Video Transcript: Spiritual Fitness

Hi I’m David Feddes and this talk is about spiritual fitness. Sometimes we tend to think about fitness when things are going wrong. When you climb on the scale and look down, and you don’t like that number you see, it is way too high, you’re way overweight, you start thinking about fitness because the scale has given you bad news. Or you go to the doctor and he tells you, you’ve got a major problem with your health and suddenly you’re thinking about physical fitness when you really weren’t thinking about it before. Or when it comes to relational fitness. When do you think about it. Well, sometimes it’s when you have a terrible blow up between you and your children or with you and your spouse or you’re at odds with somebody else. And you say I think we may need some counseling because our relationships are really bad. We want to get relational fitness because we don’t have it. And in spiritual fitness too, when we feel far from God or when things are very hard, then we think about our health more. Emotional fitness when we’re weighed down by despair or depression or by anger and shame, then we may think, “Boy, I would like to do something about those emotions.” So, it’s just the fact that sometimes we are most ready to think about fitness when we’re not very fit. 

And so, on this talk for spiritual fitness let me just begin with a situation that was a mess. In the book of James, James speaks of people who have major problems. He says, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it? You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You do not have because you do not ask God. And when you ask you to not receive because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to become a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God? Or do you think the scripture says for nothing, the Spirit He calls to live within us envies intensely. 

O, what a mess and their emotions are a mess, they’re fighting with each other, and their finances probably aren’t very good because they’re wanting things and can’t get them. And so, one area of their life after another is a problem. And James says that it’s really a problem because you’re not oriented toward God. And so, after describing all that mess, where you might want to say, is there any hope James says, “But he gives us more grace.” Isn’t that good news. God doesn’t meet us where we’re supposed to be. He meets us where we are, and he gives us more grace. And what’s been the source of all the problems are going to relational problems, maybe some financial problems, certainly emotional problems. And as you’re listening, James is talking about, but the real problem is they’ve gotten too far from God, and they haven’t been resisting Satan. So, the thing they need most is not just more relational fitness or emotional fitness or financial fitness. They need spiritual fitness. 

Submit yourselves then to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Come near to God and He will come near to you. Those verses give us a description of a great need for spiritual fitness and also a pretty good understanding of what spiritual fitness is, at its essence, at its core. We are spiritually fit when we’re close to God, and resistant to evil. And on the other hand, when we’re far from God, and don’t have very good immune system or strength to resist evil, then all sorts of other problems happen as well. And so, for fitness in all the other areas of our life, the very core of it is spiritual fitness and the very core of spiritual fitness is, “Are you close to God? And do you have strength to resist evil?” That’s the essence of it. Well, how do we go about getting that kind of fitness where we’re drawing near to God, and where we’re strong to resist Satan? 

It all begins with the heart. We really can’t talk about spiritual fitness without talking first of all about your heart and your heart health. The book of Proverbs speaks of the heart over and over. Here’s just a sampling. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Above all else, guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life. You’ve got to guard your heart from the temptations that come your way. You’ve got to guard your heart for God’s purposes because God puts in your heart who He wants you to be and what He wants you to do. And so, you’ve got to guard that against all the phony things that try to crowd out what’s true to your heart of hearts. All the man’s ways seem right to him, but the Lord weighs the heart. That’s the telling verse. Sometimes we think we’re doing just fine, but God is weighing our heart and a big part of spiritual fitness is learning to see our heart the way God sees it, to see our sinful heart and the fallen things in our heart, just as God sees them to become aware of them and resist them. And also, when God gives us a new heart, the good things he puts in our heart and a great purpose as he has for us to be able to discover those things that he’s put in our heart and to avoid the distraction.

Spiritual fitness involves learning to see your heart experience your heart in tune with the way God weighs it. Keep your heart on the right path. My son, give me your heart. You can’t read Proverbs without thinking that the heart is indeed the core of it all. Proverbs has all kinds of advice and all kinds of great guidance on all kinds of fitness and different parts of your life, but it all comes down to the heart, is your heart trusting God? Are you guarding that heart? Are you listening to how God weighs it? Is it on the right path? Have you given God your heart. You need a healthy heart. Our Lord Jesus says the same thing. Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God. A pure heart is a heart that’s not full of sin and corruption. A heart that instead desires what God wants. And so, purity of heart on the one hand is being free of wicked and evil things that we want and on the other hand, as the great Danish thinker Soren Kierkegaard said, “Purity of heart is to will one thing that was the title of one of his writings, purity of heart is to will one thing. Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart.” What is the one thing that we will Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom of God, the reign of God and everything else will be added to you. Jesus said that eternal life is to know God and Jesus Christ who He has sent. The apostle Paul said, “I want to know Christ.” 

