Body – The Healing Worshipper

I used to train horses. I taught people to ride. One of the beginning elements that I would try to get people to understand, get myself to understand is the sensitivity of a horse. They look big and powerful. The old westerns always showed people kicking their heels (with spurs, no less) into the horse’s sides and galloping away.

Horses don’t need to be kicked.

I might get frustrated, see the horse doing everything wrong. My students would yell about how stubborn or stupid their horse was. But it wasn’t the horses fault, sometimes.

What are you looking at?

Our eyes often dictate the direction of our bodies. If I am looking at the ground, it changes the physical attitude of my body. If I look left, or right, my body feels different. If I am inwardly focused, it affects my muscles, my bones. If I am concentrating on a particular point, it tenses my body, makes it more rigid.

A horse senses all these things and will respond accordingly. Sometimes they will take advantage of you. Sometimes they will try to act on what they sense you are wanting them to do. And you can assist them in learning, in training, by adjusting your focus.

People are making resolutions, trying to fulfill them, maybe already failing on them. It’s what we do every January. I am doing it too. Trying to exercise again, be more diligent in prayer, in the Word. I can feel my feet, my heart beginning to falter, again.

So, I ask again. What are you looking at?

“Let us run with endurance the race set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith…” (Hebrews 12)

I am tired. Overly so.

I’ve been sick for the past week and a half. I still am working 50+ hours a week. Worship was great this past weekend but also exhausting. I am “hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body.”

Now it feels a bit melodramatic for me to quote this concerning my life of relative ease, but I’m feeling it. Family, finances, future are huge concerns that seem to weigh on me every day.

And I know I’m not alone. Many people wonder what is going to happen next, politically, in the world, at schools and jobs. No one is exempt from wondering how everything is going to get paid for. And, every family has their nut cases. Now you’d think that I wouldn’t be worried about that one, since I’m the nut case but imagine the pressure I must feel in trying to protect and guide my children away from my socioneuropathy (I made that word up I think).

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”

We don’t lose heart. No matter what happens to our outward body, Jesus, as we fix our eyes on Him, is renewing us day by day. And in us, God is achieving an eternal glory. A beauty and power that will out shine our darkest days.

I’m not willing to walk timidly into my day. I am not cowed by the circumstances and trials. God is working a victory in me, in you.

Charge!!!