Exercise

Exercise is necessary for your body. If you want your body to be functioning at its best, you need to be working it. Exercise helps you in so many ways - it staves off depression and anxiety, it helps you sleep, it reduces stress, and SO many more things!

If physical exercise is SO important for your body, shouldn't we also focus on spiritual exercise? Shouldn't we allow our faith to be tested and questioned so that we have to dig for an answer in order to grow our faith? How many times do we wish that a trial or a temptation would go away faster instead of wanting to find the lesson from God through that trial? Doesn't He promise that He will always be with us - that He will always provide a way of escape? Why don't we trust Him in that? What is it about that that makes us question?

Does it work the same way as physical exercise? Do we think that we're doing okay where we are, so we don't need more? We don't need to learn through the trials because we grew up in church so we know everything there is to know.

Sometimes I feel that growing up in the church was a disadvantage for me. Sometimes I see others who got saved later in life and they are SO on fire and they work to learn through struggles and trials, and then I have a hard time. I wonder sometimes if it would have been different if I had become saved later on. Then I realize that is stupid. By growing up in the home environment I did, I was saved from SO MANY bad decisions that I could have made growing up. It is amazing to know this. God loved me enough to save me early on in life, and yet God loved others enough to allow them to struggle. We are all different in our lives - we all need certain circumstances to reach others for Christ.

God in all His infinite wisdom knew that and planned it that way, so I need to get out of my rut and allow Him to teach me through trials.

I am Israel.

You know how in church we read those stories about how Israel would make these promises to God only to turn around and not follow through with those promises? I remember sitting in Sunday School growing up thinking that they had to have been stupid or something. I mean, how can you be that stupid so many times? Do you not remember all of the previous exiles? Seriously, come on! Well, that's been me for a long time.

Okay, well, I'll admit, I've been that stupid so many times. I can't even begin to describe how awakening this weekend was. Seriously. In church the past few weeks, we've been talking about how to get more from your meditation on God's Word. It has been a great study, and my pastor has been really challenging us with looking into this for ourselves. Then, it hits me. I've been making so many promises to God about how I'm going to change this or I'm going to change that, and then I turn around and forget to change...or is it that I just don't want to?

That's something I've been pondering for a little while now. Am I refusing to change? Or am I just that forgetful? I've never been known to be forgetful - I didn't inherit that gene from my family tree (one of the few things I didn't inherit, by the way).

Also, as I've been thinking about this, I'm wondering if it is just me or if it is also others. Isn't consistency something that a lot of people struggle with? Why else would so many people talk about the importance of consistency?

I began this year with the goal of reading through the Bible by December 31st. That is still my goal, even though I'm currently not much farther than I was at the beginning of the summer. I will finish this. I will work hard these next couple months and catch up and finish strong, even though I wavered in the middle. I will make more of an effort next year to not resemble Israel as much as I have been. I will determine to resemble Christ more and more.