Purpose Driven Life – Day 39

39 Days Down! Tomorrow to go!

Today’s chapter talks about balance and how to maintain your spiritual health. The simple breakdown given in this chapter is that, “A great commitment to the Great Commandment and the Great Commission will make you a great Christian.” The chapter goes deeper into what this means and how it connects to your spiritual health.

Balance & Check-Ups – The Keys to Maintaining the Two GCs

The main message in this chapter is that to be a great Christian in your new world-class “Christianness” 🙂 is balancing the five purposes we have learned about in this book. How do you stay balanced? Well…:

…you can keep your life balanced and on track by joining a small group for accountability, by regularly evaluating your spiritual health, by recording your progress in a personal journal, and by passing on what you learn to others.

In June, I wrote a blog post “Doing It to Get Him not a him” and this post described one area where I was achieving spiritual growth. Well a friend of mine reached out to me wondering why I was questioning my faith and basically said I should be confident in my relationship with God. I was shocked by his comments, we had recently had some mildly heated religion/spirituality discussions, but I disagreed with him as I felt that he wasn’t understanding what I was trying to get out in my post.

After reading this chapter, I can see that what I was doing in my post was like a public journaling of my spiritual progress as well as a way to check my spiritual health and share with others how they can be encouraged in their situation(s). In reviewing how I was in my faith as well as how I am in my faith as well as where I want to be in my faith, I was assuring that I was balancing the five purposes of my life and avoiding spiritual stagnation. I will say that my friend did have a point about not questioning my faith, I don’t need to question it, but I felt like he was mistaking my reflections as questioning.

The best way to balance the five purposes in your life is to evaluate yourself periodically. God places a high value on the habit of self-evalutation. At least five times in Scripture we are told to test and examine our own spiritual health. The Bible says, “Test yourselves to make sure you are solid in the faith. Don’t drift along taking everything for granted. Give yourselves regular checkups….Test it out. If you fail the test, do something about it [2 Corinthians 13:5 MSG].”

The above passage from the book shares that the Bible calls us to evaluate our spiritual health and our relationship with God. Just like you get your physical, your eyes and teeth checked we are to check our spiritual vital signs 🙂

I should note that when you do your spiritual check ups do not focus on just the good things:

Don’t just write down the pleasant things. As David did, record your doubts, fears, and struggles with God. Our greatest lessons come out of pain, and the Bible says God keeps a record of our tears. Whenever problems occur, remember that God uses them to fulfill all five purposes in your life: Problems forces you to focus on God, draw you closer to others in fellowship, build Christlike character, provide you with a ministry, and give you a testimony. Every problem is purpose-driven.

Looking at the bad and questionable is important too, as this prevents small problems and warnings from becoming large problems and also allows you to figure out a treatment for problems or illness that is present, whether spiritual or natural in nature. Looking at these things also prevents the reoccurrence of problems as you can track symptoms and manage them. That way, when you see the warning signs you know them and can start treatment early, because you previously tracked the good and the bad.

Finally, today’s Question to Consider is, “Which of the four activities will I begin in order to stay on track and balance God’s five purposes for my life.”

For me its easy, I need to work on my personal Bible Study. I go to the mid-week service at my church and I also participate in Sunday School but I don’t take enough personal time at home and I need to do this. I may have to start really slow picking one weekend in the month and increasing from there. I have found that when I try to start doing personal Bible Study, I start too quickly and with too much of an expectation for myself and this discourages me from continuing.

Enjoy your day! Tomorrow is the last day 😦

DNMP

 

Boot Camp Day 5 – “You Won’t Feel Your Arms Tomorrow” & Bread Squats

So today was day 5 and the start of week 2 and boy did the trainer go in on us. At one point, I was doing an exercise and he says, “you won’t feel your arms tomorrow.” I quickly, bittersweetly and definitively said, “I know :(”

Ironically, I said to myself yesterday, “I ate waaaayyy too much bread this weekend. This will definitely be worked off this week in boot camp.” However, I didn’t know that I would squat it all out today!?!?!? Ughhh….Not only did we do short squats as a warm up but we did this other nightmare squat exercise as our cool down, thank the Lord my volleyball coaches did not know this latter exercise existed. Basically, we would do squats for a bit and hold and then go back to more squats!!!! It hurt, a lot, but come the end of the year…I will be singing my trainer’s praises 🙂 This boot camp is really good! I am definitely going to play with my budget to see if I can do this at least 2-3 times a year. Right now I’m envisioning this as a shake up to my normal workout routine and a way to get myself out of workout plateaus.

