Running As Worship

Do you exercise with regularity?  You should.  Moreover, you must!  The body is a tool for the Lord and it must be nurtured and cared for.  Doing some “road work” on a stretch such as the one pictured will do wonders for your body…and your soul.

One of the effects of living in the post-Genesis 3 world is that our bodies were introduced to wear and tear and ultimately physical death.  Exercise is one measure we can use to lessen the physical consequences of sin on our lives during the years that God has measured out for us.  I like to say that just as God decreed that man should work and eat “by the sweat of your face” [Gen. 3:19], so also must man maintain his health and thrive during his days “by the sweat of his face.”

Regular and frequent exercise is good for a host of reasons.  Some reasons you are familiar with and embrace.  Other reasons are often overlooked and, quite honestly, never considered.  Sure, exercise is good for the heart, lungs, brain, weight, etc.  Everyone believes this to be true.  But have you seriously considered the spiritual benefits of exercise?

The foremost benefit of exercise is worship of the one true God…if it is done correctly.  Allow me to explain and see if you agree.

Misdirected Worship

I am not talking about the wrong worship that so much exercise is about.  Many are driven to exercise solely for the praise of man.  Our society has bombarded us with images of fit people with perverse and sensual intentions.  When someone pursues an image that is pleasing to man, they are actually worshiping man.

Many are driven to exercise solely for the pride of self.  Physique and health are modern-day religions in and of themselves and rob worship from God.  Such people are actually worshiping themselves when they exercise.

Some are even driven to exercise solely for the fear of death.  In such cases, people are frantically running on treadmills literally in fear of their “fate” (as they call it) with no regard for their Creator.  In these cases people are worshiping…the unknown.

Right Worship

The worship I am advocating is directed to God the Father, Creator of heaven and earth.  Please understand, I am not merely talking about worshiping him by enjoying his creation as you run through the woods and over the hills and in the great sunlight with lots of fresh oxygen.  That is all well and good, but I’m talking about something more…something rigorous.

When you work out hard and feel a strong degree of fatigue and some degree of pain, you are in a prime condition to worship.  It is a humbling experience to be tired and hurting (to a healthy degree, mind you!).  When you are in such a state you can begin to see yourself in relation to God.  God never tires, but you are easily exhausted. God is omnipotent, but you quickly become weak.  God is ever sovereign, but you are extremely vulnerable.  I don’t know about you, but this is what runs through my mind as I am in the final minutes of an intense workout.

Such thoughts are the beginnings of true worship.  Worship begins with an honest and healthy mental ascent to these truths (God’s tireless, omnipotent sovereignty).  But the mental ascent turns into experience and live reality minutes and miles later when you are craving deeply inhaled oxygen, relief from burning muscles, and rest from mental weariness.  It is at this moment that you are primed for true worship!  Here is what I am referring to…

The Stages of Exercise & How To Worship

The early stages of exercise are…well, pleasant.  Not a great word for a workout, is it?  By this I mean a lot of things such as easy, comfortable, exciting, enlivening, etc.  This is worship material in that you can acknowledge God and the strength and ability he has given you to be active and rigorous.  That’s all well and good, but…

When you have gone long enough that you begin to think about quitting (have you been there?), that is when worship can elevate to an entirely higher level.  When you are half-way through your workout, you begin to feel your heart labor, your lungs sting, and your muscles begin to burn.  You draw in deep breaths to get enough oxygen to regulate your heart rate and refresh your brain.  This is true exercise.  This is when your humanity becomes stark.

You begin to realize that you are finite.  You begin to see that you are dependent upon something outside of you to exist.  It is at this point that you need to draw in Scripture just as you are drawing in oxygen.  Scripture must fuel your worship at all times so that you worship the Author [2 Tim. 3:16] of Scripture.  Here is what I mean:

When you are at the point that you are not sure how much longer you can go and wonder if you are going to dismantle in the next tenth of a mile, that is precisely the time to draw in this truth:

…he upholds the universe by the word of his power. [Heb. 1:3]

and a parallel passage:

And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. [Col. 3:17]

Such verses have an altogether different impact (not meaning, but impact!) on you when you are pushing yourself through the end of a workout.  These verses coupled with physical exhaustion drive you to consider them in ways very different than if you were sitting in your study reading them with a cup of coffee and the dog at your feet.

When you are at this point and you start considering that “in him all things in the universe hold together by the word of his power,” you are poised to acknowledge God as the sovereign creator and sustainer of you and your existence.  This is the pinnacle of worship while running!  This is where you want to be…three to four times per week!

So it is time to exercise.  Yes, do it for the reason of good stewardship of the body which God has given you.  But more than that, do it as yet another way in your life to worship at the throne of your Creator and Sustainer.  It is a win-win:  God will be glorified and you will be edified.  Your physical health will prosper, but more importantly, your spiritual health will soar for the glory of God.

The Perils of Prosperity

It is readily evident that a driving motivation of all mankind is the pursuit of prosperity.  This goes for all people both Christian and non-Christian alike.  The desire for prosperity began at the moment temptation and sin came into the world (Genesis 3).  Before that moment, man did not pursue prosperity because he was at the pinnacle of prosperity.  He was created in the image of his Creator, he had dominion over all that God had created, and he was in good standing and had unbroken fellowship with God.

But when man sinned, he immediately fell out of his perfectly prosperous state and a desire to regain prosperity was set in motion that has been handed down through all generations since.  Thus, today we are all motivated by the desire to be prosperous.  Even our country’s founding fathers placed this desire at the heart of what we are about when they wrote of mankind’s unalienable rights which include:  life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  The logic being that if one is alive, free, and happy then he must be prospering.

