Video Transcript: Total Fitness

Let me pause for a moment, she is a tree of life. Remember the tree of life in the Garden of Eden, which would give life, in fact, would give life forever. Adam and Eve were kicked out of Eden and the mighty angelic being prevented them from going back in and getting out the tree of life. And yet, somehow wisdom gives us at least a little nibble from the tree of life and in fact, the fullness of wisdom will give us the fullness of life again. Jesus Christ became wisdom for us and became our full tree of life and maybe say more about that in a different talk. But anyway, wisdom is pictured here as giving us something of that amazing tree of life, which gives abundance and blessedness. 

“The Lord by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding, He established the heavens; by His knowledge, the deeps broke open, and the clouds dropped down the dew.” We talked about the tree of life in the Garden of Eden. Now we're talking about God creating the earth and wisdom was that by which He founded the earth and established the heavens, and His wisdom and knowledge watered the earth. And when we have God's wisdom, we're building like the Master Builder, like the Great Creator that something created in us which is building rather than tearing down, which is watering and causing to flourish. And which is in fact, involved with the very tree of life in the Garden of Eden and all those things God made us for. That's what the real purpose of wisdom is, and when what wisdom is going to be when it flourishes fully in us in God's new creation. But even now, tastes of God's wisdom can help our lives to flourish more and can cause things around us to flourish more because it's coming from the Great Creator, the Lord of Life Himself. 

“My son do not lose sight of these – keep sound wisdom and discretion. And they will be life for your soul and adornment for your neck. Then you will walk on your way securely and your foot will not stumble. If you lie down, you will not be afraid; when you lie down your sleep will be sweet. Do not be afraid of sudden terror or the ruin of the wicked when it comes, for the Lord will be your confidence and will keep your foot from being caught.”

Let's just look back at what we've just read in some of those phrases. Length of days and years of life, it makes you live longer when you've got wisdom. Peace, the Hebrew word is shalom. And that doesn't just mean that you're not in a fight right now. It means flourishing, wellbeing. Besides peace or shalom, there's favor and good success. Don't we all want success. Healing, refreshment, filled with plenty, blessed long life again, riches and honor, pleasantness, peace again, the tree of life, blessed again, life for your soul again, adornment, so you're looking good, secure, not afraid you will sleep well. No fear, for the Lord will be your confidence. What a picture of a flourishing life! Doesn't that sound fantastic! You can almost see why some preachers become prosperity preachers. There's a sense in which the gospel is a prosperity gospel and that it brings blessing and flourishing, although there are some major mistakes with the prosperity gospel that we may talk more about later. But just look at that, you want to know what total fitness is, it's like you bit and ate from tree of life. Your life gets longer, it gets better and different areas of your life, flourish more and more. Wouldn't you love to have more of that? And that's what wisdom, wisdom in Christ, the wisdom of the Holy Spirit and practical wisdom, the wisdom that works in the details of everyday life, that's what wisdom can do. 

Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” Abundant life is what Jesus came to bring. The great church father Irenaeus said, “The glory of God is man fully alive.” When we flourish, God is glorified in us because we are what He designed us to be. Whoever trusts in his riches will fall but the righteous will flourish like a green leaf, the tree of life. You flourish like that tree. And the Bible has many passages which talks about flourishing like a leaf or like a tree that's alive. Psalm 1 says, “That the man who trust in God's word and lives by God's word is like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.” “The righteous flourish like the palm tree, they flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green.” That's what I mean by total fitness. Its flourishing. It’s well-being; it is peace. It is abundant life.

As we talk about total fitness, I'm not going to get into all the details of the different areas, but I want to givr an overview in this talk, I want to highlight three main things. First, total fitness involves the total person, not just one part of your life, but your complete being. And each area of your life affects other areas of your life. So, if you're doing poorly in one area, it can affect other areas. If you're doing great in one area, it also does help to enhance the other parts of your life. A second fact about total fitness, total fitness is not just something you can name and claim. Each area of fitness grows through wisdom and discipline. Here's an area where it would disagree with what's commonly called prosperity preaching. Some say if you just believe something hard enough and name it and claim it, it’s got to happen. Not so. Total fitness is brought about by implementing God's wisdom in your life, not just by psyching yourself into thinking something good has got to happen to you. Total fitness is not something you can just name and claim. Each area of fitness grows through wisdom and through discipline. And the third fact is this much remains beyond our control. And so, sometimes you can act wisely but if you're in a society or if evil people are up to something or just circumstances happen, or God has a different plan, you may have difficulty in some of these areas of fitness, you may become sick, you may have struggles in other areas of your life and your emotions. There's a lot of things we don't control completely. But wisdom does something: it shows us the best available path. Not every path is available to every person. You need to follow the path available to you. And wisdom helps you figure out what that path is, which will lead to your best flourishing and your best service for the Lord. And if suffering comes your way, it should come not because you were stupid, or because you're wicked, but because that was the path you were called to walk on. And so, you were on the best available path. So those are the fitness facts we're going to look at in more detail. 

