The Key to Healthy Faith: Spiritual Supplements

Let me just say…I love to workout!  Especially when I am in the habit of it and schedule it into my daily routine.  I feel more energetic, healthier and I notice that I actually have some semblance of muscles down deep in the recesses of my skin.  However, there is much pain and suffering for those first couple of weeks after taking a substantial amount of time off from my workout regimen.  I know, the key is…DON’T TAKE TIME OFF!  With working out comes nutrition.  With proper nutrition comes the supplement conundrum…what do I need?

I have a friend named John.  John owns his own supplement shop called Max Muscle.  John knows his stuff and is more than happy to answer all of my simple nutrition questions to more difficult ones that are more tailored to my specific situation.  He has a passion for nutrition, physical fitness, personal training and educating people in all of these areas.  John has taught me so much about nutrition and proper diet than he knows.  What is even more amazing is that he has educated thousands of people with the same passion he helped me.

In the same whey…er…way (sorry John), those followers of Jesus Christ should have the same passion like my friend has about sharing a healthy physical lifestyle with people in sharing their faith.  But in order to do that, we need some spiritual supplements.  The Apostle Peter tells us that God gives us everything we need when we accept Christ as our Savior.  Look at what Scripture says in 2 Peter 1:5-9

5 In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, 7 and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone.  8 The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 But those who fail to develop in this way are shortsighted or blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their old sins.

Peter had just finished speaking about being saved by grace and the promises that God has given to us that would spur us on in our faith and dedication to Him.  Peter fully expects the people he is writing to grow in their faith.  Growth is a process.  Just like growth in the physical body can be painful, so can growth in faith.  Here, Peter begins to show the process of a growing faith.

He first gives us the “why” we should grow in faith.  It is clear that Peter believes that it should be done out of a response to God’s promises.  He gives a list of supplemental ingredients that will promote health growth in one’s faith.  Those supplements are:

• moral excellence
• knowledge
• self-control
• patient endurance
• godliness
• brotherly affection
• love for everyone

Peter goes on to give the reasons and results of both the positive and negative results of an individual’s decided actions.  The one who chooses to grow in faith becomes more productive and useful in their knowledge of the Lord while the one who fails to develop lack vision and forget that they have been freed from their old sin.

Just as the physical body needs nutrients for proper nutrition and health, the spiritual body needs supplements for proper growth and development.  When one comes to know Christ, He gives to them everything they need to live a godly life.  Part of an individual’s responsibility for spiritual fitness & development, like that of physical fitness & development, is to supplement their growth with proper nutrition, supplements & workouts.

When a person wants to workout their physical body, they go to the gym.  When they want nutrition, they eat.  When they want supplementation, they go to the vitamin shop.  In the same line of thinking, when a person wants to develop their spiritual man and build or work out their faith, they have to put it to action.  Putting feet to our faith involves more than witnessing to someone, it involves developing our faith throughout our body, soul and spirit.

To grow in our faith you need to develop the following:

• moral excellence – developed through habits of making decisions that are just, noble, brave, honorable, fruits of the spirit, etc.
• knowledge – growing in knowledge comes from learning what God has spoken to us through study of HIs Holy Word. Know what He says!
• self-control – develop the ability to control your actions, emotions, behaviors and desires.
• patient endurance – (This one is tough!)  develop your faithfulness.  Faithfulness requires time!  It requires commitment!  Even when you don’t want to and don’t think you can go any further…press on and keep going!  It is a long race you are taking part in, a marathon, keep putting one foot in front of the other.
• godliness – loving, fearing and honoring God.  Being devoted to God and putting that devotion into action (Hebrews 11)
• brotherly affection – love your brother and sisters in Christ.  Discriminate against none of them.  They are your family.  Defend, protect and serve them.
• love for everyone – when your faith is growing, you want everyone to experience what it is that you have found in Christ.  Love people as God loves people!