Is this pursuit of prosperity bad?  No, not at all.  But at the same time, it can be deadly dangerous!  Stay with me…

I am acquainted with someone who several years ago during a season of prosperity spiritually relaxed and is suffering dearly for it today.  During days of trouble-free living they took up the “art” of wine drinking.  In fact, they gathered with other Christian friends from their church who were well-versed in this “art.”  Upon attaining the desired “skills,” this person boasted in the freedom they had in Christ to pursue and enjoy things that were once considered taboo in their Christian faith and their previous practice of “dead religion.”  Now, they were finally alive and free to pursue things of this world that they now declared to be unharmful because “they are covered with the blood of Christ.”

Then came a season of life filled with immense tragedy and grief previously unimaginable to this person.  In fact, the tragedy they experienced would try the most devoted of Christ’s followers.  But tragedy was compounded with tragedy.  The skill of wine tasting and consumption this person was so eager to possess and was so proud to have attained now became their worst enemy.  For, you see, as their foundation was shaken to the core and tested to the extreme, they had to have something to depend upon to deliver them through the excruciating trials.  Rather than depending on Jesus alone, they now depended on alcohol because in their deception, Jesus was not enough.

What this person did not consider was the fact that they had a compulsive nature that is highly dangerous with addictive enticements.  Thus, in their time of prosperity, they relaxed and drew close to alcohol and this is where they turned as they faced times of great pain and suffering.  Today, this person is enslaved to alcohol and prosperity did not turn out to be so good.

Jesus addresses this issue in the Sermon on the Mount.  While there were great crowds around him, his immediate audience was made up of his disciples (Matthew 5:1).  Thus, he was most immediately speaking to followers who believed in him and had submitted their lives to him.  Jesus concluded his sermon with a strong and blunt teaching:

24 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. 26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” [Matthew 7:24-27]

From this passage (and the whole Sermon) we see that Jesus tells those who follow him to not merely claim him with their mouths but, more importantly, to claim him with their hearts.  The follower of Christ who hears his words and does them will be able to withstand the storms of life like a house built upon a rock.  But the follower of Christ who hears his words and does not do them will not be able to withstand the storms of life like a house built upon sand…and calamity will be their end.

We must continually evaluate our lives to see what we are built upon.  We will be enticed by the enemy to build our lives upon the things of this world:  material possessions, fame, reputation, independence, privacy, relationships, influence, etc.  We must not fall for such trivialities!  We must be founded upon Jesus Christ and his words alone.  Furthermore, we must not simply be aware of his words…we must do them.  Only then are we true disciples.

So, to the business man, to the teacher, to the pastor, to the seminary student, to the coach, and to the doctor, I urge all of us to consider this:  the most dangerous time in our life is the season of prosperity.  It is then that we must be on our guard.  It is then that we must be most aggressive in tearing out and cutting off (Mark 9:43-48) those things that so easily entangle us. 

Storms will certainly come in life.  In fact, they are making their way directly toward you and me right this minute!  Let us be certain we are perpetually founded upon the Rock that is Jesus Christ so that we will remain standing for his glory.

Study Him to Worship Him

Today I am a “scholar” in that I am in the middle of working on a Master of Divinity degree in preparation for pastoral ministry.  God called me to this endeavor when I was 40 years into this life he gave me.  Before that…from approximately 2003 to 2007 I was a “scholar” in that God drew me deeply into his Word in a personal pursuit of him that has not ceased.  It was during this time that he revealed his desire for me to go to seminary and enter the pastorate.  But before that…I was swimming in “ignorance” about God and heavenly things while being very proud of how much I knew about my professional life and the field in which I worked.  I was an “expert” in business management and leadership, but I knew just enough theology to be dangerous and I was sadly very satisfied with such an existence.

Perhaps you are where I was in my previous days.  If so, I urge you to reconsider the importance of pursuing a rich and life-changing knowledge of God.  Consider these wise words from Richard Baxter (1615-1692) as a personal appeal to get serious about knowing God deeply:

Every man that has a reasonable soul should know God that made him, and know the end for which he should live; and know the way to his eternal happiness, as well as the learned: have you not souls to save or lose as well as learned have? God hath made plain His will to you in His Word; He hath given you teachers and many other helps; so that you have no excuse if you are ignorant; you must know how to be Christians if you are no scholars. You may hit the way to heaven in English, though you have no skill in Hebrew or Greek; but in the darkness of ignorance you can never hit it.

If you think, therefore, that you may be excused from knowledge, you may as well think that you may be excused from love and from all obedience; for there can be none of this without knowledge…Were you but as willing to get the knowledge of God and heavenly things as you are to know how to work in your trade, you would have set yourself to it before this day and you would have spared no cost or pains till you had got it. But you account seven years little enough to learn your trade, and will not bestow one day in seven in diligent learning the matters of your salvation…If heaven be too high for you to think on, and to provide for, it will be too high for you to ever possess. [J.I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness, p. 70]

Fight off the enemy’s temptation for theological complacency!  He will whisper all kinds of excuses into your head and heart:  “too busy, too ignorant, too guilty, too unworthy, too boring, too late in life, too insignificant, too…”  When you hear these lies from the Adversary, recall Jesus’ words:

44 He [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him.  When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. [John 8:44]

Memorize this verse and use it to fight off apathy for your knowledge of God.  It will honor God!  It will change your life!  It’s never too late to start! 

If done with a God-centered heart, scholarship is worship.  So, as my good friend Alan Morris so often exhorts, “study to know Him!”  Yes, study Him to worship Him!