MAKE COMMUNION PART OF YOUR FIT LIFESTYLE
Why do you do fitness, exercise and pursue health and wellness? Perhaps it’s to lose weight, feel better, live longer, look good or be stronger.
Beyond the motives, your fitness efforts, the time you invest in being active, should contribute to a clearer focus on your life mission, connection to a purer source of peace and the capacity to truly do good in the life of others. You can #liftmorewithChrist and make your fitness regimen be a way to regularly connect more personally with God.
You can make communion with Christ a lifestyle. Make your active lifestyle regimen a regular time of fellowship with God’s son. Let your workout be consumed with your commitment to the calling He gives you.
If Jesus Christ was physically among us today He’d be offering today’s wellness worshipers, temple builders and fitness devotees the exact same thing he did with his disciples at the Last Supper — to experience fellowship, a breakthrough, a spiritual union – to personally transcend into a lifestyle built with lasting values – communion!
Communion is an easy and simple practice – a celebration that you can do the next time you go to the gym, get active outside, do small group exercise or workout at home. It may just be a time of prayer and reflection with God. However you may also choose to incorporate traditional communion elements like the convenient prefilled communion cup with wafer that you can get from Blessed Communion. If you don’t have access to that you can improvise.
Regardless of how you do it, communion – that intentional taking of time for personal fellowship with God, isn’t a ‘have to’ requirement it is a ‘get to’ investment into real and greater strength.
READY? DO IT NOW!
Pop in the earbuds or put on the headphones. Find a place to sit or stretch. You can do this while you are doing your active regimen but you may find it’s best to be still and just focus on this communion time. Now, listen to the music medley, I Lift Up My Thanks/Tremble/Step By Step, below for a 10-minute communion time with God. While you do that talk with God and lift up the following:
- your family
- your praise – be thankful for the things that have given you joy
- your needs
- others
- your hopes
- your worship – focus your thoughts on the compassion, wisdom and strength of God
- your concerns
- your community
- your challenges
- your opportunities
Communion is an easy and simple practice you can do as an important part of your active lifestyle regimen.
HOW TO DO COMMUNION AND ‘DO FITNESS IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME’
The tools to regularly practice communion as part of your fitness routine are pretty simple: Something to eat and drink – ok, yes ideally juice and bread, access to Bible passages and a few minutes to share your thoughts with God and more importantly meditate quietly on God’s voice of instruction for you. People often also find a song for listening or singing that helps nurture a spirit of worship.
2023 Week of Fitness + Communion
Blessed Communion is the official supplier of individually sealed prefilled communion cups for the 2023 Week of Fitness + Communion, April 2-8, 2023.
They are available free while supplies last directly from Faith & Fitness Magazine or order direct from Blessed Communion:
When do you do communion? It’s entirely up to you. You can do it before, during or after your fitness activity. There is a lot of value in doing it before the workout because it sets a foundation – a starting point that can enhance, transform and guide the entire time you’ve set aside to be physically active.
How does that work? Doing communion at the beginning can help you focus on the following spiritual concepts that also have tremendous practical significance in your physical activity:
- OBEDIENCE
- TRUST
- CHOICE
- FELLOWSHIP
- FAITHFULNESS
- SACRIFICE
- PATIENCE
- FORGIVENESS
- RIGHT STANDING
You might want to ask God to help you pick one for the theme for your workout. The spiritual preparation followed by the physical exercise can often be the fuel that drives your actions, commitment and behavior transformation for the rest of the day.
At first, if you’ve never done this, it’ll be foreign to you and may feel a bit forced. Push through and keep going because eventually you’re going to find this totally redefines how you do fitness. You won’t be going through the motions you’ll be tapping into the greater power of God’s Spirit.
GOD DOES IMPROV – YOU CAN TOO!
Maybe you know of the Bible’s account of Jesus turning water into wine or taking 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish and blessing them to where there was enough to feed 5000 people with food left over. Jesus isn’t limited. And, in Him you aren’t either. He demonstrated that through God’s grace and miraculous power He could improvise using just about anything to transform the ordinary into exceptional.
So what if you don’t have the Holy Sacraments for your own personal communion – No ornamental chalice of wine turned into Jesus’ blood or unleavened bread transformed into Jesus’ flesh? If the cool little disposable cup of grape juice with the paper thin wafer on top isn’t available do you just skip doing communion like skipping leg day – again!?
What if all you have at the time is a protein bar and a water bottle? Can those things be “consecrated” – declared and made to be sacred (pure and wholly given to God)? Can you be consecrated? In the Bible, Paul says in impressive detail that yes you can. It’s really about the dedication of your life to the cause of Christ – fellowship with God.
For those who sincerely identify as Christian – followers of Jesus Christ, being dedicated isn’t about showing off or daring to do communion as part of a workout. It is about partaking in commitment, being mindful of God’s inevitably greater purpose in everything ordinary and as fitness pro David Jack of activeight says, “to magnify the good in fitness and in the lives of the people it serves”.