Just like being a couch potato is a bad decision for your physical man, one doesn’t want to become a spiritual couch potato.  When you fail to develop your faith and grow, your spiritual gifts retard and your Christlike habits are left under-developed.  When you don’t use the spiritual nutrients and spiritual supplements, you are not growing as God intended for you to grown in your faith.  Use everything that God has given to you since you have come to know Him.   Become the person that God has intended you to become!  Put your devotion to Him into action!

Body Shop

Today I as I sit down to write, I am still thinking about yesterday.  I was the guest speaker at Whitehouse First Assembly in Whitehouse, TX.  My friends, Michael and Angie Fleming are the pastors there and have a great staff that works with them.  One thing I love about the church is that there are no strangers there.  The moment you walk in, its like you have just been gone for a while and made your way back even though it may be your first time to ever visit.  On Saturday, this church hosted a 5k and 1K fun run to raise money for a missions work they titled Hope for Haiti.  Now don’t get me wrong, this was just a part of the focus of the weekend.  You see, the pastor has been conducting a series of messages that he called Back to the Future.  The whole premise is based on what your future self would come back and tell your present self.

This particular weekend, they were focusing on “body ministry”.  This is a topic that you don’t normally hear about in church unless it deals with the entire church body as a whole.  However, Sunday was going to be a little different.  It was dealing with the individual’s personal body.  I have grown up in church and admit that I have never heard a message on the individual’s responsibility in taking care of their bodies.  This honors God! I want to share with you some thoughts on this topic today and give you a challenge.

Jesus, when asked about the greatest commandment, replied in Matthew 22:37 this way,

37Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’

In this passage, he gave 3 areas to love God with…heart (body), soul, and spirit (mind).  When I saw this, I asked, “How in the world do I love God with my body?”  I immediately began to think of sacrifices, diets, exercise, the silver sweatsuit…I wanted no part of those.  You see, I love donuts.  I have never met a donut I didn’t like!  Those donuts are also what helped me to get to an all time high weight of 420 pounds!  My body was not loving God!  I tried to use Scripture, being a pastor of a church, to justify my obesity.  In fact, I used 1 Timothy 4:7-9 as a justification, look what it says…

7Do not waste time arguing over godless ideas and old wives’ tales. Instead, train yourself to be godly. 8“Physical training is good, but training for godliness is much better, promising benefits in this life and in the life to come.” 9This is a trustworthy saying, and everyone should accept it.

My rationale was found in verse 8 to get out of the discipline of training my body.  However, I quickly found myself flashing back to this image…

I wanted no part of this!!!  That was when I re-read Romans 12:1,

1And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.

Honoring God with my body was not a diet, exercise regimen or even wearing some crazy looking sauna suit.  It was a holy sacrifice of me GIVING my body to Him as an act of worship.  He finds that acceptable.  Now the part of me finding that acceptable was the issue.  I had to come to grips with making time to offer my body to God.  I had to make a change.  I weighed 420 pounds and was miserable.  Through a variety of measures, I was able to lose over 200 pounds.  Check out my before and after photo…

I began to think, I am putting up a wooden fence at my house, about to paint my house, have put new flooring in my house and spent all kinds of money on my house yet not done one thing for my body.  I had neglected my body for too long.  1 Corinthians 6:19-20 says this,

19Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, 20 for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.

That is when I realized, I have spent more on my earthly home, than the Temple of the Holy Spirit.  God bought me with a price…His Son!  I have no other choice than to honor Him with my body.  What good am I to God on this earth if I am dead?  NONE!  My thinking then changed, If I try to make my home have the best appearance it possibly can, why should I do anything less for God’s temple?

As I shared this at Whitehouse First Assembly yesterday, the Pastor and I asked them to make physical fitness commitments.  His goal was for his church to get healthy and corporately commit to lose 1000 pounds in the next 6 months.  They took pledge cards and collected them…the final tally…2345 pounds total as a goal to make their bodies a living sacrifice which is holy and acceptable to God.

WOW!!!  That is over 1 ton of weight they want to lose as a church!

My question for you…

Will you begin today to make your body the best temple that it can possibly be for God?

Will you commit for the next 6 months to a healthy lifestyle and take off some unwanted weight?

Will you honor God with your body since He bought you with a price?