So the pure in heart are those who focus on that one thing that kingdom of God being with Christ, being united with Christ. Jesus said, “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart.” So, spiritual fitness is not just a matter of learning a few good things or fighting a few evil things. It’s having a heart, a heart for God, and a heart for God. A good heart filled to God’s Holy Spirit is a heart that brings out good things. Without a heart like that the good things are not really going to happen, and the bad things are going to flow out of the evil heart. In Jesus’ parable of the four different kinds of soil he said the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart. 

Now if the key to spiritual fitness is your heart health, then how do you get towards that health? And how do you succeed in having a good heart? Well, you can’t do it just by spiritual disciplines or by some of the practices we’re going to be talking about. Think again of a physical health. If you’ve got a bad heart and you need a heart transplant, you may say I want to make my heart healthy, and I’ve heard the exercise and workouts are good for your heart. So, you get out there as far as you can, as fast as you can. What’s going to happen? You’re probably going to drop dead because you don’t have a heart that can handle that kind of exercise. You need the new heart before you can start getting into exercises that’ll maintain heart health. 

And so, it isn’t a Christian life before anything else happens. We can’t make our heart good. We need a good heart, but we can’t make it good. And so, we need God to give us a new heart. In James, “Purify your hearts, you double minded,” and elsewhere in the Bible it talks about what that involves. God says, “I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them.” A little later in Ezekiel, he says rid yourselves of all the offenses you’ve committed and get a new heart and a new spirit. And then in Ezekiel 36 God says, I will put a new heart and a new spirit within them, I will take out of them their heart of stone and give them a new heart of flesh, a living beating heart. So, God does this heart surgery. It’s the same kind of thing Jesus talked about. He said, “You must be born again.” The Bible uses different words to describe it, but to receive a new inner life, to receive a new heart. 

And when you do have a new heart, and sometimes they’re still old desires and sins that battle within you, so you keep praying that God will keep renewing that new heart. The prayer of Psalm 86 Verse 11, give me an undivided heart. The people who are in that mess in James had divided hearts and they were trying to follow the world as well as God.  They’re being tugged by the devil in their heart wasn’t fully in tune with God. So, when I’m thinking with you about spiritual fitness, let’s not skip ahead too quickly to the importance of spiritual disciplines and practices and things that will make your heart healthier. I want to make sure first, that you’re in tune with the Lord, that you’ve come to the Lord and trusted in the Lord Jesus as your Savior. Have asked Him to wash away all your sins with His precious blood to credit all of his righteousness to us so that you’re you have a right standing with God and to cause you to be born again to give you a new heart that only the Holy Spirit can implant in you. With God’s Spirit living in you and with a new human heart or human spirit that He gives you, then you’re ready to move further into spiritual fitness and not before them. 

So just hear me again, you need the new heart before you need anything else. And so, once you have that new heart, then you can say, “Lord know, how do I develop my spiritual fitness?”

 How do we know how we’re doing? Well, here are some signs to use in your spiritual fitness testing just to get a sense that even if you are a Christian, even if you do have a new heart, how’s it going? How is your spiritual health? Donald Whitney wrote a book involving ten marks of your spiritual health and he based those on some of the things Jonathan Edwards, the great leader in the Great Awakening spoke and wrote about. I don’t have 10 listed here I kind of combined some of those and arrange them a little differently. 

Here are seven ways to test your spiritual fitness. And let me begin just by focusing on this. Are you desiring God more and more? One sign of spiritual fitness is that you want God. You long for him. When you read the Bible, you find David saying, “As a deer pants for streams of water, so my soul longs for you, oh God,” that’s Psalm 42 or Psalm 63 Oh God, you are my God earnestly. I seek you my soul thirst for you. My body longs for you. There is this tremendous longing for God, Psalm 27. My heart says that you seek His face your face, Lord, I will seek the apostle Paul, I want to know Christ. Do you have that desire for God? To know him better, better to get closer and closer to Him? If you say well, not really, but I know that I think that I wish I did. That’s the start. Maybe you don’t have that desire for God as strongly as you should. And maybe you have a desire for a desire, or you want to want that’s at least a start. But this longing and the fact is, the more you know of God, the more he gives you of himself, you might not feel completely satisfied and fulfilled. In fact, you might feel thirstier than ever because you’ve tasted, you’ve tasted that the Lord is good, and you want more and more of Him, and you long to be filled more and more with His Spirit. And that’s one of the first signs of spiritual fitness is that God implants in you a desire and a longing for more and more and more of Him. So as James says, you want to come here to God, the desire to come here to God? 

