ChristFit North Devotional – 6/23/2013

By Jordan Robison

“And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him…Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward.  It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”

– Colossians 3:17, 23-24

As we go into the workout today I want everyone to think about what our motivation is behind what we do in our lives.  As so much of the world bears down on us it is easy to lose focus on God and make it all about our glory instead of His. Whether it is in work or athletics are you working or training for your own glorification or are you striving for success in order to glorify God?

In Paul’s letter to the Colossians he makes it very clear that whatever we do, whether it be what we say or what we do, we should do it all in the name of Jesus, giving thanks to God.  This is a hard thing to do but it is something we should strive for nonetheless.

The only way for us to successfully bring glory to God in everything that we do is to successfully prepare our minds and bodies for the temptations that lurk around every corner in the world that we live in.  How do we do this?  We invest time in our relationship with Christ by studying his Word, praying and simply keeping him on our hearts so that when the time comes we are prepared to give him glory.

I have a challenge for all of us in the upcoming week.  Try to keep the following two questions on your mind as you go through the week.

1)  Before you make a decision or take action on something, ask yourself, “is this going to glorify God or is it going to glorify me?”

2)  How would God’s Kingdom be built if you sought to bring God glory in all things?

The dictionary defines disciple as both a noun and a verb.  The noun is “a person who is a pupil or an adherent of the doctrines of another” and the verb is “to teach; train.”  We are all disciples of Christ, not just every once in a while, but every minute of every day.  As disciples let’s strive to bring glory to God in everything that we do.

ChristFit North Devotional – 6/16/2013

By Jordan Robison

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.  Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.  For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.  Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.  Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.  In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all flaming arrows of the evil one.  Take the helmet of salvation and sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” – Ephesians 6:10-17

Belt of truth, breastplate of righteousness, sandals of peace, shield of faith, helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit.  When Paul was writing the letter to the church at Ephesus which we call the book of Ephesians he was sitting in a Roman prison and at the moment that he was writing about the armor of God was probably observing the Roman solider keeping guard over him.

Paul also wrote a letter to the church in Corinth where he spoke of the wars that we as Christians are waging.  “For thought we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does.  The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world.  On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.  We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” – 2 Corinthians 10:3-5

As Christians we are fighting a spiritual war.  The world tells us to focus on the flesh and it uses desires of the flesh to try and pull us away from our Father, but when we entrust our lives to God and put on his armor then we prepare ourselves to fight the good fight.

When we are here at ChristFit, yes we are training our physical bodies but more important than our physical training we are spending time in fellowship with one another, developing relationships that we can then use to help us strengthen one another in this ongoing spiritual war.  We train for competitions, we train for races, we train & study for school in order to succeed.  We spend a lot of time training for success in things of this world.  When we join together here we surround ourselves with both physical and spiritual training partners.  Let the relationships you develop here and the fellowship we have together train you beyond just the physical but train you spiritually as well.

Picture the scene from Braveheart.  You’ve got thousands of soldiers lined up for battle, yelling and screaming and then charging into battle.  Can you imagine being on the front line of this charge with no sword and no shield, completely unprepared for battle?

“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” – Proverbs 27:17

Let us prepare one another for the spiritual battles that we face.  Let the relationships we develop help sharpen us and propel us forward in our relationship with God.  We don’t go into battles alone and unprepared.  Let us join together to strengthen and sharpen the armor that God has given us so that we can stand strong together as members of God’s army.

 

ChristFit North Devotional – 6/9/2013

By Rachel Crampton

The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness; He will quiet you by His love; He will exult over you with loud singing. – Zephaniah 3.17

Walking through life as a believer is not an easy task. We are constantly under assault from multiple fronts- lies flying at us from every direction, attacks from the enemy, and a sinful flesh waging war against The Spirit that dwells within us. When we aren’t focused on the Truth of the cross, it is easy to become distracted, discouraged, and disheartened. But God, in His goodness and love for us, have given us His Word and Truth to cling to during those times. In this one verse, He provides us, His sons and daughters, with five truths to remember.