First of all, total fitness involves the total person, and each area of life affects other areas. Let's look at these different areas of total fitness and we'll then highlight how they're interrelated. Spiritual fitness is your walk with God, your ability to resist the evil one, your power to accomplish things for the kingdom of God. Physical fitness is how your body is doing. Health and strength and wellbeing and long life. Financial fitness is management of your money and your property and doing so in a way that honors God and that blesses others and that keeps you from needless dependence upon others. Intellectual fitness is thinking hard, thinking clearly, becoming well informed and using the mind that God gave you and loving God with your whole mind. Emotional fitness is having the proper balance of emotion, being able to manage difficult emotions like anger, or shame or guilt. And those are all emotions that we need to have in one sense as sinners. If nothing ever makes you angry, when there's so many things wrong with the world, there'd be something amiss with you. So, anger is not a bad thing in and of itself. Shame is not always bad because sometimes we do things we're ashamed of and so we should feel that shame or that guilt that comes our way. Sometimes despair comes over us and that's not always a good thing. But sometimes it can prepare us to recognize our dependence on God. So there's the negative emotions and when I speak of emotional fitness, it's not so much that you'll never have emotions like that, but that you'll learn from emotions like that and be shaped by them the way God wants you to be. 

And also, of course, that you'll have the positive emotions of peace and joy and gladness and just empathy with other people and all those things that go with positive emotions. So emotional fitness involves all those. Relational fitness means that you flourish in family relationships, in marriage, in interacting with neighbors and fellow workers and others and that as the Bible puts it, as much as it depends on you live at peace with everyone. Relational fitness is living at peace with people as much as it depends on you. And it doesn't always depend on you.  Sometimes, they've got to be able to get along with you as well. But relational fitness means that you know how to deal with people and interact with them wisely and well. Vocational fitness is being skilled in your job or in your calling from God, the work that you do, whether that's the work you're paid to do, or the other areas of work that you do in the service of the Lord. Now, all of these areas are very closely related. And somebody who might consider himself super spiritual might pay attention only to the spiritual and think that he can neglect the physical or the financial or the relational and so on, but that will have a negative impact on his spiritual fitness as well. 

Let's look at how some of these things interrelate and interact. Spiritual fitness is important not just for your walk with God, but it also has an impact on your physical fitness. For instance, the Bible says don't be drunk with wine but be filled with the Holy Spirit. When you're full of the Holy Spirit and you're leaving alcohol alone, you're a lot more fit than a person who is drinking way too much and getting addicted and destroying their liver. When you are following God's will spiritually in your sexuality and in the life of marriage, you're protected from many sexually transmitted diseases, because your walk with God leads you to behave in a different way physically. Your spiritual fitness affects your financial fitness. When you know that everything you have belongs to God, and that you're called to give some of it back to him for the work of His kingdom to share with others who are in need. You might say “Boy, that sounds like it would make me poor, but no!  When you are God's financial partner, He blesses you and you become a more skilled planner because you're saying, “Well, I've got to give a certain amount to God. I really like to give something to help others and what do I have left.” And you're managing your money with careful attention because you're a spiritual person. Intellectual fitness is inspired by spiritual fitness. If for no other reason that you want to know the things of God and you want to what the Bible teaches and the Bible in itself is a major education and as the person who knows the Lord and follows Him, you want to learn and keep loving God with your mind. Your spiritual fitness helps your emotional fitness. Sometimes you may struggle with despair or depression. And there may be other causes, but sometimes there's a spiritual cause for why you're so down. And when you get close to God again, the joy returns, and your emotions are restored. Or you don't know how to handle your anger and then God comes in and helps you to deal with that anger. Relational fitness is so closely related to spiritual fitness. One of the great powers of being a spiritual person is the power to forgive because you've been forgiven. And every relationship needs forgiveness, needs grace. And when you are walking with God, then the Lord makes you to live at peace even with your enemies, it says in the Bible. You find ways to develop relational fitness. And when you're a spiritual person, you have God's sense of calling and it affects everything you do in your work life. 

