Every month at my gym they write a new question on the blackboard for people to answer. For June 2024, the question was: why do you work out? Immediately a thought jumps into my mind: because my body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.
Now I feel compelled to write it on the blackboard but I don’t want to. Being a Christian in public is uncomfortable, isn’t it? In my disobedience and chicken-ness I make a compromise that I’m too busy to write it today, and there are too many people around, and that I’ll write it another day.
A couple more days pass and I still feel compelled to write it on the blackboard, but I never do.
I have a dream one night. I perceive that I’m in three-dimensional space like in a room and there are some numbers and characters, albeit blurry, hanging in space as if they are written on a wall. It looks something like this:
In the dream the text is blurry and unintelligible. It’s more blurry than what I can recreate in this image. In the dream all I can tell from the text is:
- It beings with a number
- There’s a long word starting with a capital letter
- There’s a single number
- Followed by colon
- Followed by two numbers
I then wake up and it’s early in the morning, about 6:30 AM. I immediately know that the verse is 1 Corinthians 6:19. I go to the YouVersion Bible app and look up the verse:
Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?
1 Corinthians 6:19
Mind blowing!
And convicting.
I obviously know the Lord wants me to write the Bible verse on the blackboard, so I steel my mind to do it and allow myself to be comfortable being uncomfortable.
Once I get to the gym I see someone else has already written another verse!
So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
1 Corinthians 10:31
It’s easy to think that we are the only one, and being a Christian is public is weird and we shouldn’t do it. Elijah had similar concerns:
He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”
1 Kings 19:14
The problem is what Elijah thought wasn’t true! The Lord responds:
Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him.
1 Kings 19:18
When you share your faith know that you’re not alone. Just as with Elijah, the Lord is with you, and there are more Christians around you than you realize.
The Lord is continually pursuing us and is growing us. He gives us challenges and tests, but that is a good thing:
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
Philippians 1:6