“Take time and trouble to keep yourself spiritually fit.

Bodily fitness has a certain value, but spiritual fitness is essential,

both for this present life and for the life to come. There is no doubt

about this at all, and Christians should remember it.”

(I Timothy 4:7-8) (Phillips Translation)

Take a terrestrial globe, like the one that sat on your teacher’s desk when you studied geography in grammar school. Place that globe on a three-legged stool — three legged, mind you, not four. Label one leg of that stool “physical fitness,” another “mental fitness,” and the third “spiritual fitness” — and you have before you a perfect object exhibit of your own personal world. That’s you and your three-fold foundation for life.

Your happiness, your success, yea, your whole world rests on these three pillars: physical strength, mental ability, and spiritual stamina. Knock out any one of them and your world totters and falls. Your well being in life depends upon keeping strong and steady these three pillars of personality.

Now everybody knows that, of course; and most of us, I think, would agree that maintaining the stability of these three foundations to our personal world is partly our business and partly in other’s keeping.

Take physical fitness, health, for example: That is partly in God’s hands and partly in ours. Do you remember how the old grandfather in the play, You Can’t Take It With You, prayed in that folksy conversational manner? Every time the family would gather for meals, the old man would say grace by looking up at the ceiling and remark: “Well, sir, here we all are again. If we can just keep our health, everything will be all right.” In that unorthodox prayer, there are three important elements: first, the acknowledgment of the crucial value of health, if it vanishes one’s whole world is threatened; second, there is implicit the faith that health is primarily a divine gift; and third, the recognition that we can do something about keeping ourselves physically fit — “if we can only keep our health.” Rest, exercise, nourishing food, guarding against over-indulgence and dissipation — these are for us to see about to keep physically fit. We must be obedient to the laws of health.

The same thing is so with reference to mental fitness for life. It is partly out of our hands and partly in them. Latent intellectual capacities are given. We have them by providential gift. We had nothing to do with the creation of our minds. But the business of keeping mentally fit is somewhat ours. We can develop our intellectual resources or let them go to seed.

The selfsame thing is true of the third pillar of personality, spiritual stamina. The business of keeping steady and standing this third foundation of our personal world is partly ours and partly in other hands stronger than our own. Eternal God made us living spirits just as He made us breathing creatures. We do not create our own spirituality. But there is plenty we can and must do if we are to keep ourselves spiritually fit.

Now there are a lot of fine folks who recognize the value of keeping themselves physically and mentally fit but who do not attach any importance at all to keeping themselves spiritually fit. They act as though their world could be forever supported securely on a two-legged stool.

St. Paul advised his young friend Timothy: “Take time and trouble to keep yourself spiritually fit. Bodily fitness has a certain value, but spiritual fitness is essential, both for this present life and the life to come.”

You might be surprised if I gave you the names of some of the people today who agree with the Apostle Paul and give priority to this third pillar of personality. You know who Johnny Lujac is, don’t you? He’s the ace triple threat back for the Chicago Bears professional football team who was in his college days one of the greatest stars Notre Dame ever had. Reminiscing not long ago about those college days Lujac said: “Sometimes the biggest, strongest looking men would fold up under the pressure of a tight game. I remember one man on our Notre Dame squad who had been tabbed as a weakling by many of the players. The lad was pale-faced, quiet, and kept to himself. ‘Scared of his own shadow,’ one of the men remarked skeptically. Yet one day when this quiet lad got a chance in a game, he played like a titan, diving head first into opposing blockers to break up play after play. Needless to say, the team’s estimate of this guy’s courage had to be sharply revised. He had that ‘extra something’ over and above his rather mediocre physical talents.” That extra something was spiritual fitness.

Someone was recently pointing out that Mrs. Roosevelt has made it a consistent rule of her life to maintain constant self-control. And whatever we may or may not think of her, the fact is: that in her public life — assailed as she’s been again and again by those who differed with her, sometimes violently and unjustly assailed, whether she was attacked by a Republican ward-healer or a Catholic Cardinal — she has never lost her self-control — she has proven herself to be spiritually disciplined.

Just go down the line of human enterprises and experiences; see how spiritual fitness is recognized as a number one requirement for success in every venture: There’s college for example: Nowadays the colleges are so full, high school seniors are having difficulty in gaining admittance. Colleges are choosey. They are picking only the best applicants. They investigate to find out just what kind of boys and girls are asking admission. I’ve been impressed with the kind of questions asked, almost universally, to determine a student’s fitness for college.

Do the colleges ask how good looking the young man or woman is? Do they ask how much money the father has? Do they inquire into the family pedigree? No. Such questions are never asked. After one hurried enquiry into the applicant’s health — and one about his academic record, the questionnaire rushes on to ask: “How well does the applicant get along with people of his own age? With those older than he? Is he a dependable person? Is he loyal? What of his character? How high or low are his ideals of service? Yes, the college is probing to discover his spiritual fitness for meeting successfully the demands of life.

