Spiritual Warm-Up
Posted by nathan on 12 Jul 2007 | Tagged as: my life., thoughts on god.
Last night I went for a run, and it was a hard one. I felt horrid. Possibly the worst I’ve felt in my six weeks of running.
You know what is really striking about that? The first five minutes, I felt the best I’ve felt in the past six weeks.
I only ran four miles, but I stopped about six times for a breather and to stretch my legs. My legs were very sore and were very tight. Needless to say, I had a lot of time to think about why my legs were so sore.
I finally came to the conclusion I need to stretch more often than just before I run. I run several times a week, so it isn’t that I just need to run more often–there was something else affecting my ability to run last night. I need to properly warm-up and stretch.
That conclusion got me thinking about my spiritual life. Is it possible we need to do a spiritual warm-up prior to digging into deep things of God? Are there times when we aren’t getting something simple, but find ourselves too stubborn to just do the simple (and, we assume, boring) things in favor of the deeper, more ‘glamorous’ spiritual things?
Do we tend to skip over praising and worshiping God and go right to asking God to give us what we want? Is my spiritual life all about me, or is it about God?
Do you ever find yourself having a hard time doing the simple things, even though you know you need to do it, but you’d just assume do the things you want to do?
3 Comments »
on 12 Jul 2007 at 10:15 am 1.
mike said …
Keep running, bro! Are you training for a race?
on 12 Jul 2007 at 10:26 am 2.
nathan said …
Yeah, i’m running my first 5K in EIGHT years on July 27. I’m hoping to not get my personal worst…
on 13 Jul 2007 at 2:15 am 3.
Tara Lilly said …
To me, this is the best reason for a great praise and worship time before the message at church. It’s like stretching, getting fired up, ready to receive. When I focus and get with God, the Word connects and I know I’ve been fed. I’ve noticed when I’m distracted during worship and don’t prepare my heart, it’s harder to stay focused during the sermon and I can’t seem to grasp what God has for me with the same intensity. Great observations Nathan!