Excercises

by Pastor Don Ray

New Years confession: I don’t exercise enough.

So the other day, my wife and I talked with each other about why we’d like to exercise more frequently. We weren’t baking up pie-in-the-sky plans to become Olympic athletes, but rather, we were trying to discern and unpack some primary reasons and motivations for exercising.

Exercising Prayerfully

We quickly identified a number of factors: from being good stewards of the bodies God has given us, which are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19); to potentially prolonging our life and thus our ability to love and serve each other, our children, church, and community; to maximizing our monthly investment in our gym membership; and more.

The hope is that clearly understanding why we are wise to stay active can help us be more focused and stick with an exercise regimen more regularly and joyfully. In this case: it’s not just about jogging on a treadmill or lifting weights, it’s about being good Christian stewards and energetic servants of the people God entrusts to our care.

Prayerful Exercises

Last summer and fall, we as the Body of Christ at Faith prayerfully discerned the core values we believe are important to God and therefore also important to us. Based firmly on the Word of God, we identified Sacramental Worship, Intergenerational Life Together, Disciple-Making, and Vocational Service as the most important values.

These core values are the foundational reasons and explanations for why we do what we do as God’s people. Among other things, they help communicate what is most important, they help our leaders discern and clarify important decisions, and they inspire people to action.

Getting to the Core

For the first six weeks of this New Year, we will come together in worship and adult Bible classes for Faith’s first annual study of our core values.