The surprise moment of today’s workout also happened during the ending squats when I started saying the Hail Mary in Portuguese to get through a set. I’m not even a Catholic Christian nor have I ever been. I only know the words because I did a play this past summer at the Portuguese Language School at Middlebury College where we had to say it. I even remember one of my classmates messing up the lines all the time because she only knew the Hail Mary in Spanish. If you think I’m kidding here it goes….”Santa Maria Mãe de Deus rosai por nos os pecadores…” I’m not into the whole “oh the Holy Mother” thing, I’m more of a straight trinity Christian, but I think this came up based on a mix of calling on God to get through this workout and calling on my route memory to keep me distracted so I could get through this workout 🙂

Well as a reminder I’m boot camping at Total Core Fitness Boot Camp. If you are in the area check them out and no they are not paying me to say this. If you want more one on one training I have personal training contacts in NYC and in Central Jersey; click a link or leave a comment so I can send you their info.

Happy Monday,

DNMP

P.S. – Hope I can feel my arms a bit tomorrow :{

 

Boot Camp: Day 2 – My Arms Are Weaker Than I Thought & Praise and Worship

So what did you accomplish by 7:30am today? Me? I had 5:30am prayer, 6:00am boot camp and 7:00am praise and worship (okay so the latter was unexpected but good :)).

So today’s boot camp workout was focused on cardio but boy did he work our muscles in the process. The crazy thing is that my arms are weaker than I thought. I knew doing boot camp that they would suffer the most in this “kick starting my body again” exercise but wow oh wow its bad. My arms are hurting as I type and my triceps…olvidatelo 😦 I mean I called out Jesus more times in that workout than I think I have in prayer 😦 …I was doing Catholic crosses between exercises, saying “My Lord,” and I even did a rendition of my running powersong “Jesus is My Help.” Beyond that there was one exercise that almost had a merengue type rhythm so I even kept myself going during one set of this exercise by saying “mambo, mambo,” keeping my legs moving in a slow, very slow, merengue rhythm.

So boot camp ends and I get into the car and I have been playing the Israel and New Breed Alive in South Africa CD, great CD by the way, and next thing you know I get in a nice praise and worship in the car. I was boppin and even raised my hands. Have you heard the song “To Worship You I Live”? well the version they do…”yes Lord!”

The part where he goes, “And when you have no words left just go ‘ohh ohh ohh ohhhhh’.” That just hit my spirit in such a way…I could hardly speak…right in my car (Thank the Lord for those unspeakable moments in praise & worship and that it was a red light when it happened today). Probably between the remnants of the 5:30am prayer (Pastor Mary always goes in in an unique and special way) and all that Jesus calling I did in my workout added by the fact that this week is Holy Week (I kept thinking during boot camp that, “this workout is nada compared to the beating and abuse that Jesus got this week and that if He can go through that for me…I can get through this workout for my goals”). [whew…sorry spirit writing pause…its soooo amazing the sacrifices He made for a maybe…but I digress]

Well I will end here…tomorrow is a weight train day at boot camp but I’m worried because my arms are like jello (J-E-L-L-O) now…and will be worse tomorrow (the second day is always worse in soreness land).

Have a great and blessed day!

-DNMP

P.S. – Let’s go Celtics!

P.P.S. – I love how the little smiley man, isn’t he so cute?, fits both parts of my blog’s subtitle i.e. my weak arms & those weak arms in praise and worship 🙂 yay!

 

Boot Camp: Day 1

So today was day 1 of the bootcamp I signed up for (Thanks Groupon!). Let’s just say I had flashbacks (read nightmares) of volleyball pre-season and I don’t know if I will be able to move my arms tomorrow :{ However, it was a good workout and I know the trainer will have me working muscles I don’t really ever work, like my now suffering arms. I mean let’s just say that when I choose to run over an exercise…it’s hard!

If you are in Central Jersey check um out! Total Core Fitness Boot Camp. The head trainer says he has not repeated a workout in four years.

My favorite funny moment so far was actually from orientation yesterday. We had to do a plank for 30 seconds and I started singing the Spelman Hymn. Why? Because when I was in high school, when we [the volleyball team] would do wall sits we would have to sing our alma mater and do a cheer and basically we were done when our class was called during the cheer (let’s just say senior year was hard, lol). Well since I don’t remember the words as well to my high school alma mater I started singing the Spelman hymn. Crazy or not, singing a song with these types of things is actually quite helpful as it allows your mind to focus on something else besides the pain 🙂

Anyway, I can’t wait to see my results in four weeks 🙂 as this is the shake up to my workout that I was looking for (My 10 year high school reunion is in November & Homecoming is a month before that).

Tomorrow is a cardio day…yay :{ …please pray for me.