Or take physical fitness. You say, “What's that got to do with these other areas?” Well, I'll just start with the spiritual. How you're doing physically can have a lot to do with how you're feeling spiritually in some circumstances. I know of a person who was hearing voices, and some who were around her wondered whether she might be under attack from demons and possessed even by demons. And she got some thyroid medication, and all the voices were gone, and she was on a good spiritual plane again, because you see, her difficulty was physical, not spiritual in that case. And the spiritual symptoms were actually coming from the physical cause. Take how children are doing. If a child is screaming and yelling at the parents’ face, a little two-year-old, you might say, “Child, you are disobeying your parents. You are in rebellion against God! You need a long sermon about submission and obedience.” Or you might also say, “You know what, it's half hour past naptime and the little one hasn't eaten much. Let’s give him a little food, give him a little nap, have him lie down,” and what do you know spiritually and emotionally, they're way better. So, your physical well-being has a lot to do with your spiritual, emotional and relational well-being and not just for little children. Sometimes when you're tired, when you haven't eaten for a while, you can be a big grump, you can feel down spiritually. And so, the physical affects these things a great deal. Physical fitness affects your financial fitness. You can't go to work, or if you can't stay awake on the job because of a physical problem, then it's going to be more difficult for you financially. Your physical well-being also affects your ability to pay attention and emotional fitness, your intellectual and emotional, your relational fitness. Sometimes just being in good strength and vigor helps you to get out there and be with other people and it's hard to have relationships when you're not physically healthy. It's hard to do a job if you're not physically healthy. So again, you see the physical fitness affects all the others. 

Financial, how does that affect the other areas? Well, it affects the spiritual because when you're financially fit, you put God first. And so, you have to have spiritual fitness in order to be fit in the other areas of finance. Physical fitness, what's finance got to do with that? Well, you'd like to eat. You'd like to wear clothes in cold weather. You don't have a house and a roof over your head. Takes money to do that and financial fitness it's very important to take care of your own physical well-being and the physical well-being of those around you. Finances can help pay for an education. It can help buy you some books and other opportunities to stimulate your intellect. Financial fitness can have a big impact on your emotions. When you're in debt, when you're suffering terrible financial struggles, it has a big impact on how you feel emotionally. It can have a terrible impact, or a good impact on your relationships. Marriages can split over financial problems. If husband and wife let the finances just get way out of whack and get at each other's throats over it. And of course, physical fitness has a lot to do with your vocational fitness because if you are able to be financially in a position where you don't have to take the first job that comes your way, but can instead look for the kind of work that suits you better because you're financially able to just look a little longer and be in good shape, then your vocational fitness is going to benefit. 

Intellectual fitness affects all of these. You need to know the Bible you need to be able to think clearly about God and that'll help your spiritual fitness. Knowing what good nutrition is will help your physical fitness and again, that's intellectual. Finance, knowing good financial practices depends on your mind being well informed by learning about finances. Intellectual fitness can affect your emotions because you're thinking through what's going on in your heart and your soul. Intellectual fitness is very important for relationships. Sometimes we can't help what happens with our mind. Sometimes people have dementia or affected by diseases where they can't think clearly anymore. But then they're not able to relate in the same way they used to be. It might not be their fault, but definitely a loss of intellectual power can have an impact on the ways that you relate to other people. And by the same token, thinking clearly and thinking sharply and being a blessing, an interesting person to talk with can help your relationships. And obviously your intellect helps your job prospects a great deal. Many, many jobs all of them in fact depend on intellectual alertness and knowing what you're doing.

Emotional fitness, that has a tremendous impact in the whole realm of the spirit and of your walk with God. And if you're down emotionally, if you don't pay attention to what's going on with your anger or your shame, or there's unresolved things from long ago that have continued to drag on your emotions, you may think that you're just far from God and that you've been listening to the devil. When in fact, it's emotional wounds that haven't yet been addressed, that are harming you and dragging you down spiritually or sometimes even physically. When you are distressed and in great sorrow or overwhelmed with anger, it can be really bad for your body. And on the flip side, a cheerful heart is good medicine it's good for your body and having positive emotions can make you healthier. Emotional fitness is very important in relational fitness as well. When you're dealing with other people, and you've got a short fuse and unresolved anger you may actually like the person all right, but you just can't handle your emotions and wreck some of your relationships. On the other hand, if you can maintain an even keel and cheerful demeanor and an attitude of peace in your heart, then your relationships improve as well. And I don't need to say how life on the job is going to be better if your emotions are also fit and well ordered. 

