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

Ryan Sim - March 24, 2014

Monday - A New Idea - Reset Society

Hi. Welcome to Redeem the Commute. I’m Ryan, your host for the daily challenges. We’re in the middle of a series right now called Reset, where we look at how following Jesus resets our thinking about various topics in life. This week we’re thinking about how Jesus resets our view of society’s divisions. The daily challenges are meant to help us explore what it means to follow Jesus, even in the midst of a busy commuting lifestyle. We have a rhythm that we follow each week to help us explore our topic. We introduce the idea on Monday, then Tuesday’s we study it in the Bible. Wednesday’s we try to let the Bible’s teaching sink in, and change and transform our thinking. Thursday’s we try to act out what we’ve been learning. Friday’s a day for prayer and reflection, and then Saturday’s a day for rest. Sunday is a day for community, because even when we are scattered and busy, it is important that we come together as one community to explore Jesus and what it means to follow him in one place. That’s why this Fall we’re planning to launch a new worshiping community in Ajax called Redeemer Church. Stay tuned for more information. Shortly after moving to GTA, my wife and I had dinner with some new friends. We had just moved from a small community in eastern Ontario, a mostly monocultural community where a handful of people had been to university. We found ourselves at dinner with two people from South Asia, one from Finland, and one from east Asia. 3 of the 4 had PhD’s and the fourth had an MBA. After dinner we realized we really had arrived in the most multicultural city in the world – meeting men and women from every continent, of every class and education. Ajax is this in microcosm. Ajax has the highest number of culturally visible population; 32,005 residents or 36%. Also, 17,055 who speak another mother tongue. We may be used to such diversity here, but think big picture. We have a daily experience that would have required a lifetime of travel just 100 years ago. Whether we were born here or moved here, we encounter people who look different, sound different, have different traditions and cultures than ourselves every single day, and may not even notice. Sure, it’s not all harmony. There are divisions here and elsewhere in the GTA, but by and large in Canada there is little tolerance for discrimination based on race, gender and social class. It still happens, but when it comes to light, most Canadians react with disgust. It hasn’t always been this way, and isn’t this way everywhere in Canada or in the world. Just look at the divisions in Ukraine between those who identify with Russia, those who identify with Ukraine. Examples abound like this one. North American history was quite different just decades ago – with segregated schools, buses, and not long before, slavery. Add in gender, class discrimination around the world, in our recent history, and still today in Canada, and we can see there are many divisions in our world. What does a follower of Jesus do with these divisions? Is Christian just one of those divisions? To be Christian, do we say we are nothing else? Does becoming a Christian mean every culture that doesn’t have a long Christian history is suspect? Some missionary efforts have indeed gone this way – bringing western culture with Christian faith as one package with no distinction, to which others must conform. That’s been terribly damaging, and doesn’t even take seriously Christianity’s history as a global and multicultural phenomenon. Question: When you picture a Christian, what kind of person comes to mind? Do they have a certain ethnicity, social class or gender? What experiences led to that?

From Series: "Reset"

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.

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