Spiritual Fitness

Spiritual fitness can best be defined by the health of our faith. When we talk about having a strong or healthy faith, it has to do with the degree to which our faith has taken root and directs each area of our health or life. 

Our health is a combination of several areas: physical, emotional, mental, professional, social or relational, and spiritual. Each of those is distinct, but all of them overlap and influence the other. As followers of Jesus, our faith should inform and influence every area of our lives. Developing a strong faith allows us to move closer to the ultimate goal Jesus laid out for us in the greatest commandment: loving God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength and loving our neighbor as ourselves. 

The question we need to ask ourselves is how can we build a stronger faith? How can we strengthen the one thing that caused Jesus to express amazement during his time in ministry? 

He never congratulated people for their wisdom, financial success, or amount of influence. He never celebrated nor criticized his disciple’s works or efforts. The only thing that caught Jesus’ attention was faith. He routinely asked the disciples, “Where is your faith?” When he interacted with individuals, he would call out and celebrate their faith and nothing else. 

Faith is the only way to follow and please Jesus. We have to believe He is who He says He is and that applying our faith in Him is truly the best way to approach each and every area of our life. Our ability to do that is how we measure our level of spiritual fitness. 

The good thing is that we don’t have to try to build our faith on our own. We don’t build spiritual strength through our own efforts or discipline. Faith is a gift that is given to us by God and something Jesus promises to bring to completion. 

What this means is that the development and strengthening of our faith is not up to us alone but a process in which we partner with God. He promises us that he has our best interest at heart. He promises to finish the work he began in us when we first knew him. Jesus Himself promised that it would be better for us to live in the presence of the Holy Spirit than for Him to remain on earth.

All of this is to say that we can trust God’s involvement in developing and deepening our faith. What he wants for us is far better for us than anything we can imagine or do for ourselves. The tricky part is that we often don’t understand how God is at work. We end up resisting Him or delaying our obedience because of this confusion. 

We can find some clarity in the area of physical fitness. God has designed our bodies to respond to certain principles and practices in order to build muscle, lose weight, and improve our overall fitness level. Like the rest of creation, our physical body is meant to point us to Jesus. God uses the same methods as professional coaches to build our faith and spiritually strengthen us. When we better understand how and why God works in our lives to help us grow, we can stop resisting his efforts and better cooperate with the Holy Spirit. 

Principles like progressive overload, variation, specificity, and time under tension may seem foreign but are easy to understand and apply to our spiritual well-being. God is already at work. I believe that the Holy Spirit is having an ongoing conversation with each and every one of us; it falls on us to pay attention and respond. When we have a better idea of how God works, we can respond in faith that goes far beyond blind trust. We act knowing that what is happening in our lives is not random or without purpose. God is in control and can use everything for the purpose of bringing to completion that work he first began. It may not be easy or comfortable; growth rarely is, but it will be good, and we will emerge stronger on the other side.