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10/22/2008

Thoughts

What is your physical condition? Have you been to the gym lately? How many push-ups or sit-ups can you do?

When I was a kid I was a string bean. I could hide behind a street lamp to keep from getting threatened by the big kids. In those days schools had a physical education program that was headed up by Arnold Schwarzinager and there were national guidelines written for the minimum physical activities every student should be able to accomplish in appropriate grades. I just barely passed in the 8th grade. As I was going through the tests on the playground, kids were lapping me on the track, on the monkey bars, everywhere, but I finished and got the badge of National Recognition that I could do the minimum physical requirements as a young American citizen.

I now have children and they do not have the same national physical requirements placed upon them. As a matter of fact some of them are disabled and they live with a whole different set of expectations. Having these 'thorns in the flesh' do not make them any less of a person and we try to provide the equipment necessary to overcome their hardships. (Hearing aids for the deaf, wheel chairs for the crippled, surgeries for the broken.)

That got me thinking of my spiritual condition. In that span of physical conditioning to consider National P.E. authenticated citizens to quadriplegic, where could I say I matched up in the spiritual. Some tests include: temptation. coveting, jealousy, pride. After some serious consideration I realized I was fairly weak or crippled in a lot of ways. I know that God is certainly more capable than I am as a loving father to provide for all the things to make up for my faults in my spiritual life. What are they? He who has ears let him hear? The dumb will speak and the lame will walk and the blind shall see. That sounds like pretty good apparatus to me.

The next time you are tempted by that nagging of the flesh as this world loves to feed, consider it a time to work-out. The good news is that we will not overcome by our own strength but by the gifts God gives us. Our exercise is to be intimate with him by giving him our feelings, black as they are, ugly as they are, stretch them out to him and agree with him that they are no good and ask him to overcome. Exercise intimacy, experience victory.