Drink Lots of Water and Get Plenty of Exercise
The church needs to go on a diet. I say that because, in many corners of the world, we have become fat and lazy. A sedentary church is next to useless.
I know a little something about diets. Three different times in my life I gained considerable weight and had to lose it. Unfortunately, I’m at that stage once again. I suspect a lot of you have had a similar experience to mine.
“Universal with all diets.”
There are all sorts of diets out there. You’ve heard of many of them—the Scarsdale, the Atkins, Weight Watchers, South Beach, Mediterranean, and the Paleo (just to name a few). From low-fat to low-carb to high protein, they’re all different. Yet there’s one thing that seems to be universal with all diets.
Whenever you embark upon one of these surefire ways to regain your girlish figure, the last line usually goes something like this. “Drink lots of water and get plenty of exercise.” It stands to reason that, if these two things are central to a healthy diet, we should be doing them at all times—diet notwithstanding.
In actuality, we are all on a diet of one sort or another. The question is always this: is it a good diet or a bad one? If your daily diet consists of things like French Fries and Philly Cheese Steaks, chances are you’ll get a tad heavy around the middle. If you are disciplined and practice portion control, you have a good chance at maintaining a reasonably healthy level. Drinking lots of water and getting plenty of exercise is a part of that as well.
Before, when I said that the church is fat and lazy, I was thinking along spiritual terms. A congregation could all look like gym rats and still be spiritually ineffective. Generally, that ineffectiveness comes from a lack of water and exercise.
Dehydrated spirits tend to wither.
Biblically, water is one of the symbols of the Holy Spirit. Jesus instructs his church to drink in plenty of God’s Spirit (see Luke 11:9-13). When we are drinking our fill, we can go through the driest desert and not thirst. When we refuse to ask for those daily drinks, we dehydrate and our spirits wither.
The other side of that spiritual diet, of course, is exercise. But how do we exercise our spirits? Well, let me first tell you how you DON’T exercise your spirit. Go to a building once a week, sit in a pew for an hour, listen to a sermon (no matter how good or dynamic), and then leave. That is a plan guaranteed to get you fat and lazy. It’s like eating a seven-course meal just before bedtime. Not a stellar idea.
We need to exercise our spiritual muscles by doing the things Jesus prepared the way for us to do. His teachings on this matter include things like feeding the hungry, visiting the sick and imprisoned, praying, and making disciples. You can find the entire list in the four Gospels. It comes highly recommended.
[Dave Zuchelli is a graduate of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and is currently the pastor of Smith Chapel, in Great Falls, VA.]
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