Hi. Welcome to Redeem the Commute. I’m Ryan, your host for the daily challenge. Today is Thursday, so it’s the day we try to apply and live out what we’ve been learning all week. We’ve been looking this week at how followers of Jesus are meant to treat their bodies as a temple for the Holy Spirit. As something that doesn’t belong to us, but that belongs to God. That is something that God uses to have a physical presence here on earth. That’s how we’re meant to see our bodies. It’s a wholly new way of seeing our bodies because up until we became followers of Jesus, we were probably tempted to see our bodies as our own. As something that nobody had any businesses influencing how we use but us.
But Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, makes it clear that our bodies are not our own. They were bought at a price. The price was Jesus’ blood shed on the cross, so we want to take our bodies really seriously because they were bought at a very high price. The price of God coming to earth as one of us. Taking on a body of his own and then sacrificing it for us and our bodies.
When we do take what God has given us, our bodies bought at a price, and we abuse them. When we over indulge, when we over consume or we have too little activity in our lives, when we abuse ourselves, that has very serious affects on our body. We know that when we over indulge, when we eat too much, we immediately don’t feel good. But then there are long terms effects as well. When we do that as a regular pattern, it leads to diabetes, to obesity, to all sorts of physical health concerns that have a real impact. Not just on our physical bodies, but on our emotional and spiritual health as well.
Drug and alcohol abuse have a physical toll on our body, yes, but also a spiritual and emotional toll as well. It clouds our minds. It clouds our judgment. It clouds our ability to focus and rely on God for our stability, our hope, our contentment in life. We very quickly learn to depend on a substance for our meaning in life, and it takes over and becomes our God.
The Corinthians attitude was that anything goes. Basically, as long as it feels good do it. We might add today in our culture as long as it doesn’t hurt somebody else, it’s fine, but that whole attitude, whether it’s the Corinthian 1 or Western 1 today needs to be countered. One way to counter it is by intentionally limiting our consumption in this world. In a world that tells us we can and should have everything with no limits, what we can do as followers of Jesus is actually put limits on our consumption.
One way Christians have long done this is by fasting. By intentionally setting aside periods of time, like one that’s coming up, lent. 40 days before Easter, minus some Sundays, was the traditional time that Christians intentionally limited their consumption. People do it in traits way today by “Oh, I’m not going to eat chocolate.” Or, “I’m not going to drink coffee.” But in a larger sense, Christians were meant to actually refrain from eating. From eating during the day or from eating certain foods. Christians were intentionally limiting themselves and it had not just a physical impact on their bodies, but a very real and spiritual impact.
When Christians fast, they identify with those around the world who don’t have food to eat. Who don’t choose not to eat. They simply have nothing to eat. It’s not a choice at all for them, and so the Christians can intentionally choose to identify with them and understand a bit better what’s going on in the life of somebody with too little food to eat.
Fasting also has a very real spiritual impact in that it reminds us that we are not our own. That our food is not something we’ve earned, something we’ve created, but rather something that God has put on this earth through powers completely outside human control. God has made food available to us in this earth. He makes the sun shine and the rain fall. Willingly breaking our daily, weekly routine of consumption can remind us of what it’s like not to have God, and to remind us that the rest of our lives are completely reliant on God whether we realize it at the time or not.
It’s often in fasting that people find their ultimate strength is truly in God. They find they’re able to worship God in a new way because they are focused solely on him. The emptiness in their stomach quickly gives way to reminding them of the emptiness that would be in their lives without God. It’s a great way to focus your thoughts on God and to recognize his place in your life, and I encourage you to do it. It’s actually going to be our challenge for you this week. To set aside some time this week to fast. That might look like skipping a meal or it might look like skipping something else you find yourself over dependent on in this life. You find you’re watching too much TV and it’s preventing you from having some physical exercise in your life, then fast one night a week from television and do something physical instead.