1. He is in our midst. – Regardless of our standing before Him, it does not change the fact that God is always present (see Psalm 139). As our heavenly Father, we can rest knowing that no matter the trial, temptation, or lie, has not and will not abandon us; He is in our midst.
2. He is mighty and will save. – One of the enemy’s favorite lies to whisper is that we are too far gone to be rescued. “You don’t know my story, what I’ve done.” True, we may not know each other’s stories, God knows our stories. Ephesians 1.4 says, “Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him.” He chose you, loves you, and as the Creator of this world, is more than powerful enough to save you from it.
3. He rejoices over us with gladness. – Multiple times in the gospels, Christ teaches about the Father’s heart when one who is lost is found. In Luke 15, we see three consecutive parables from Christ about rejoicing when someone/thing that was lost is found. No matter how dirty, how fallen, how skinned up our knees we may be when we return to Him, He rejoices in the fact that we are found.
4. His love will quiet us. – We are an anxious people with a very common sin struggle – we don’t fully trust God. As a result, we struggle and strive to control our surroundings and relationships, only to be met with disastrous results. It is only when we remember God and His great love for us that we will be still. Not only will that love quiet us, but as Philippians 4.7 tells us, “The peace of God which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”
5. He exults over us with loud singing. – For He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers.” (Hebrews 2.11) God is not ashamed of you. You are now one with Christ, a pure and spotless child of God. He loves His children and will set them apart for the entire world to see (Matthew 5.14-15).

ChristFit North Signup – 6/9/13

We had a great turnout for the first ChristFit North workout last week and want to keep it going strong again this week.  We’ll be meeting again at 3 o’clock Sunday afternoon up at Crossfit 972 for some Faith, Fellowship and Fitness.  If you’re planning on coming out then please signup on the attached googledoc so we can have an idea as to how many people are coming.

Also, we’ll be taking volunteers to write devotionals each week.  If you would like to pick out a scripture that you would like to share with the group and write a couple of paragraphs about it that we can reflect on then please let me know.  There is also a 2nd page to the signup sheet where you can sign up to write a devo.

Thanks to everyone for coming out last week and I hope to see another big group of y’all this week.

“Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.” – Philippians 3:13-14

LINK TO SIGNUP SHEET:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AsZwo81ZaDPUdHVDVkg1c2dZM1A3d3RXTHk2aXAzU1E&usp=sharing

ChristFit North Kickoff Devotional – 6/2/2013

By Jordan Robison

Philippians 3:12-16 (NLT) – I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.

Think about the focus and work we put into some of the “races” that we run in our lives. If the “race” is pursuing a promotion at work think about the effort and time you put in on a daily basis…could you imagine just choosing to take a couple of days off during the week just because you didn’t have time for work or just didn’t really feel like going into the office? What if your “race” is training for a sport or competition, think about all the work that you put in at the gym…would you choose to just casually skip training days?

These are both legitimate races that we will run in our lifetime, but what is the most important race that we’re running? In his letter to the Philippians, Paul says that he is pressing on to “reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.” As Christians the most important race that we run in our lives is the race that Paul is running…a race to reach the heavenly prize that God is calling us to.

If pursuing a relationship with Christ is the most important race that we’re running then why is it so easy to skip a quiet time in the morning or not sit down in prayer and have a conversation with God frequently? What would it look like to take 15 minutes a day spending time with God?  Consider this, there are 24 hours in a day, that’s 1440 minutes…15 minutes therefore is 1.04% of our entire day .  Is stopping and spending 15 minutes, 1% of our entire day, with the creator of the heavens and earth, the one who has saved us from death and given us eternal life too much to ask?  As we work out together today and as we approach the upcoming week, let’s remember the most important race we run in pursuit of Christ and think about what you can do to run that race in the best way possible.

1 Corinthians 9:24-27 (NIV) – Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize?  Run in such a way as to get the prize.  Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training.  They do it to get a crown that will last forever.  Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly, I do not fight like a boxer beating the air.  No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.