The Scale Don't Lie: How practices shape our bodies and souls
Practices shape our bodies
Fifteen years ago when I was single I had a gym membership. I lifted weights, did some cardio (or whatever they call it now), played hockey, and ate things like a can of tuna for supper many nights a week. I weighed a lot less in those days.
I’m fat now and have been for some time and there’s no mystery as to why. My body has been shaped by my practices. It was slimmer when I exercised more and ate less. It’s pudgier after doing the opposite for several years. Unless you suffer from certain medical complications or are a high-metabolism person who eats a zillion calories and can’t put on weight, it’s no secret what shapes our bodies. It’s what we do (or don’t do). Is it any different with our souls?
Practices shaped the early church
Luke shares with us how Christ’s church quickly grew from a handful of frightened people sequestered in one place to a global movement thousands strong. God’s empowering presence fell upon the church and prompted them to preach to their neighbors that they must repent and be baptized. Once many of their neighbors did, here’s what came next:
“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:42-47).
Were you to read further in the book of Acts, you would find the gospel of Jesus Christ spreading like wildfire from Jerusalem, where the above passage takes place, to its surrounding areas and eventually the known world. Jesus appointed the church’s first leaders to be his sent witnesses, and they obediently went, sending others along the way. Jesus’ mission may have been their driving focus, but the shape of the church as a whole got its every contour from the practices the individuals performed both alone and together as the church. Practices don’t just shape our bodies; they also shape our individual souls and our churches.
Practices still shape the church today
In the gym the saying goes, “no pain, no gain.” It’s a principle of weightlifting that muscles respond to opposition by breaking down, only to recover even stronger for the task at hand. The early church experienced much opposition that strengthened them. People were put to death for their faith. Parents shunned children who accepted Christ. Fathers lost their livelihood in response for their conversion to the gospel. And the church grew. Tertullian, who was a church leader a couple centuries after Christ, remarked that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”
And so it goes today. Globally, Christ’s church is experiencing growth as never before—and persecution as never before. Sent-ones are reaching out to their friends, family, neighbors, and even enemies with good news of God’s kingdom, regardless of their material poverty, threat of imprisonment, or being shunned by family members and employers alike. God continues to empower his church to grow despite opposition. God’s people meet in homes, share in fellowship, eat together as spiritual families, and give out of their own poverty to help whoever among them has need. Sound familiar?
Meanwhile in America things look rather different. I cannot speak for every American church, but the practices that shape most Christians here little resemble that of the early church in Acts chapter 2 or the global church today. Like people with gym memberships who never use them, we meet together rarely, certainly not daily. Many of us feel like our time to be shaped by the church’s teaching ends around 6-8th grade or so. We fellowship plenty with family and friends on our own, but our identity as a church is sketchy outside of a Sunday morning worship service. We give out of our excess what is leftover to God’s needs, whether that be time or money, but we rarely go without something we want, often taking for granted that we have been provided everything we need.
To be sure, there is no threat of imprisonment, shunning, or loss of income by being a Christian in America. But that’s not the only thing that shaped the early church and continues to shape the global church. The identity of being sent-ones, missionaries, can be our identity too. The devotion to daily practices of teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, prayer, and generosity is just as available to us as it is to anyone else in the world, if not more, when we consider the staggering amount of material wealth at our disposal. What is missing is the first thing Luke says above: devotion.
Step on the scale
What practices shape your life? Many of us are devoted to entertainment, pleasure, anxiety, pride, greed, lust, and a whole host of other maladies that weaken Christ’s church in America. What would it look like to exchange our devotion to ourselves for the kind of devotion the early church had?
Take stock this week of the practices that shape your soul to find out what you value and delight in: What is responsible for the most miles on your vehicle? What do you spend the most free time doing? What repeatedly shows up in your checking account register or credit card statements as unplanned expenses? How do you start your day? How do you end it? What do you think about all the time? What do you always find resources (time, energy, money) to do? What is the first thing you want to shed off your schedule whenever you can? And so on.
If worship makes you groan, if you have no hunger and thirst for righteousness, if your conscience is seared to sin, if you prefer to think about and talk about everything but God, and if you struggle to be a witness to the good news of God’s kingdom because you don’t think you’ve seen God at work in your own life in a while, then it’s time to assess what practices have shaped your soul.
An utter lack of joy in salvation and gratitude to the Lord are the chief symptoms of a soul that is out of shape, and if that’s you, there should be no surprise as to why. It’s what you do (or don’t do). Now that you’ve stepped off the scaled, what will change?
