Tips on how to Pray When You Train

This text is a part of the Tips on how to Pray collection.

How We Ask for Assist

In keeping with 1 Timothy 4:4–5, it’s not sufficient solely to listen to what God has to say about our bodily train. Making bodily life holy entails prayer—asking God for assist. We consecrate our our bodies and train to God “by the phrase of God and prayer” (1 Tim. 4:5)—by what he says to us (in his phrase) and what we are saying again to him (in our prayers). So what do we are saying?

Obtain Train as a Present

First, we thank him. “Every little thing created by God is nice, and nothing is to be rejected whether it is acquired with thanksgiving” (1 Tim. 4:4).

The first step in responding to what God revealed to us is receiving our our bodies because the presents they’re—not taking bodily motion and exertion without any consideration however explicitly thanking God. Gratitude is the very fundamental and applicable response of the creature towards his Creator, fulfilling our function to “honor him as God” and “give due to him” (Rom. 1:21). And so we could pray one thing like this: “Father, thanks that my legs and lungs work like they do. Thanks for arms that swing and elevate. Thanks for stability and that I don’t have an ailment or different situation that confines me to mattress.”

No matter physique God has given you with its strengths and weaknesses is an event to thank him and to take action recurrently. Simply as every new meal generally is a good immediate to thank him for his provision of meals, so additionally the start (or finish) of a exercise or bodily exercise is a chance to thank him for the present of your physique and vitality. It’s additionally an opportunity to thank him for his grace to us in Christ. As Christians, we not solely acknowledge God as our Creator however Christ as our Redeemer. We’re doubly “not our personal”—we didn’t create our our bodies (and souls) nor did we pay the value to redeem them. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:19–20, “You aren’t your individual, for you have been purchased with a worth. So glorify God in your physique.”

Receiving fortunately the flexibility to maneuver and train is a crucial start line, however there’s extra.

Ask God for Assist

We do greater than merely thank God for what he has given us and carried out for us in Christ. We additionally flip to the longer term with religion—to exercise forward, the vitality we’ll want, the life to be lived—and ask him for assist.

To get sensible, maybe you pray this the night time earlier than exercising: “Father, please give me sleep tonight and the desire to beat laziness tomorrow morning. Assist me to get away from bed, placed on my exercise garments, lace up my footwear, and put one foot in entrance of the opposite—after which work such self-discipline all through my life within the battle towards sin.”

Or perhaps at the start of your exercise you ask, “Father, give me the drive to push my physique past consolation, to ‘self-discipline my physique and preserve it underneath management’ (1 Cor. 9:27). Work in me, by your Spirit, in order that this bodily coaching serves the ripening of the religious fruit of self-control (Gal. 5:23).”

For me, my typical prayer level for train is the start of the exercise. My most frequent train is operating, and I’ve made it a behavior to hope as I’m setting out on a run: “Father, make this run holy to you this morning.” I could say, “I consecrate this half hour to you. Give me vitality, assist me endure, preserve me from harm, and use this train to spice up my mind, pleasure, and physique. And assist me love others nicely right this moment. Might you be glorified in my physique.”

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No matter physique God has given you with its strengths and weaknesses is an event to thank him and to take action recurrently.

One other approach you would possibly pray relating to train is that this: “Father, guard me from valuing bodily coaching greater than godliness. Reasonably, make these efforts holy, by my performing in religion, in order that this train serves my Christlikeness as an alternative of competing with it.”

Or: “Father, loosen my grip by myself efficiency, outcomes, and private targets. Might my train not in the end be about me however about my richer enjoyment of Jesus and my readiness to like and serve others.”

Or: “Father, grant that I’d know you and luxuriate in you extra by pushing my physique on this approach. Let me really feel your pleasure by this pure present in order that I’m spiritually happy sufficient to sacrifice my very own preferences and private routines to satisfy the wants of others.”

Train Christian Religion

You would possibly pray the night time earlier than. And pray as you start a exercise. And even pray at key moments in the course of the exercise—as I typically do when beginning up a protracted hill with little vitality late in a run. And pray afterwards, thanking the one who designed your physique, made it, and sustains it.

Train as a Christian by exercising in mild of what God says about your physique in his phrase and by praying with gratitude for his assist, blessing, and smile in your bodily coaching. Don’t train with the presumption of unbelievers however consecrate your exercises—make them holy—by the phrase of God and prayer.

This text is tailored from A Little Theology of Train: Having fun with Christ in Physique and Soul by David Mathis.

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