February 19, 2011 – 1 Corinthians 9

When I first started to read this chapter, it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.  But after you read the whole thing, go back and read it over again.  This entire thing is about Paul not wanting to be a hypocrite.  He teaches and preaches and has those that follow him and he wants to make sure that they understand he is not just preaching this life, but living it.  “Do we not have the right to eat and drink?”  He is telling them that he has the same temptations that he is warning them against.  He is not immune to temptations, nor is he allowed to indulge because he is an apostle and leader.  He is living the life he is telling them to preach so that “after having preached to others, I myself should be disqualified.” 

This is one of the things I find hardest to do sometimes.  We can get caught up in feeling like we are doing enough to be close to God and lull ourselves into complacency.  Paul is telling us that the way to not fall into this is to “I drive my body and train it”.  Are we driving our faith, our spiritual lives, are we training and building it up, or is our spiritual life becoming a lazy couch potato.  Lent is a good time to get back into shape.  We had Advent and Christmas and New Year’s resolutions, but now we may have found that those have slipped a bit.  Lent starts in about 2 weeks.  What are we going to do to get back into shape?