Sinful Exercise
11/7/19
How is it that this practice comes to our hearts almost
every day? It is a promise from God that
He will take away our burdens when we lay them down at the cross, and where we
fail this Truth is when we pick them back up and repeat such activity over and
over until our physical bodies are tired and our spirits are basically
nonexistent. It is this action of
exercise that God deems sinful yet we blatantly ignore the concept of what the
cross is for and hold onto the anxieties that we bring to the cross in the
first place. There is no survival in
this process and until we throw those burdens away and leave them there our
lives shall always function in a defeated condition. God did not send His Son to die on the cross
for us to perform sinful exercises in front of it, He sent His Son to heal our
diseases, provide eternal salvation and a holy life with absolute peace
intact. If we do not follow the
instruction of the Word of God it means we do not believe in its Truth. God wants us to change this process and turn
our hearts to Him and to obey His promises.
In a day and age where almost every commercial break
demonstrates how important it is for us to be physically healthy, society
leaves out the more important truth of how our inner lives should be ever
healthier. It seems like there is no end
to such physical grooming and shaping and why would it not end for this
industry racks up trillions of dollars each year in revenue. Some people are now looked down upon or at
least frowned upon if they do not participate in some sort of exercise program
that can be nationally attended. This
concept is not a bad one folks, but when all of the attention is drawn to the
physical there is never time remaining for the spiritual which is exactly what
the world wishes we would thrive within.
There is a huge eternal Truth here that many cease to practice or do not
practice at all and end up sinfully exercising due to the simple fact that we
do not adequately and properly take care of our spiritual lives.
Psalms 55:22
“Cast your burden
upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous
to be moved.”
1 Peter 5:7
“Casting all your
care upon him; for he careth for you.”
This time last year, I was engaged in a rehab program that
was designated to strengthen my heart for I had just come off of triple
bypass surgery. There were no
complications to the surgery and my recovery time went according to plan, in
fact, I returned to word two weeks before my previously arranged return date,
all went well. However, for a while, I
was going through some exercise regimes in my therapy class and as God jogs my
memory I remember one certain exercise that gives us a good picture of what
occurs when we perform these sinful exercises before the cross. I would stand up straight before the mirrored
wall with a lightweight dumbbell in each of my hands. I would then bend forward as far as I could
go down and allow my arms to just hang for a few moments. After a few moments, I would slowly raise back
up to the standing position with the dumbbell and repeat this exercise for
approximately 10 minutes before moving on to the next station. After a few days of completing this exercise,
my therapist would increase the weight of those dumbbells and the task would
become a bit harder. Yes, they were
light but when you approach a therapy session for a specific condition it means
that your body is not in the best shape or condition that it was previously. I did not like exercise programs when I was
young and really do not like them now but I understand their purpose and I
accept them for what they are and how they train our bodies to regroup and to function
again after some sort of lengthy letting it go ceremony.
I know that this example of mine is not the perfect
example that many of us complete while coming to the cross but it is one that
gives us a good picture of what we should not be doing when we stand before the
cross. Do we understand that there is a
specific detail that we must follow while we are standing in front of the
cross? This detail is not one of a
religious ceremonial procedure by any means but one that gives eternal purpose
to what the cross stands for in our lives.
This detail is given in so many Scripture verses throughout the Bible
yet the message that these verses teach us are not obeyed like they
should. When we do not obey them they do
become a religious ceremony and one that means absolutely nothing to God,
Jesus, or the meaning to the cross. It
actually defiles the cross and everything that it stands for, an idol that we
look at and continue on our journey without changing one bit.
In our first passage, we see the truth of what we are
supposed to do when we approach God because it specifically says that we are to
cast our burden upon the Lord. We are
supposed to cast our burdens on the Lord.
The word “cast” here comes from the Hebrew word “haslek” which means
to throw, cast, hurl, fling, throw away, to throw something away. This means that whatever we have with us that
is not good for us we can throw them to the Lord and He will not let us see
those things again. Furthermore, the
word “burden” used here comes from the Hebrew word “yehabeka” which means
burden or lot and refers to that which is given to someone. And the third word
used here, or it is a phrase in this case, “upon the Lord” which many of us
know that the Hebrew word origin here is al Jehovah” and the phrase means upon,
the ground of, according to. Lastly, the
phrase “will sustain you” comes from the Hebrew word “yekalkeleka” and means to
sustain, to support, maintain, measure, or calculate. When you put all of these words and phrases
together you have a statement that gives us a place of refuge and safety
because when you bring in something and leave without it, it is a wonderful
feeling and one that makes us free indeed.
The second passage we have here comes from 1 Peter 5:7
and reaffirms what the first passage tells us.
Peter tells us that it is our responsibility to cast our cares upon Him
(Jesus) for it is not God’s Will that we carry the burdens and anxieties of the
world around with us. Sinful exercises
appear when we come to God and confess our sins before Him which is the eternal
and spiritual practice of dropping our baggage at His feet. Our problem is this: we do go to the cross
and ask for forgiveness, we let loose our burdens while we are on our knees
before Jesus. We look into His eyes and
are refreshed because we have done what we need to do in order to be saved and
restored. However, when we stand back up
and begin to turn away we simultaneously bend over and pick up our bags once
again and take them with us. This is
where the concept of sinful exercise comes into play because we leave in the
same spiritual condition as we arrived, nothing has changed.
