Earlier this week Apple announced a new workout service, Apple Fitness+. It’s a very eye-catching and polished option for home workouts. You choose your own personal preference of workout type, trainer, length, and music. Here are some lines from their advertising:
- “New workouts every week.”
- “Work out how and where you want.”
- “Quickly and conveniently choose from a catalog of workouts. Flex your freedom of choice.”
- “Anywhere you want. Anytime you want.”
Sounds great! But it will fail. Oh, it won’t fail for Apple—they’ll make a ton of money. It will fail for a lot of users because of those advertising lines above. Getting fit is a commitment, but Apple created an appeal to convenience.
Perhaps you’ve heard Stephen Covey’s illustration of filling a bucket with the big rocks first and then putting all the little things around them (read it here or watch a video here). Fit people don’t consider fitness to be the little pebbles they squeeze into the convenient moments of their lives. Fit people consider fitness to be the big rock and they make everything else fit around it. Spiritually fit Christians have the same attitude as physically fit people. They consider the exercise of their faith to be the big rock of their lives and put it in the bucket first, making everything else fit around it.
If you want to get spiritually fit or stay spiritually fit, Jesus does not suggest a program of convenience or freedom of choice. In Luke 9:57-62 he told three would-be disciples they must be willing to make sacrifices, big ones, to follow him. The church of Jesus is not “anywhere you want, anytime you want.” The church does not promise “new workouts every week” to try and snag your fleeting attention. The church does not suggest you “flex your freedom of choice.” The truth is, the Christian faith is not convenient. In fact, it’s very inconvenient. That’s why it’s a commitment.
Though we fall short, our Savior did not. He followed through with total commitment to his mission—going to his death on a cross to win eternal life for us. As now he lives in our hearts by faith, he not only trains us up in the way we should go but also gives us his own power for commitment. No other choice of trainer and music can give us that kind of power.
The convenience message and slick technology is appealing advertising that will gain subscribers for Apple. And convenience is not wrong or sinful. It’s not wrong or sinful to play baseball on Sunday morning and then watch the worship show later when it is convenient for you. Committed people may reach down for convenience. But convenience is weaker and it begins the slippery slope to laziness, which is why so many home workouts ultimately fail. And so the church is ill-served to pursue an advertising campaign of convenience, because that attitude will fail to achieve the church’s mission—to make committed followers of Jesus. So the church will ask you to commit, to be inconvenienced because Jesus and the communion of saints is the biggest rock in your life.
The gym is here for you, come on in (and bring a friend!). May Jesus bless your workouts.