When you think about relational fitness there again, Jesus says, “Hey, if you don't forgive, then you're not going to be forgiven. If you don't love others, you can't love God.” So let that be enough said about how relational fitness relates to spiritual fitness. If your relationships are bad, or if there's trouble in your family, it can eat away at you, you can lose your appetite. You can lose lots of sleep, it can sap you physically. So don't think, “Oh, I can just do whatever I want in relationships and my body's going to be fine.” That's not how it works. Relational fitness affects the body. It affects your finances. If you can't get along with anybody, you may find your boss fires you or the people don't want to work with you or that you just cannot earn a living because you're not skilled enough in interacting with people. And on the other hand, if you're good at connecting with people, if you're good at working with them and listening to them and relating to them, it does a lot of good for your finances. It does a lot of good for the intellect just because you're always learning from other people in your relationships. It does a lot of good for your emotions, because when you've got good relationships, the emotions will follow. And it's very important of course for your vocation as well to maintain good relationships with your workers.

And when you've got a great job and you're being fulfilled in doing what God's purpose is for you, that is a spiritually rewarding thing to know that God has assigned me this domain. He's given me these gifts and responsibilities and I'm doing it with His help and by His Spirit, and it gives you a spiritual thrill and a sense of God's purpose in your life. When you're doing the job and doing it well, well then that is very important for your physical well-being and for your finances as well because you can keep a job and you can make an income. Your vocational fitness very closely interacts with intellectual as I've already said, and when you're doing your job and doing it well and you feel like you're doing what you were meant to do, there's a fulfillment that helps your emotions a great deal. One the hardest thing for some people is when they lose a job, and they lose some of their sense of purpose and they lose that sense of accomplishing things and doing what they're good at. It just saps them emotionally. And on the other hand, to have vocational fulfillment also often gives emotional fulfillment and it helps your relationships. If you're a person who never finds your spot in life, your calling and your ability then it makes it hard to provide for your family, put strains there makes you a little grumpier and so on. I trust you get the idea. Maybe I've gone on in too long a detail here. But total fitness means that every aspect of your life affects every other aspect of your life, for better or for worse. And so, we don't want to neglect any part of our life or God's wisdom and God's word in dealing with those areas of our life. 

Total fitness involves the total person, each area of life affects all the other areas. That's the first big point I wanted to make, and I trust that I made it at sufficient length. Second total fitness is not something you can just name and claim. Each area of fitness grows through wisdom and discipline. I coached a basketball team that won the national championship for 12-year-olds and under of homeschooled teams. And so, there was 32 teams at the nationals after teams came out of the regionals. And in that National Championship we had one boy on our team in particular, who averaged 26 points a game in 24-minute games. One game against the number one overall seed. He hit eight three pointers and scored 32 points. What an accomplishment! Did that come because he said, “Lord make me a good shooter.” It didn't come just because he said more prayers than other boys. It came because he shot a lot of shots, he practiced and practiced, he got the right form, and then he practiced, and practiced and he could make shots from anywhere and nobody could stop him. And other boys in our team too got really skilled because they had practiced a lot. They listened to some coaching. They also developed those skills and disciplines on their own. You can't go on a basketball court and just say, “Lord, make me a good shooter.” That's not how it works. And if you want to be fit in various areas of life, you can't just say, “Lord made me financially fit. Lord make me spiritually strong. Lord, give me great relationships.” Yes, you should pray for those things. But don't think you can just pray for it or just name it and claim and say, “Lord, I envision myself being a spiritual giant, now make it so. Lord, I envision great relationships and financial prosperity, be it so.” That's kind of like walking out on the basketball court, never having touched the ball and saying, “I shall be a great shooter. Make it so!” Dream on. Okay. Faith is important. Prayer is important. But God develops us through wisdom and through discipline. 

