So l
ast night I went on a run, 4.03 miles… It was pretty incredible, when I was done with the run, my legs were tight, but from a cardio perspective, I could have kept going. This was super encouraging to me. It was almost the runner’s high I have heard about. Meaning, I was excited that I was in shape enough to go 4 miles on just under a 10 minute mile pace.
Sometimes I have my headphones in and I listen to worship music, sometimes I just talk to God, I ALWAYS pray. This has been an incredible way for me to connect with Jesus. Sometimes my prayers are completely self-focused, sometimes they are directed on behalf of someone else. If you look at the routes I run on Facebook, you will know if I have prayed over your house or business. It has been fun for me to do and very grounding.
My friend, Darin Gemmer pointed out yesterday that intention is very important, and I agree. Exercise by itself is not worship. Exercise when done to connect with your creator, to care for his creation and to put a prayer cover over those you serve is. I have been approached about participating in runs, which sounds great, but for now, the point of exercise for me is the connection to the creator, and when that gets superseded by training for a run, my heart of worship diminishes as well.
TMI here? In august I weighed in at 218 pounds, more than I have ever weighed in my life. I am now down to 207 lbs.
I have a goal to get down to 190lbs, I picked the number out as a “big hairy audacious goal”, one that I didn’t think I could accomplish. I picked that for a reason. I am looking for people who believe I can reach a weight I haven’t weighed since my freshman year of college and will tell me that they believe that by pledging money that would go to help a needy teenager get to Young Life camp from the Olympic Peninsula. The goal on the weight loss is $2000 to help kids get to camp. So far I have $20 pledged.
The only thing that I can do to accomplish the goal is exercise. There is no extreme dieting, there is no weight loss tricks just hard work. Pledging will be on the honor system. If you pledge you follow through, I won’t hound you. Please le me know you are pledging either through the blog, or email for FB message. It just creates a bigger reason for me to get healthy.
So at Church on Sunday ( http://www.ptfbc.org ), Skip, our pastor challenged us to think about how what we do is an act of worship. It was in conjunction with Earth Day, but it is bigger than that. The idea that the decisions that you make can be an act of worship to the Creator of the Universe. I love the idea, so I wanted to put my list together.
- Whenever possible we buy organic in order to not put toxins in the bodies of our children or ourselves.
- We recycle, it is a pain, because our local trash pickup doesn’t pick up the amount of recycling that we produce, so I have to store it and bring a HUGE load down to the Fort. It is inconvenient and blows all over the yard, but because God created each one of us AND the natural world, and in Genesis 1:28 gave us dominion over the natural world, which as far as I am concerned is God-Ordained responsibility to take care of it.
- We cook and bake from scratch. It is a lot easier to run to Safeway and buy a cake for a birthday party, but when you control the ingredients, you control the cake. This one is a little more complex. I already mentioned the idea that we want to take care of our bodies, but we also want to control the amount of processed food, we also want to reduce the distance something is shipped to me. I can buy flour that was made here in Washington, thus reducing the distance the flour was shipped to me.
- We buy organic, shade grown, fair trade coffee. When I drink my coffee in the morning, I love knowing that I am supporting family operations around the world often propping up the plight of woman and children in the developing world.
- We fix things. I am not super handy, nor ever have been, but whenever possible we fix things, rather than going and buying something new, we are also thoughtful about what we buy, so we don’t get stuff that will break on us and end up in a landfill.
- We bring our clothes to the local thrift store, so our lightly used clothing will stay in our community AND that is also a source of clothes for us as well. It is weird to think that the clothes you take for a donation, get shipped off to processing plant and then get distributed to each community that would purchase it. So if I bring professional attire to the thrift store, then I want someone in my community to get them, not because my community is better, but because of my intent. I would to love my neighbors as I have been loved.
- We go without. In a world where you need it now, and waiting is a weird though, we ask ourselves, do we need whatever our want is telling us? I think about Jacob in the Old Testament who had to wait 7 years for his bride Rebecca, but instead got his bride Leah, and then had to wait 7 more for Rebecca. Patience, reduces the amount you consume and develops incredible spiritual discipline.
- We exercise. It is sort of a weird act of worship, but obesity is not of the Lord and frankly, this is an area where I am convicted and fall victim. When I am active, I hear the Lord. When I don’t his voice is quieter.
- We put our value on people and not things. This is also a difficult one, because things make our life comfortable, but people are who Jesus challenged us to care for. When Jesus says, whatever you did for the least of these you did for me “rings” in my ears.
These are just a few, I could keep going, but that isn’t super bloggable. How is what you do an act of worship? Please share.
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