THE GOOD RULES – TAKE A PASS OVER BONDAGE
Journalist Caryle Murphy explained in a 1998 Washington Post report that the rules of communion are as varied as churches. In it she describes that, “Roman Catholics believe the “Blessed Sacrament, as Holy Communion is also called, is based on the doctrine of transubstantiation, which holds that when bread and wine are consecrated at Mass, they are actually transformed into the body and blood of Christ.” The Southern Baptist tradition on the other hand, “holds that the elements of Communion are symbolic.” Then there are the Episcopal congregations who, “freely invite all baptized persons who are free to receive Communion.”
It’s all like a bunch of fine print at the bottom of a legal document. If you’re an average Joe or Jane and not a member in good standing of any denomination then go figure. No wonder so many people feel like surely ‘Jesus isn’t for me’. If they were to give religion a social media status they would post, “It’s complicated.” It’s kind of like getting fitness advice from several people. You might be inclined to spare yourself the frustration and not even bother to exercise altogether.
Craig Brian Larson in his article The Crux Of Communion in Christianity Today talked with several pastors to help you get better clarity on the practice of communion within a variety of church experiences. He has done a good job of bringing out some helpful insights.
Deep down most people know that the confusion from others is not a viable excuse to do nothing. They want and physically need to move, eat healthy, rest better, pursue fitness and live well. These shared necessities are good reasons to SIMPLY come together with others to be active, share in nourishment and pursue peace.
Consider the Bible as a simple, clear and definitive source of instruction for communion:
While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.”
Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
A few key words to note are: give thanks, eat, and drink. Don’t over complicate it. Jesus was partaking with those close to him in the Passover meal – a tradition of commemorating God supernaturally freeing the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Jesus transforms this to be a practice for all to partake and celebrate in the good life. When you do communion you share and participate in faithfulness. You choose to be one with Christ in being obedient, making sacrifice, releasing freedom and fostering the fullness of God’s goodness.
Do you have to move. No. Do you get to exercise, stretch, be flexible, and become stronger? Yes. Do you have to eat healthy? No. Do you get to taste flavor, be filled with good nutrition, be refreshed and have your thirst quenched? Yes. Do you have to rest? No. Do you get to be restored, experience peace and fellowship in the presence of God? Yes. Do you HAVE TO do some rare ritual – communion? Nope. Do you GET TO do communion? Yes! It’s freeing, good and it’s who you are.
NO STIGMA – OVERCOME THE OBSTACLES IN YOUR MIND
If you’re reading this prior to Easter we encourage you to join with others around the world anytime the week before Easter for the annual week of Do Fitness In Remembrance Of Me. Similar to movements like See You At The Pole or the National Day of Prayer this week long period is designated so that people exercising everywhere can unite with a common purpose to practice communion personally or in a small group as part of a fitness routine.
Beyond the Easter season, practicing communion regularly can be as common place and routine as stretching before your workout. Here are a few tips to facilitate a healthy development of a communion for fitness practice:
1. Find a natural place to do it. That might be in your car before you go into the gym. Some YMCA’s have chapels. Your gym likely at least has a room open but not being used for a class or they have a meditation or stretching space. Certainly you can focus on God right at your own cardio equipment during your allotted time or at your free weight station – and if someone wants to ‘work-in’ all the better!
2. Find someone to join you. That might mean getting a workout partner (a friend, family member, co-worker, pastor, or someone else. This could also mean going to a faith-centered fitness facility or participating in a faith-centered fitness program where communion should not-only be understood but accepted and supported.
3. If all of this still seems extremely foreign then start by simply doing communion in the privacy of your own home workout. As you get familiar with communion and start to discover where God can take you during it you’ll likely find a greater sense of comfort in doing communion and be inspired by your time with God. As with all things fitness, persistence is key.
Because practicing communion is a natural expression within the context of spirit/mind/body ideals, you can confidently overcome both real and perceived barriers. Most fitness businesses and community organizations have core values of mutual respect and diversity. Hopefully the members there embrace those values or at least acknowledge that they know of the organizations values. So doing communion in fact supports and reinforces your facilities culture.
Be encouraged, get inspired and do communion. Your fitness efforts, the time you invest in being active, can now be so much more than just a good workout. You can set the stage not only for a really incredible day but also for a lifestyle centered on God. Don’t just do fitness. Connect with Christ as He invites you to do fitness in remembrance of me.
SHARE HOW YOU DO COMMUNION
We’d like to hear from you. What are your thoughts about doing communion as part of your personal fitness? Post a comment below. When you do communion before, during or after your workout we’d like for you to CONTACT US and tell us more about it. If you need support in doing communion or in bringing it to your group, gym or community then reach out to us to GET HELP.
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