A second question, are you resisting the devil, the world and the flesh? James was describing a situation with the devil. He was misleading people. They were in love with the world, their own desires, their own fleshly wishes, were dominating them, and they were in terrible spiritual health. When God is working you when you’ve drawn close to God, then you’re resisting the devil and he’s getting away from you because he’s scared of you because you have a great power at work in you. The world is no longer dominating and controlling. You’re not conforming to this world but you’re being transformed. The flesh is no longer ruling everything but the Spirit. So, the fallen nature is getting weaker and weaker. And the renewed heart, the powerful spirit within you that God gives you is getting stronger and stronger and stronger. How are you doing? Do you find yourself falling for the same old temptations over and over again? Maybe it’s a temptation to pull up in anger, or a temptation towards pornography, or just a temptation to ignore people in need and go about your own selfish path or the temptation to ignore God? There’s so many temptations, I can’t list them all here, but are you resisting? Sometimes, you may get discouraged because you’re not succeeding all the time. But my question is, are you even putting up a fight? Are you resisting? Are you battling against the world, the flesh and the devil? If you’re battling that’s a sign that there’s at least some health. If you’re just giving in all the time and being overcome, then that’s a sign that your spiritual fitness is very low, if you’re alive in the Lord at all. 

Another question, “Are you loving and caring toward others?” Loving God above all is the greatest commandment. But Jesus said there’s a second amendment like it love your neighbors yourself. And He showed us the importance of caring for people. When Jesus was asked, “Well, who’s my neighbor?” He told the story of the Good Samaritan of somebody who helped somebody from a different ethnic group who despised him even, but he still helped him in time of need, and that’s about spiritual testing. Do you want the best for others, do you take action to help them and care for them when they have needs. And not just people out there and just have a general attitude of, of care towards the people of the world. When people are close to you, maybe your own family members, maybe a relative who doesn’t like you very much, and you’re not that fond of them either. But do we pray for them and love them and care for them. That’s a sign of spiritual health, if you do.

Here’s another tests. Are you willing and able to forgive? Or you hold grudges? Do you want revenge? Are you always eager to get payback in a fight back? One sign of spiritual fitness is that you’re like Christ. Christ prayed, “Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they’re doing. When He was crucified.” Jesus, great martyr, Stephen said, Lord don’t hold the sin against the right well, they were pelting them with rocks and killing them. So that’s a heroic kind of forgiveness. But are you a forgiving person? When people do less serious things than murdering you. When they offend you when they hurt you in various ways, is that something that just eats at you, and you just want to get them and pay them back? There’s a healthy kind of anger that recognizes the injustice of what’s done and commits it over to the Lord and says, “Well, Lord, if there’s vengeance to be taken, then you take it, but I’m going to do good to those who’ve chosen to be my enemy or who’ve chosen to mistreat me.” If you’re living by the grace of Jesus Christ, then you also overflow with the grace of Jesus Christ.

In Jesus story of a servant who was forgiven a huge debt, but then refuse to forgive a smaller debt, that person wound up being handed over the torturers. And sometimes that’s what the Lord will do with this. Now just cast this into hell, he might hand us over the tortures right now where if you won’t forgive, it makes you miserable, and you feel more and more dry spiritually and other aspects of your life begin to suffer. And the way to get rid of the torturers is to learn to forgive. And so that’s a sign of spiritual fitness. When you are hurt and offended by people, but you forgive them. You want the best for them. You pray that God will bless and help them another chance. 