If you’ve been finding you’re overly reliant on something like alcohol or caffeine or some other substance, then take a break from it. Find a way to break that cycle of dependence and learn to depend on God instead. If it’s something that’s truly awful for you, like dependence of a substance overly dependence on alcohol or a drug, then break that cycle completely and get some help doing that. You won’t be able to break it just by taking a day off. But if it’s something like caffeine or an occasional drink that you want to take a break from, then take a break to remind yourself of your dependence on God. Then moving forward, maybe, continue to enjoy what God’s created, but not as the center of your life. Not as the source of hope and contentment, but rather as just one thing to enjoy that God happens to have created in this world among many.
Challnge: Try fasting. Not just once, but try to make it a regular thing in your life by skipping a meal once a week or once a month, or think ahead to when lent starts. I’ll remind you in these challenges of that, but think ahead to when lent starts and what you’re going to do during those 40 days before Easter to focus yourself more on God and his provision for you, and his having bought your body with a price. The price being his own body dying on a cross and how you’re going to honor that, rather than using your body to pursue all sorts of things in this world as if they were God himself.
So we’re going to fast to focus on God as our ultimate source of contentment, of nourishment, of everything we need in this life. Here is your challenge: What do you find yourself depending on, more than is healthy? Take a fast from it, and use that opportunity to think “Big Picture,” about physical changes that are going to help you grow on dependence and Christ alone.
Have a great day putting that into practice. Might to be today that you do it, but it might be today you decide when and how you’re going to do it. Maybe discuss that with your friends from the train or bus or from work or from home. Discuss together how you’re going to do that and how you’re going to support and encourage one another when it gets hard. Have a great one. I’ll see you tomorrow as we pray and reflect about this. Bye for now.
Read the Bible in Sync Today
Loading Content...
Share a Link to this Message
The link has been copied to your clipboard; paste it anywhere you would like to share it.
Hi welcome to redeem the commute, I’m Ryan your host of the daily challenges. Today’s Tuesday is the day we explore in the Bible our topic for the week and this week we’ve been talking about how following Jesus resets our views of compassion and service to others. We saw yesterday how people can show compassion for a lot of wrong reasons. They can be doing it to increase their profile and image. They can be doing it just to get volunteer hours. They can be doing it to somehow earn a reward from God or good karma. Whatever it might be, these are selfish reasons to do something that would otherwise have been selfless. A true act of compassion is something selfless and sacrificing. When we gain from that it ceases to really be compassionate and is actually about showing compassion to ourselves.
We’re finding ways to serve ourselves by serving others. Followers of Jesus aren’t meant to benefit themselves from serving and caring for others, are they supposed to do it and if so why? There was an article I saw making the rounds on Facebook a couple weeks ago from the Onion a satirical news source. The article was headlined Local Church full of Brainwashed Idiots Feeds Town Poor Every Week. Sources confirmed today that the brainwashed morons at First Baptist Assembly of Christ all of whom blindly accept whatever simplistic fairytales are fed to them volunteer each Wednesday night to provide meals to impoverished members of the community.
“Unfortunately there are a lot of people in town who have fallen on hard times and are unable to afford to put food on the table so we try to help out as best we can.” said 48-year-old Kerri Bellamy, one of the mindless sheep who adheres to a backward ideology and is incapable of thinking for herself, while spooning out homemade shepherd’s pie to a line of poor and homeless individuals. At press time, the brainless, unthinking lemmings had donated winter clothing they no longer wore to several needy families and still hadn’t opened their eyes to reality.
Well the Onion is a source of satirical news but as satire works it always reveals something that’s somewhat true. Here we have an article that actually does a really good job of pointing out that those who appose Christianity for whatever intellectual reasons they might have can often do it without much compassion. I have a hard time wrestling with the fact that those who they think believe something untrue find that it drives them to great acts of service and compassion for others. A whole concept of modern hospitals has arisen from the church. Many schools have their origin in the Christian church.
We can go through many of the ways that our society particularly western society cares for the poor and needy and although it’s managed by our government today or it’s managed by a nonprofit organizations without explicit Christian connections very often the very notion of serving the poor and needy in our culture has come from Christian faith. It’s easy for opponents of Christianity to attack a few easy targets especially distant ones like crusades hundreds of years ago or religious persecution that may happened in places far away around the world. In reality there are millions of Christians every day simply serving the poor and needy in their community, giving up high paying jobs to go and work for a nonprofit.
