At first, you may feel selfish.  I know I did.

When I first thought about the concept of becoming Fit For Jesus, getting healthy and more fit originated out of love and gratitude for His great sacrificial gift.  After all, God sent His own Son to die and literally be the punishment for our sins, so that we would not spend eternity separated from Him.  Once we realize the awesomeness and depth of God’s love, it compels us to do SOMETHING in return, right?

So, originally, becoming fit for Jesus was an act of thankfulness.  In addition, once we have received salvation through Jesus Christ, His Holy Spirit resides in us, gently guiding us and teaching us, conforming us into His image.  The motive expanded from thankfulness to an act of honoring the Holy Spirit and taking care of His temple.  Either way, both of those motivators and reasons aren’t selfish and they give the glory and honor to God… but then a new motivation clicked inside my head as I listened to a sermon at church not too long ago.

I’ll need you to bear with me on this, while I explain the background.

In the sermon, one of the minor points was that there will be varying rewards in heaven.  Frankly, that means that Billy Graham is going to get a better mansion than me, as well as a host of other treasures, crowns, and rewards that I simply won’t get.  (For the record, that’s quite okay:  Billy Graham deserves them.  I’ll catch up the best I can, with God’s strength!)

Here is a nice visual representation of the concept (with absolutely no disrespect intended for the amazing Reverend Graham), and then I’ll explain what it means:

This is a graph of joy, of happiness, or spiritual reward.  As you can probably imagine, everything to the left of the black dashed line is life here on earth.  At point A, you are born.  There are a few ups and downs in life, as well as a few ups and downs in our spiritual rewards.  We get saved and receive God’s gift of salvation, we backslide a little as the devil attacks us and prevents us from reaching others, we reach out to Jesus, listen to the Holy Spirit, and we grow.

And then we die.  That’s Point B.

At Point C, we find ourselves in heaven.  We are all hanging around praising God in spectacular, unbelievable, reverent awe until Judgement (Point D), at which point our actions here on earth are weighed, measured, and burned up in the flames.  To paraphrase the Bible, we then receive our rewards based on the good stuff that is left, and then heaven just keeps getting better and better, forever and ever.  Here is the specific scripture:

Our actions with a value of wood, hay, and straw get burned up and lost.  If all of our actions are burned up, then we still stay in heaven, because our starting foundation is Jesus Christ, but we won’t have much extra reward.  If, however, our actions are made up of gold, silver, and costly stones, which survive the flames, then we are rewarded abundantly.

I left church that Sunday with ONE thought on my mind:  I want to do as many great and wonderful things as I can for Christ and in obedience to God, because I want a lot of reward in heaven.  And while at first I felt selfish thinking that way, I remembered that Jesus told us to store up treasures in heaven!

Naturally, my next thought was “Even though I want to be with Christ Jesus right NOW, the longer I am here, the more treasure I can store in heaven.”

Now, what does all of that have to do with getting healthy and fit for Jesus?  Well, I believe it has quite a lot, depending completely on two very important assumptions.

1)  We are going to assume that God doesn’t decide to take us early, and therefore die a natural death.

2)  We are going to assume that we seek Christ with our whole heart and obey His Word and do really, really good stuff that equals gold, silver, and costly stones.

So, finally, we are about to reach the whole point of this article.

Take 2 people.  They are born on the same day.  They accept Christ on the same day when they are 9 years old.  Day by day, they do the same good works, in the same order, reach the same number of people for Christ, tithe on everything, etc.  They are both wonderful examples of Christ and obey Him equally.

The difference is this:  one died early of a heart attack at the age of 42 because he wasn’t healthy and did not take care of his body.  The other lived to be over 80 because his health was important to him, and he continued to obey the Lord.

Literally, it becomes a simple math problem.  If the unhealthy guy got X amount of reward in heaven, then the healthy guy MUST have received more, because of the additional 40 years of building up treasures in heaven!  It’s not that the unhealthy guy was a bad person.  He was a great person who loved the Lord with His whole heart!  He will still be unbelievably happy in heaven.  He just didn’t live as long, and so He just doesn’t receive as much.  He wasn’t able to show God’s love to as many people or win as many souls for Christ, only because he wasn’t alive as long.

So… like I said, when I left church that Sunday, I initially felt selfish.  Then, I remembered Jesus told us to store our treasures in heaven.  Finally, I realized that I have an entirely new reason and motivation for being healthy.

How do YOU feel?  Think about it objectively, and let me know what you think.

Take care, and may the Lord bless you immeasurably,

Jeremy Nelms

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