Fifteen years ago when I was single I had a gym membership. I lifted weights, did some cardio (or whatever they call it now), played hockey, and ate things like a can of tuna for supper many nights a week. I weighed a lot less in those days.
I’m fat now and have been for some time and there’s no mystery as to why. My body has been shaped by my practices. It was slimmer when I exercised more and ate less. It’s pudgier after doing the opposite for several years. Unless you suffer from certain medical complications or are a high-metabolism person who eats a zillion calories and can’t put on weight, it’s no secret what shapes our bodies. It’s what we do (or don’t do). Is it any different with our souls?
Practices shaped the early church
Luke shares with us how Christ’s church quickly grew from a handful of frightened people sequestered in one place to a global movement thousands strong. God’s empowering presence fell upon the church and prompted them to preach to their neighbors that they must repent and be baptized. Once many of their neighbors did, here’s what came next:
“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:42-47).
Were you to read further in the book of Acts, you would find the gospel of Jesus Christ spreading like wildfire from Jerusalem, where the above passage takes place, to its surrounding areas and eventually the known world. Jesus appointed the church’s first leaders to be his sent witnesses, and they obediently went, sending others along the way. Jesus’ mission may have been their driving focus, but the shape of the church as a whole got its every contour from the practices the individuals performed both alone and together as the church. Practices don’t just shape our bodies; they also shape our individual souls and our churches.
Practices still shape the church today
In the gym the saying goes, “no pain, no gain.” It’s a principle of weightlifting that muscles respond to opposition by breaking down, only to recover even stronger for the task at hand. The early church experienced much opposition that strengthened them. People were put to death for their faith. Parents shunned children who accepted Christ. Fathers lost their livelihood in response for their conversion to the gospel. And the church grew. Tertullian, who was a church leader a couple centuries after Christ, remarked that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”
And so it goes today. Globally, Christ’s church is experiencing growth as never before—and persecution as never before. Sent-ones are reaching out to their friends, family, neighbors, and even enemies with good news of God’s kingdom, regardless of their material poverty, threat of imprisonment, or being shunned by family members and employers alike. God continues to empower his church to grow despite opposition. God’s people meet in homes, share in fellowship, eat together as spiritual families, and give out of their own poverty to help whoever among them has need. Sound familiar?
Meanwhile in America things look rather different. I cannot speak for every American church, but the practices that shape most Christians here little resemble that of the early church in Acts chapter 2 or the global church today. Like people with gym memberships who never use them, we meet together rarely, certainly not daily. Many of us feel like our time to be shaped by the church’s teaching ends around 6-8th grade or so. We fellowship plenty with family and friends on our own, but our identity as a church is sketchy outside of a Sunday morning worship service. We give out of our excess what is leftover to God’s needs, whether that be time or money, but we rarely go without something we want, often taking for granted that we have been provided everything we need.
To be sure, there is no threat of imprisonment, shunning, or loss of income by being a Christian in America. But that’s not the only thing that shaped the early church and continues to shape the global church. The identity of being sent-ones, missionaries, can be our identity too. The devotion to daily practices of teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, prayer, and generosity is just as available to us as it is to anyone else in the world, if not more, when we consider the staggering amount of material wealth at our disposal. What is missing is the first thing Luke says above: devotion.
Step on the scale
What practices shape your life? Many of us are devoted to entertainment, pleasure, anxiety, pride, greed, lust, and a whole host of other maladies that weaken Christ’s church in America. What would it look like to exchange our devotion to ourselves for the kind of devotion the early church had?
Take stock this week of the practices that shape your soul to find out what you value and delight in: What is responsible for the most miles on your vehicle? What do you spend the most free time doing? What repeatedly shows up in your checking account register or credit card statements as unplanned expenses? How do you start your day? How do you end it? What do you think about all the time? What do you always find resources (time, energy, money) to do? What is the first thing you want to shed off your schedule whenever you can? And so on.
If worship makes you groan, if you have no hunger and thirst for righteousness, if your conscience is seared to sin, if you prefer to think about and talk about everything but God, and if you struggle to be a witness to the good news of God’s kingdom because you don’t think you’ve seen God at work in your own life in a while, then it’s time to assess what practices have shaped your soul.
An utter lack of joy in salvation and gratitude to the Lord are the chief symptoms of a soul that is out of shape, and if that’s you, there should be no surprise as to why. It’s what you do (or don’t do). Now that you’ve stepped off the scaled, what will change?
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