Are you heavenly minded? The Bible says, since you’ve been raised with Christ, set your minds on things above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God and when Christ who is your life appears you also will appear withHim glory. You know, you’ve been raised with Christ. You know, Christ is alive, and you know that His glory is going to be your glory. And so is your mind on the Lord Jesus in heaven a lot. You think about God a lot. And that’s one element of being heavenly minded is you’re looking to God and Heaven to Christ seated in heaven. And you love to focus on God on His throne and Jesus’ reigning in heaven, and on where he is right now, really, and also the great heavenly future that He’s prepared for His people that haven’t come to earth and you long for His appearing, you long for Jesus to come again and make all things new. The words of revelation about the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God to Earth and God wiping away every tear and that glorious, splendid city and the river flowing and the tree of life and God dwelling in the midst of his people and your heart thrills to those things. Are you heavenly minded? The apostle Paul said some people aren’t. Some live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction. Their god is their stomach. Their glory is their shame, their mind is on earthly things. To have a mind that’s always looking down and attached to the earth and attached to the urges and desires of your stomach. That’s a sign of terrible spiritual health. But a mind that’s focused on Christ and on God and on the future. He’s prepared for us and always straining towards him and towards that future. That’s a sign of spiritual health. 

Another test of spiritual health is how are you doing in spiritual disciplines? Do you read your Bible? Do you meditate on the Bible? Do you go to church and listen to those who speak the truth of the Bible? Are you involved in discussion of the Bible with other Christians? Are you faithful in Bible intake? Right for prayer, you spend time every day with God talking with God? Is your natural reaction when some challenge comes up to speak to the Lord about it when something good happens is your natural reaction to praise God and a speak a prayer of thanks to Him. If you’re dealing with people who have difficulties, is it kind of a natural reaction for you to say, “Well, would you like me to pray about that with you?” Is prayer something that just flows out of you and that characterizes your life? Do you practice other things such as fasting or solitude and time alone with the Lord? Do you do some journaling just to track your spiritual life. There may be a variety of things that are spiritual disciplines that help you, but supremely Bible intake and prayer are the real big ones. Are you faithful? And do you love to hear from God’s Word in its various ways of being presented to you, whether you’re reading it or hearing it from someone else or studying it with others. And is prayer a major element of your life. 

And those are some tests because if I just say in general, “How’s your spiritual fitness?” You might say, “Well, okay, I’m not sure or great.” But you need to have some actual ways of probing a little bit more to see how you’re doing and if you see at least in some of these areas, signs that you’re not so healthy, then you need to keep on developing your spiritual fitness and who of us could say I’ve got it made and I’m perfectly and fully there in every one of these questions. No, we need to keep relying on God. He gives us more grace; He calls us to draw nearer to God and resist the devil and then to keep on pursuing spiritual fitness. So, these are some of the tests that we need to be aware of and I just urge you, before we go any further in the course, to ask yourself, how’s my spiritual fitness? How am I doing? 

And then we do need to think about training. When you have a new heart, when you’ve got some sense of how you’re doing in your spiritual fitness you do need to train. If you think not, well just ask yourself these questions, “Can athletes succeed in sports without exercise and practice? Can a quarterback for a perfect spiral or a point guard fire a perfect pass or a perfect shot without ever having practiced or learning the proper techniques? Never. Can soldiers succeed in warfare without any drills and training?” Wouldn’t that be sad sending people out on the field of battle when they’ve never even learned to use their weapons, when they never even learned the likely tactics that the enemy is going to use? They’ll be mowed down in no time. “Can workers succeed in their careers without studying or learning any skills?” They just show up for work and say, “Here I am. Aren’t I wonderful? What do you want me to do?” Well, you got to learn, you got to have the training necessary to succeed and the Apostle Paul uses all of these pictures for how we develop in the Christian life. He says that athletes go into strict training. He says the soldiers are those who follow discipline and follow orders and don’t just get tied up in civilian life. He says that a successful farmer is the one who works hard. So, he’s speaking of athletes and soldiers and workers and all of those are pointing to the fact that we need discipline. Can a disciple succeed in godliness without spiritual disciplines? 

Donald Whitney says, “The spiritual disciplines are the God given means that we are to use in the spirit filled pursuit of godliness. I’ve never known a man or woman who came to spiritual maturity except through discipline.” So, there are various practices that people have learned from the scriptures and throughout church history that are God’s ways to pursue godliness and to become more like Jesus as we rely on the Holy Spirit. And if it is, “I don’t need any of that.” Well, this is what Donald Whitney says and he’s right, “I’ve never known anybody who came to spiritual maturity who didn’t practice discipline. Spiritual Fitness begins with a heart, but it doesn’t just stop there. It pursues, it matures and grows and develops through disciplines as the Holy Spirit’s working in us.

