Melissa kicks my butt. Every Monday (well, can the past two Mondays qualify?), I enter Melissa’s domain and submit to her crazed high-strung workouts. Think Jillian, from The Biggest Loser, except without the cursing. It’s beyond me how someone with only a buck five to claim for a body can drive 20 people to the brink of workout despair. The first time I worked out with her, I gagged and tasted the peanut butter toast I had eaten an hour prior. Yum.
Surprisingly, Melissa’s ethos would have fit right into Paul the apostle’s culture—nearly 2,000 years ago! Remember, Paul wrote some of his letters from Rome, one of the birthplaces of physical training. Listen to what Paul wrote:
Exercise daily in God—no spiritual flabbiness, please! Workouts in the gymnasium are useful, but a disciplined life in God is far more so, making you fit both today and forever.
- 1 Timothy 4:8
So, if exercising daily in God is important, how do we do that?
I think there are two ways we can spiritually train. Remember, we’re in this for the long run. No spiritual sprinters, here. When the emotional high of a church service or retreat wears off, we need to know how to sustain our spiritual walk with God—day-to-day.
Jesus told us to “abide in” his words. When we open our Bibles and read scripture, we’re filling our hearts and minds with His truth. And we don’t just read for distance, or to check it off some dutiful Christian list. We read to find God’s truth, receive it, and obey it. Find a devotional, or commit to read through a book of the Bible. Invest in a journal to capture the truths God makes known to you. When we read the Bible regularly, our spiritual appetites grow.
Let’s train by reading the Bible!
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