The word that this second passage that is important for
this article is the word “care”. “Care”
is the word that the King James Version uses but is translated from the Greek
word “merimnan” which means care, worry, or anxiety. When one stops and thinks about this word and
its meaning for a moment, it becomes clear that these definitive words mean
exactly the same as what is used in the first passage of Scripture when the
Psalmist uses the word “burden”. As in
the first passage, we find that we are commanded to do a specific action which
is to cast our cares (anxieties) upon him.
The ONLY “him” that this verse can be referring to is Jesus because if
the author was referring about any other person then this entire letter would
be considered fraudulent and a fake, not representative of the Truth about God,
His Son, and Holy Spirit. Then, every
other epistle written by this author would also be in question concerning its
authority. Also, we find the exact same
pattern here that we did in the Psalms passage, we leave our problems with
Christ and do not bring them with us when we leave. If we do take them with us we are in
disobedience and therefore accepting sin back into our lives as a willful
practice.
These two verses of Scripture are beautiful
representations of why Jesus came to this earth, lived amongst us, died for our
sins, and rose again. As stated many
times before, every passage in the Word of God points to the fact that we have
an option of surrendering our lives to God and living peacefully and
blameless. When we practice this sinful
exercise program we will eventually bring back to the cross bigger bags and
burdens, it is a guarantee and as long as we continue to live in such a bound manner
those bags will increase exponentially until we will not be able to
single-handedly carry them all at once.
This is not what Jesus died for nor is it what God created us to live
under. In every Scripture that says for
us to carry our burdens to the cross and to lay them or cast them at the feet
of Jesus, NONE of them say for us to pick up those burdens when we are
done. NONE of them! SO why do we continuously perform such
exercise programs?
This action of ours is disobedience to God and we all
know that when we disobey we are committing sin. I understand that this type of disobedience
is not placed into the “normal” category of sin but we need to recognize that
even this description of disobedience represents sin. Furthermore, if we routinely come to the
cross with our baggage, squawk at God and then turn around with baggage in hand
it is called rebellion and the setting and ground within our lives have sinfully
grown. Here is another thought one must
consider when we pick back up the bags we have placed at Jesus’ feet and that
is: when we perform this act we allow ourselves to open doors that the enemy
will use against us sometime in our future.
See, when our bags become bigger and thus heavier it means we have
picked up more things along our journey; more doors. We have no more room to excuse our burdens or
troubles because we have voluntarily picked them back up and went on our merry
way in the same condition that we were when we arrived at the cross. This completes one “rep” of this sinful
exercise. Now, being human I can ask this
question: how many of you will not address a hurtful situation again when you
think about it? Okay, most of us play
that game over and over in our heads until we cannot even sleep at night. Guess what, you have just completed the
second “rep” of this sinful exercise.
These “reps” shall continue until you go back to the cross and LEAVE the
burdens and anxieties there. The same
setting shall repeat itself if you pick up those bags again; just leave them
there. Why? Because Jesus cares for you, this is the 2nd
part of the second passage used here.
But when people do not understand what the cross is or
what price was paid for on that cross gross innuendos and flat out lies can be
administered to our lives. Look at all
of the insults both physical and spiritual that come across our eyes and ears
every day, it is so sad to hear about some of the things that humans have to
endure, all the while knowing that there is a perfect solution to every need,
insult, problem, burden and anxiety that the ruler of the world throws at
you. This horrific condition has now
come to the point where people do not even believe that the cross is a viable
or true answer, so they stay away and do not even bother trying to seek the
Truth. Humanity screams at us that God
is dead and that He does not hear what your heart says and that He does not
care enough to be concerned with someone like you. It is beautiful people like these who fall
for such lies and continue to be dumped on by our enemy, the one that they
follow. This type of repetitious living
will not give you strength, but shall only provide further and deeper pain
until all you can feel is anger toward every aspect of your life and world. Congratulations, with all of this weight that
you are carrying around you, have also voluntarily presented yourself to your
enemy with an enormous amount of doors to make your life even worse. Do you see this pattern in anyone you know or
care about? What about in the daily news
feeds? We are in trouble Church, and we
have fallen down on our command and the results of our dereliction of duty are
unfolding right in front of our eyes.
Good news, Church!
God has called us to separate ourselves from this world and to teach
those who do not know Him the Truth about their lives and their potential
freedom in Him. But in order for us to
complete this command of His to us, we must STOP practicing the title of this
article and allow God to work through our lives as we should be. As long as we continue this exercise
activity, our effectiveness in what we are commissioned to do shall be null and
void and meaningless. Talk about being
an example of a goat and not a sheep.
When we drop all of our cares and worries at the feet of Jesus He
guarantees us peace and freedom from this world, the one item that countless
people seek every day but at the same time evade it because of their lack of
understanding about this promise from God.
Church, we have got to start teaching the Truth about the Word of God
again, we can no longer afford to sit by and believe we have punched our ticket
to Heaven; this belief actually is a sin and a sinful exercise because you go
to the cross every Sunday and sit there without changing one bit. There is still time to begin the work that
Jesus commanded us to do, but we have to stop this sinful exercise program and
show the lost of what true freedom really is and who it comes from.
DLB
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