————————————————————————————————————

In the past Christmas, my wife had this loving idea to gift me a certificate for a local exercise club. She wants me to join a short program called “Healthy Back” in light of my problematic back. The intent is to strengthen my weakened back by using the instructed program offered by the club. Inevitably, this exercise program becomes my New Year resolution, as she suggested. 🙂

The first session I had was with an instructor in the club. Its purpose is to evaluate my current condition in order to see how the program could help. In the process of evaluation, I had to sit on a “strange” machine and the instructor would lock down my lower part on the machine – this prevents me from using leg portion to err the evaluation. Then, I had to use my back to push a back lever on the machine, back and forth, to test the strength of my back. Not sure how accurate it is; the prognosis is my back is not as strong as others are , according to the test result. So, here we go, I need to stay in the program. 🙁

“How healthy is our back?” is always an important question to ask ourselves as we are vertebrate in nature. Without a healthy back, we would not be able to stand up and walk. As a result, severe illness could be developed and they would hamper our physical body to function properly. For years, I have this problem in my back and it causes me to loose sleeps during the nights and have to take extreme care in doing various physical actions. It is by God’s grace that I could continue to function normally. I constantly remind myself, “One day at a time, don’t over-do it!” 🙂

If we look closely to our faith living, there is a “healthy back” element too. I would think “a good relationship with our Lord” is the “healthy back” to our faith journey. Let’s recall it. How many times do we loose sleeps during the nights because we want to satisfy our own desires and ambitions, without considering how God would think? How many times we would go astray because we think we can do it all due to our pride? We have seen many symptoms of our “unhealthy back” in our journey of faith. However, we still don’t want to confess our transgressions to Him. Jesus’ brother, James, taught the brothers and sisters in the Jerusalem that anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God (與世俗為友的 ，就是與神為敵). In addition, God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble (神阻擋驕傲的人 ，賜恩給謙卑的人James 4:4, 4:6).  This tells us that we need to humble ourselves before Him and spend time with Him consistently in order to build up a good relationship with Him.

My brothers and sisters, without the healthy back in our faith journey, we are likely to fall into the traps made by the evil one, inattentively. May we encourage one another and remind one another that our enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Let us not to become one of his victims.