And as we spoke of in a previous talk, that involves at least these things. You revere God and you put Him first. You treasure truth, you keep seeking it, you keep learning, and you keep going after it. You start with commands from God and from parents and from others who are knowledgeable in your life and know more than you do. You keep those commands, and you develop a sense after a while of wisdom and good decision making even when you don't have a particular command for that situation. And you research reality. You pay attention to many different areas of life, and you study. If you want to be financially fit you study finance, at least enough finance to manage your own finances well. if you want to be physically fit, you find out what is the latest and best advice on nutrition and exercise and things like that. You research reality and you learn how to develop and be more fit in those areas. You accept advice. Name it and claim it say I am going to be wise. Well, who's going correct you, okay? You grow more slowly than that. You make mistakes, and you learn from them. One way you learn from them is by accepting advice of people who correct your mistakes and sometimes they give advice even before you make the mistakes, that's even better. Follow good advice and avoid the mistakes but if you do make them then accept the advice and correction of those who point it out to you and learn yourself. Keep pondering, keep thinking, keep looking at these different areas of life we've been talking about, and figure out what you can change and what you can do better. That's the path to getting wisdom. 

So don't just say it's an act of faith that I claim it all. You can claim it in a sense by claiming Jesus and saying, “Jesus is for me wisdom from God, He came to bring me abundant life. I embrace you, Jesus, I embrace your Holy Spirit. But now Lord, help me to grow up and grow in wisdom day by day. Help me to eat more and more from that tree of life that You are and that You provide and to have that flourishing as I grow in Your wisdom and discipline.” Don't try to take shortcuts because Jesus calls us to walk with Him in order to grow in wisdom. Not just to have an instant infusion of health, wisdom and abundant life just on the spot and everything is good from there on out. Wisdom is important. 

And finally, much does remain beyond our control. We're not always going to experience great physical health or great economic prosperity. Sometimes things happen that we don't control, that no matter how much wisdom we exercise, it doesn't go the way we were hoping. But wisdom shows the best available path. And so, we want to take that path and do it in the best possible way, realizing that sometimes God calls us to suffer and sometimes things don't happen the way we wanted. 

But we want to avoid stupid suffering, okay. Some things you can't avoid and some things you can. Wisdom says in Proverbs since you've ignored all my advice, and not accepted my rebuke, I in turn will laugh at your disaster. I will mock when calamity overtakes you. That's what happened with stupid suffering. You wouldn't listen to wisdom. You wouldn't listen to advice and now you're in a fix and wisdom mocks you.  The apostle Peter says, “How is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong?” Sometimes you get a beating. Sometimes something bad happens and you brought it on yourself. Sometimes you land in prison because of a crime you committed. You say, “Oh glorious me, I'm suffering from a noble cause. No, you're just suffering because you were a dunce or because you were foolish. I don't insult anybody, because we all are sinners. We all have things that happened to us because we did wrong. I'm just saying there is such a thing as stupid suffering. And wisdom helps you to avoid stupid suffering so that if you do have to suffer, there's a good reason for it. And you can realize that there is something even noble about suffering when it's not because of failure of wisdom. 

The apostle Peter says, “If you're insulted because the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.” If you are suffering, it should not be as a murderer, a thief or any other kind of criminal or even as a meddler. However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God, that you bear that name. Many of the greatest and choicest saints of God have suffered greatly. Jesus Himself suffered greatly. He didn't have financial prosperity. He didn't have all the other things that we talked about nonstop all the time. But He was God's greatest instrument. And sometimes people are called into a mission or into a purpose or God just hasn't designed for their life that leads them through many trials and all of us in one form or another are going to accept and have trials. But we want trials that God sends for our well-being, for a purpose, not just ones that are suffering as a murderer, a thief or criminal or meddling in affairs we didn't belong in. We're blessed when we're insulted for the name of Christ. And we're blessed when we've been living by wisdom and then we have the fortitude and courage to deal with things that we still have to bear. 

Jesus says, “Truly I say to you, there's no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for My sake and for the gospel and who will not receive hundred-fold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions and in the age to come eternal life.” So total fitness, flourishing, abundant life can bring lots and lots of good things in this life and in the age to come eternal life and there may be some persecutions and sufferings thrown in with it. But the total effect will be a life of wisdom of total fitness and joy in the Lord.

So here are the areas we're going to be thinking about in this course: spiritual fitness, physical fitness, financial fitness, intellectual fitness, emotional fitness, relational fitness, and vocational fitness. We're going to learn the big picture of God's purposes in each of these areas of our life and we're going to learn some of the particular life skills that apply to the lives that we have right now. And so, I pray that you'll be blessed as we continue in the class, that God will help you to grow in His grace, and become more and more fit and flourish and really taste something of God's wonderful tree of life in Jesus Christ right now, as you flourish in Him.