The Ab Workout of Christianity!

Anyone who knows me on a personal level knows that I love to workout, I enjoy being in the gym day in and day out. When it comes to building muscle or losing weight, what is the number one area that comes to mind? The core, or abdominal area right? Many people don't look at it this way, they think of it only as a "visual" area of the body, but, a strong core is very important to the body. Why is that?

When you look at the body, it stands upright and erect, right? Well, what area of the body do you suppose is responsible for this happening? Mainly the abdominal area and lower back region of your body, without strength in these two areas, you'll most likely grow to have bad posture and find it hard to keep your upper body erect. In the same manner, Christianity has core principles and teachings, with Christ at the center of our religion; because without Christ, we wouldn't have a religion, hence the name "Christianity".

I'm sure that by now many of you may be confused, thinking things such as: "So is this an ab workout article specific for Christians? Are you going to tell us how to workout? Did Jesus have a six pack or something? What's going on here?" So here's your explanation, Christianity is founded around the teachings, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is the absolute core of our religion, aside from God Himself, but there are also other basics that must be learned so that we may continue to grow and strengthen our core.

The Ab Workout of Christianity

Alright, timeout, God just opened my eyes and showed me something really cool, and I have to share this with you; it pertains to the lesson, and actually serves to enhance it. I was going to share each principle with you anyway, so this just helps to illustrate it and help you commit it to memory. Alright, so think about this, what else are abs referred to? A six pack, right? As you strengthen and tone your abdominal's they begin to form six smaller and well defined muscles. 

Well, I flipped open my Bible to Hebrews to see what the author had to say about spiritual growth and guess how many basic fundamentals need to be covered before maturing? I'll bet you can figure it out! But for giggles, let's just count them out anyway:

1. Turning away from evil deeds
2. Placing our faith in God
3. Instruction of Baptisms,
4. Laying on of hands,
5. Resurrection of the dead, and
6. Eternal Judgement

I also have to add this in as well, yesterday as well as today, I've been praying and asking the Lord to fill me with His Holy Spirit and lay on my mind what I should write about for the day. Both times he's given me great ideas, yesterday being How to Accept Christian Salvation! and today being the fundamentals of Christianity, ask and you shall receive; as long as it's in line with His will. I just noticed this as well, today kind of follows up with what I covered yesterday about accepting salvation, building on what a new Christian should learn; and I did none of this on my own, it was all God; He is truly amazing!

Alright, sorry for going off on a wild tangent, let's get back to the main subject at hand, which is building a secure foundation as a new Christian; the "abs" of Christianity. So Hebrews chapter 6 opens up by telling us that we don't need to constantly go over the same teachings over and over again; this is only for those who are no longer "new" Christians. However, if you are a new Christian, you should already know that it required faith in God and Jesus Christ to even become saved. You should also know that Christ was sinless, he lived a perfect life; following His example, we should also desire and strive to become perfect, although we will never achieve it until Christ returns for us.

"Older" Christians remember this as well, just because you've already learned the fundamentals does not mean you quit studying them; you simply need to move on to more advanced teachings while remembering the basics!

Now, what many of us may not know too much about are the last four points on the list; which are in many ways very similar to the abs of the body. Look at it this way, you have your behavior and your faith in God, which are your upper abs; easiest to understand as well as target in a workout. Next you have baptism and the laying on of hands, which are your middle abs; slightly harder to grasp and requires slightly more effort to target in your workout. Last you have the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgement, the lower abs of the body; much harder to understand and grasp, as well as hitting them properly with specific exercises.

Baptism is an act of symbolism, done in public, where the pastor of your church submerges you in water, symbolizing the death of Christ; then bringing you back up into a new and forgiven life, which symbolizes God bringing Jesus back from the grave. The laying on of hands is an act, which was performed by Moses in the Old Testament, and by the apostles in the New, which involves praying over someone and laying your hands on them. The notes in my Bible say that this was an ancient Jewish practice, used to set people apart for special service. For example, In Acts 6:6, the apostles prayed over seven men to be placed in charge of administering food wisely. In Numbers 27:23, Moses laid his hands on Joshua, filling him with the Holy Spirit and commissioning him into his place of responsibility.

The resurrection of the dead could be talking about two different things, it could be talking about the miracles that Jesus and his apostles performed by raising people from the dead; but more likely than not it is referring to when Christ was raised from the grave by the power of God. If you never learn anything else from the Bible or about Christianity, this is the one thing which you should always remember. God came to earth in the body of a human, who was named Jesus, lived and taught among us, and was murdered; three days following his death, he was brought back to life, then continued sharing His teachings with His disciples for a time before ascending to heaven.

The last point which needs to be covered is the eternal judgement, which I'm sure that many of you have already heard of before; at least in some way, shape, or form. Many people who are not Christians have all heard that when they die they may either go to heaven or hell, but they choose not to believe or take part in this fact; yes I said fact. The truth of the matter is this, however, they may very well not even make it to their physical death; for the Lord our God is going pass a judgement over all of humanity. Here's how it will work, those who have submitted their lives to Jesus Christ will be granted the gift of eternal life with our God; but those who do not give their lives over to the Lord will spend all of eternity suffering in hell, it's that simple.

When is this second coming? The Bible tells us that no man knows the date or time of His coming, but when it happens it will be as if a thief in the night. The prophecies that were made in the past of the events which would happen right before His arrival have already come to pass. The only reason God is holding off on His return is to allow us a little more time to reach out to others and save them before it's too late. This is our single most important goal as Christians, spreading the good news about Jesus Christ and leading them to a relationship with the Lord.

To those of you who have been following my blog since it started, I'm sure you'll notice that my speech was kind of all over the place today; can you blame me? God revealed something truly unique and amazing to me today which I couldn't wait to share with you all, not to mention I was talking about growing as a Christian; that's a lot to get fired up about. If you enjoyed this article and would like to share it with others, there are social buttons located at the top of the page; also, please consider voting up my article with a +1. Feel free to leave me a comment below before you leave.

God Bless!