Flying halfway around the world to help build homes and schools, the list could go on but there is something to Christian faith that has driven people to acts of service and compassion even when there is nothing in it for them. This isn’t a new thing either, hundreds, thousands of years ago we can find Christians serving others even at their own expense. In some of the earliest days of the Christian church there was a plague that hit Rome and one early historian and Christian bishop Eusebius wrote the following about how the Christians acted in that community. “All day long, some of them, (the Christians) tended to the dying and their burial; countless numbers with no one to care for them. Others gathered together from all parts of the city a multitude of those withered from famine and distributed bread to them all.”
You can see how even in its earliest days followers of Jesus were those who stayed when others fled. In those days if you could flee the city during hardship whether it was a famine or a plague or otherwise, you could get out of the city and fend for yourself you did. If you had the resources to do that you took advantage, yet it seems to have been the Christians who were remarkable for having stayed behind to care for those who were sick even if it meant they were going to become sick themselves. Why would people be so sacrificial? What model had they seen? What motivation did they have? Well, I think we can find it in the words of Jesus.
Here’s what Jesus said, “For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me.” Then the righteous will answer him saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you or naked and clothed you? When did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?” The king will answer them, “Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”
What Jesus has done in that teaching is he’s reset our view of ourselves and others. Imagine if a plague hit our community, others would suddenly become a risk to our health and well being. Think back to when [inaudible 00:06:19] happened, suddenly we started to see each other differently. Others were potential risks, they might get us sick, they might kill us. People stayed home, they got out of town if they could. I remember traveling during that time and people being afraid of me because I was Canadian.
It was a time when humans became a risk and that’s a time for followers of Jesus to overcome that risk and to say you know what we still need to serve one another. Be careful, take the necessary precautions but we’ll do what we need to do. At the time I was a volunteer paramedic and I remember the fear that struck many of us and yet we felt we still needed to do our jobs. Followers of Jesus are meant to be the same. We’re meant to continue doing our jobs of serving others as if they are Jesus Christ himself simply because it’s what followers of Jesus do even when it’s a great risk to ourselves, even when it’s a sacrifice, even when it calls for us to give more then we think we can handle. What Jesus has done is he’s reset our view of ourselves and others. Others have shifted from being risks to opportunities.
We shifted from being victims to being potential hands and feet of Jesus serving others whom he loves as well. I’ve got a question for you to think about today.
Question: Who are you afraid to help? Who do you think is a risky person to help? How does following Jesus transform them from a risk to an opportunity to serve in Christ’s name?
I hope you share this discussion with somebody else you know, somebody from the train or the bus from work or from your neighborhood, just somebody you know who can watch the videos on the same days as you and whenever you’re together you can discuss.
We’ve got a growing network of these small groups and please let me know if you’re discussing these challenges regularly with others, I’d love to hear about your group and what you’ve been discussing. Have a great one, I’ll see you tomorrow and don’t forget we’re reading the Bible in sync as community as well. See our website or app to see today’s Bible reading, bye for now.
When our computers get bogged down and unmanageable, we know to hit a reset button to simply start over. Wouldn't a reset button be great in life? We know it would be complicated, with all our responsibilities and routines to consider, but imagine the freedom and refreshment of a new start in life! What would you do differently? What would you pay more attention to, and what would you ignore? How would you avoid getting bogged down and broken again?
The great news is, in coming to earth as Jesus Christ, God has begun to "reset" our universe, our world, and even us. We're invited to start over with him, in what he calls his kingdom. We're invited to start a new life with a clean slate.
What gets wiped clean, and lived differently, when God resets our lives? We'll explore how God resets these key areas of our lives:
Reset: Goals
Reset: Time
Reset: Money
Reset: Work
Reset: Body & Food
Reset: Sex & Marriage
Reset: Family
Reset: Compassion
Reset: Nature
Reset: Society
Reset: Death
Join us for the next several weeks, and invite God to reset your life.