And the disciplines might take a different shape for different people. For example, kind of training and even the discipline you need to win the marathon is different than the kind of discipline and training that you might need to be a successful player in the National Football League. Now, both of the pictures that I just shown are very disciplined and, in a sense, very fit. But this great lineman could never run a marathon. And that marathon runner could never play the National Football League. Each one needs to train in a way that’s appropriate for the thing they’re hoping to accomplish. 

In our Christian life, there are some things that we need to do in common. We all need Bible intake. We all need prayer. But some of us may need a little different kind of training. For instance, someone who tends to just go through life without thinking very much about it may need to journal and carefully think and ponder what’s happening in their life and then write it down. Somebody else already thinks too much about how they’re doing and sometimes they get too down on themselves, because they’re so introspective. And for them, maybe journaling would be too much of a good thing. And so, there are some practices that one person might need, that another person might leave aside and pursue other kinds of spiritual disciplines. Or there might be a discipline that everybody needs about that in a particular situation I need more. Take for instance, Bible intake. Every Christian needs that but I need it more than most people because I’m called to be a teacher of others, and even a teacher of the teachers of others. And so, I got to immerse myself in the Bible, I need those disciplines to an even greater degree than many people with a little different calling in the Christian life. 

So, realize how much you need disciplines, and the purpose of those disciplines is to train yourself for godliness. Godliness is a value in every way as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. In a sense, this verse really focuses everything that we want to say about spiritual disciplines and the whole purpose of it. You’re training yourself to be godly and that godliness is valuable for you in this life, because it helps you to grow in many ways, and also for the life to come. 

Now, what’s this growth in godliness involved? Well, it means growing closer to the Lord Jesus Christ and experience. You sense His nearness, you’re drawing more and more close to Him, and His Holy Spirit is in you doing things in you, and so you sense more and more of His life in you, His thoughts coming into your thoughts. The Bible says the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace and other virtues. Well, this love for God and this love for Christ the Holy Spirit gives draws you closer to God. You have joy. The Bible speaks of joy unspeakable and full glory. You have peace, the peace that surpasses understanding, and more and more of these elements of your life and in your heart are because you’re experiencing God, you’re experiencing Christ. And when you want to grow in godliness, the purpose of spiritual disciplines is to help you experience more of Christ, to get closer to Him, to draw nearer to God. And not only then to draw closer to Christ into God, and the Bible puts him become partakers of the divine nature to live in fellowship with God, but then also to grow like Christ in your character, not just in your experience and relationship but then also in who you are. The Bible speaks of Christ being formed in you. Christ dwelling in your heart and then becoming shaped more and more like Him and who you are in the way you behave. And the way you treat others and the way you forgive others. And spiritual disciplines are all to help you become more like Christ and that is something to do for the sake of doing. Oh, I got to get up the morning pick up your Bible read it that’s not just to read the Bible. You can check something off on your list is to get closer to Jesus and become more like Him in who you are. 

And the third area not only experiencing more of God and being shaped more like God and like His Son, Jesus Christ, but then also growing like Christ and the impact you have. Because Christ was anointed with the Holy Spirit. He had tremendous power from God. And he said that those who believe in Me will do even greater things than these. Think of it. Jesus said that His followers, those who would come after him would accomplish even greater things in eternal impact by the power of the Holy Spirit. And the purpose of spiritual disciplines is to power up, to become stronger in the gifts you have to seek more and more of a spirit’s anointing and power in your life so that you can accomplish the mission, the purpose to which Christ calls you. What a glorious thing that is to grow in godliness, and to train yourself for it so that you’re more like Jesus so that you’re getting closer to Jesus and so that His power and His anointing and His impact is upon you. And that’s inspiring. It’s exciting. 

But let’s go back to where we started. Sometimes we think about spiritual fitness because we’re not very fit. There’s fights and quarrels. Our desires are misguided. Our finances are a wreck, and we can trace it back in some cases to the fact that we’re pretty far from God, and pretty much getting tugged around by the devil. But remember what the scripture says after describing all that mess, it says, “But he gives more grace, and by His grace, resist the devil. He’ll flee from you. Come near to God, and He will come near to you.”