“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.” – 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
The second area of life that I realized I need to put Jesus first in is my physical health. I’ve always been a pretty “low maintenance” person – I don’t like having to think much about eating, exercising, etc. – and that worked just fine until I hit my mid-twenties, and my metabolism plummeted. Since then, I’ve bounced around between 180 lbs and 230 lbs, my current weight. None of that is extra muscle; it’s 50 lbs of pure fat.
Again, it would be easy to pursue weight loss for reasons of personal vanity or quality of life, but for me, the prime motivation is that I want Jesus to be first in my life, even in my physical health.
Thus, some changes need to be made in the form of diet and exercise. Here are a few things I’ll be implementing:
- Eating – I am an “eat to live” kind of person, but my problem is that I like the feeling of being “full”. A couple changes I will need to make are: 1) no fast food, unless absolutely necessary; 2) control my appetite, and resist the urge to feel “full”; 3) eat more fruits and vegetables.
- Exercise – I decided to try working out with a kettle bell (hopefully 2-3x per week), since I hear it’s very effective, and doesn’t require me to leave home (also, I broke my exercise bike). I realized long ago that if I need to leave home to exercise, I won’t do it. We’ll see how this goes. Also, I need to spend more time walking, so I got a pedometer I can put in my pocket, and I’ll try to walk at least 5000 steps per day.
I would love to get down to 190-200 lbs, and I think this is totally doable. Even being “low maintenance”, these few changes should produce good results, and hopefully that will keep me healthy so that I can serve God to my fullest capacity.
The first area that I need to put Jesus first in is my personal organization and time management. Those who know me are aware that I am chronically disorganized, forgetful, and I often lose track of things, such as emails, appointments, and tasks that need to be completed. While a certain amount of that can be chalked up to personality traits or mental limitations that I can’t change, some of it is just because I haven’t put in the effort to get better, even though I believe Jesus would expect more faithfulness from me. I need to become more organized, not just because I want to be a better person or have a better life, but because I want Jesus to be first in my life.