Think of spiritual fitness like you would physical fitness. In order to be physically fit, you need to have strength, flexibility, and endurance. If all you had was strength, but not the other two (like a body builder), you would be considered muscle bound. You would look buff, but would not be able to touch your toes or run more than a block. You need all three to be physically fit. You do different things to work out each area (e.g., weight lifting; stretching; sustained aerobic exercise).
For spiritual fitness, I like this scheme: Spiritual fitness requires knowing, being, and doing (head, heart and actions). In order to be like Jesus, and live a life that rocks, we will need to tend to each of these areas of our spiritual life. Otherwise, we will come up short. We will need to "workout" each of these areas with different exercises. Our going through Mark and trying to understand things fits into the first area: knowing. But if we stopped there, it will be bad. Jesus said some pretty nasty things about people who did that.
Think of knowledge as being necessary but not sufficient. You need it but it, by itself, will not get you where you want to go. If you can get this in your head now, you will be ahead of the game. It was a hard one for me to get. When I was young, I thought knowledge was the key. And to a certain degree it was. It opened up a whole new world for me. But it only will lead us so far.
Have you ever seen the moving Shadowlands? It is a movie about a part of C.S. Lewis' life. He was probably one of most foremost Christian thinkers in the last century. It is not a teen movie (not enough action!), so you might think it is kind of boring, but it did a good job of contrasting a life of knowledge and experience. If you are bored enough, you might rent it.
Practically, you can study the bible your whole life and have great understanding, but if you do not attend to the other areas of spiritual fitness, you will miss the mark, big time. So, we will need to explore the being and doing parts of our spiritual life and do some workouts in those areas as well. Tonight, I will go down and feed and interact with the homeless. This will give me a chance to workout in the being and doing areas.
As you read through Mark, see if you can see examples of these three areas of spiritual fitness. Check out 1:12-14. What is going on there? I see lots of "being" going on. Do you see it? How so?
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In the other gospels is says he was led by the Spirit. Think about it. If you and I were there, what do you think we would have done? Chances are, I would have been checking out the crowds and listening to the dude eating the bugs. The would have been huge distractions.
How do you think Jesus was able to sense the Spirit's leading? As a general rule when reading the bible, it is probably best not to think of the situations any differently than we would experience them today. For example, rather than saying "because he is God" or "because that was a special situation," you would do better to think of bible situations as being just like situations in your life. So in this case, what would Jesus have to do to sense the Spirit?
I would argue that he was "being" in the situation. He was attentive to the present and fully aware as things were unfolding. He was not distracted by an encounter he had yesterday or thinking about what he will have for dinner tonight. As such, he was able to sense the Spirits leading.
How did he learn to do this? Look for hints as you read through Mark.
Also, what do you think he did those 40 days in the desert? Check out the other gospels and make a list. Think through how that would have looked. 40 days is a long time. What did he do during that time, specifically? You might have to do some speculation.
We will flesh out the whole being thing over time.
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