Today, Dream

Jesus, You Are MyAll In All. Happy Monday everyone. Hope you had a good weekend. We did. Yesterday I took Loretta to the beach so she could celebrate her birthday. Fun times. We love going to the water as often as possible. Seems it's where we do our best dreaming. Pursuing God's best for our lives and living that dream is our week's theme. Hope you check-in each day. I'll want your feedback as well as the opportunity to let the community pray for you in your pursuits.

Thing about dreams is that they don't always mean smooth sailing or clear vision. But if we're following God's will for our lives, it will always be an opportunity to demonstrate our allegiance to Him. I'm pretty excited about the theme. Loretta asked me to begin with the dream that God placed on my heart nearly 7 years ago.

Twist my arm. Ok. (I love telling this story, and forgive me if you know how this ends.) Whenever I'm speaking to groups around the country, I seldom miss an opportunity to share it. Years ago as I sat in my office as the worldwide Fitness Director at Muscle & Fitness magazine, I was editing an article that needed to get out the door ASAP, when I heard a noise from across the indoor atrium. It was Joe Weider -- the founder of bodybuilding and fitness -- leaving his office for the night.

At the time, Joe was in need of a walker as well as a nurse to get around. As he walked out of his office, I watched him as he made his way down the hall and directly in front of a bronze statue of himself from his younger prime -- arms folded, chest puffed, chin high. Captured in time, a bronzed Joe Weider, now merely a backdrop of a struggling reality. In one rare moment, I was an eyewitness to two bookends of the same man. The sight caused me to sit back in my chair. Right then the Holy Spirit whispered to my heart, "It's not about the body." I thought to myself, What's a Christian exercise physiologist to do with such a realization? One of the top fitness experts in the country with one of the nicest titles in the industry, a few celebrity books under my belt and more on the way, I immediately realized a strange hollowness and deadness in my work. I wanted to make an impact on people's lives, and I was hungry for a legacy that would honor the Lord in my area of expertise. It's a moment I will never forget. I started to dream.

I will always be in Joe's debt for giving me my very first writing job out of graduate school and then for the honor of being the fitness expert to his magazines. But while he did so much for the temporary body of a country, I will forever remember him struggle down that hall, fighting for every step. God used his loss of movement to help inspire one. I called it PrayFit.

Again, this week is about pursuing God's best for our lives and living that dream to its fullest. And as we'll see tomorrow from one of God's Biblical examples, sometimes that means the pits and other times it means the peak. See you tomorrow.

--Jimmy Peña

For Discussion: I began today's message with 'Jesus You Are My All In All.' That means He's the treasure we seek. He's the goal. I tell ya, the older I get the more I realize how little I've meant that statement over the course of my life. I can get so caught up in my dreams that I forget to trust the Giver of it. Are you like me? Am I alone? What can you and I do to make sure that as we diligently strive to live this life, we make sure it's His approval we're after? It's gonna be a good week. Dream, on.