evil. It is too easy to toy around with modesty, playing that “righteous card” when it serves our purposes. It is even easier to invest in your own personal beauty (money, time and effort) and then value that healthy, fit, muscular, adorned, perfect look at all costs — while we turn our gaze and attention away from those who are different and don’t meet our expectations. We are too often willingly repulsed by others – the beautiful lives that God has created and smugly “appreciate” their inner beauty. My Faith & Fitness Magazine conversation with photographer Rick Guidotti can hopefully help all of us move beyond that attitude. He says in a different interview, “F*** inner beauty, these kids are GORGEOUS!” His choice of words may be raw but I know his spirit reflects the same passion of Christ who said, “Your righteousness is like filthy rags.”
Want to be fit, really fit? Put on a garment of praise and be robed in God’s righteousness.
How dirty and stinky are your undergarments? Those spiritual attitudes you wear most closely. Mary Mack talks about this and more as it relates to women in Pretty Little Secrets. Religious perfume and a haughty wardrobe can cover ugliness but it can’t transform your spirit. Instead, wear a fragrance of joy in God and be clothed with the garments of salvation and praise to God. He has covered you with the robe of righteousness. THAT is apparel tailored especially for who you are. It is designed by God to bring out the distinct personality that is beautifully you.
Welcome to the next issue of Faith & Fitness Magazine. Take your time reading and exploring a God that is so intimate in His relationship with you He has designed a purpose that only you can fulfill. This is your fitness. A strength that is suitable in every moment. Be in condition to Be Life to others.
Train strong in Christ,
-Brad Bloom, Publisher