It is the same story when a fellow applies for a job. Out go letters to people who know him asking: “Is the applicant trustworthy and dependable? Would you entrust him with funds or property belonging to you? Does the applicant use intoxicants? Does he gamble? In short: is the man spiritually fit — does he possess that inner, intangible control which renders him adequate for meeting and handling successfully the experiences of life?

Then there’s marriage, one of life’s common ventures. What does it take to make for success here? Physical fitness and mental fitness? Yes, surely. But beauty of body and physical health, cleverness of intellect and well-matched minds are not infallible guarantees for successful marriage, else the smartest and the prettiest would invariably be the happiest married. But such just isn’t the case. The record shows that in the great adventure of marriage always the ones who find that blessedness which is even beyond happiness are those spiritually fit of whom Elton Trueblood says: “Marriage is magic in many lives, partly because it combines the flesh and the spirit in such a remarkable unity.”’

But how does one keep spiritually fit? What are the rules? What sort of religious calisthenics are recommended? When Paul was urging Timothy “to take the time and the trouble to keep himself spiritually fit,” he said right off that eating certain kinds of food and abstaining from eating others at various seasons was no good at all as a spiritual exercise. Neither was marrying or refusing to marry.

We must also add in all sincerity that just joining a church and becoming a regular attendant at services is no guarantee of spiritual fitness. There are people who have been faithful attendants at Christian worship for decades and in the crises of life have found themselves as spiritually unfit as infidels, and like the faithless were crushed by life’s experiences. Nadab and Abihu, Aaron’s sons, were consecrated and ordained priests who served daily in the Temple — but they offered a strange fire before God and were consumed in the wrath of the Lord.

Neither is acceptance of a religious creed, no matter how full or rigorous, a guarantee of spiritual fitness. Jesus found the Pharisees holding on to an elaborate creed with fanatical zeal — but he also found them spiritually dry and dead — unfit to enter the Kingdom of God.

Doing good works, kind deeds, are not necessarily helpful in keeping us spiritually fit. As St. Augustine pointed out — it all depends on our motives.

Even prayer is no sure exercise to make us spiritually fit. Though we be on our knees naming the name of the Lord, if our hearts are harboring resentment, bitterness, self-pity, jealousy, or hatred, then these imps of Satan effectively block the spirit of our righteous God who would come in to take possession of us and arm us with calm poise and strong goodness.

The only sure and certain way to keep spiritually fit is to come humbly to our Savior Jesus Christ and keep close — every day — to Him. Other religious teachers have said: “I will point you to the truth. I will show you the right way. I will outline for you the best life.” Jesus Christ says: “I am the Way, the Truth, the Life.”

Jesus Christ made personal devotion to Himself the dynamic of His disciple’s life; so that Christianity does not exist apart from Christ. The Apostle Paul’s mastery of Greek and Hebrew thought was a tremendous thing, yet the driving power of Paul’s life was his personal relationship to Christ. Peter was a typical social reformer, yet the secret center of his life was Christ. In our day John Mackay says that: “People who are consumed by the inner fire of the spirit of the living Christ are the counterpart in human life of the smashed atom which releases cosmic force.” Spiritual fitness for all the demands of modern life comes only from spiritual union with Christ, and prayer, and creedal statements, and church attendance and deeds of charity and mercy are profitable exercises to produce spiritual fitness only when they lead to or flow from oneness with Him.

A man was trying to read his Sunday morning paper and his small son was pestering him to distraction. “Daddy, let me see the funnies. Daddy, what’s the man in the picture doing? Daddy, when are we going to Sunday School?” Finally in an exasperated effort to get a few minutes peace, the father took a sheet from the paper which had a map of the world on it, and tearing it up into small pieces gave it to his son saying: “Now you go over in the corner and see if you can fit this puzzle back together.” In a far shorter time than he had expected, the boy was back with the job done. “Why Son,” said the father, “you surprise me. I didn’t dream you knew so much about geography.” The boy replied: “I don’t Daddy, but you see there was a picture of Christ on the back, and when I got Him in place, the world took care of itself.”

If we get Christ in his rightful place in our lives — if we take Him as our Savior and serve Him as our Master every day — then we will be spiritually fit and the affairs of our personal world will take care of themselves.

• Scripture Reference: 1 Timothy 4:1-16 • Secondary Scripture References: n/a • Subject : Spiritual conditioning; 636 • Special Topic: n/a • Series: n/a • Occasion: n/a • First Preached: 11/13/1949 • Last Preached: 3/21/1955 • Rating: 3 • Book/Author References: , John Mackay