Our Posture Matters

Our Posture matters, in our physical bodies, and especially in our spirits. When our physical posture is out of alignment, we can expect physical consequences. I have dealt with many issues with my back over the years, and have surgery scars to prove it. Our posture involves a combination of several things that we need to understand and keep in balance, in the physical and in the spiritual. 

My focus today is less on the consequences of being out of alignment, and more about how to regain and maintain our godly spiritual posture and balance. Let’s look at a few factors that help with godly alignment of our spiritual posture. 

Walking through life in genuine humility is one important key to finding and maintaining good spiritual posture. Balancing an understanding who we are and why we exist has many layers. Remembering that we are made from the breath of God with dust, while knowing our Creator Mandates us to rule over the earth, using His God given authority, requires balance. This tension between the two helps. Maintaining this aspect of our posture matters in our relationship with God and other people. We all have the same origin and mandate.

Most of us English speakers are familiar with the idiom, “your name is mud.” It means we have messed up and usually are in big trouble. For me it is another reference to dust, and that our bodies will be buried in dirt someday. We have all messed up and have consequences to deal with. That is the bad news but it is balanced by The Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of our Creator, who died on the cross to pay the eternal price for our sin. 

When we receive our Maker’s gift, we are redeemed and forgiven. We step into the eternal Kingdom already operating here, through the fulness of relationship with our Creator. We become His royal priesthood and the Holy Spirit lives in us. The Spirit inspires and empowers us to rule and reign, righteously according to the Creation Mandate. (Genesis 1:26-28)

Another pair we get to balance is learning how to passionately seek Creator and His ways without becoming stuck in routines. I love routine and routines can be helpful to train us in godliness. Too often human nature can pull our posture out of balance by depending on the routines and forms more than on our relationship with our Living God.

Do we understand our Creator is so much bigger, powerful, and loving than what we can understand? I find it helpful for me to occasionally pray prayers whose answers are so humanly unrealistic, that the answer can only come from above. Worshiping the Lord with reckless abandon like David did in 2 Samuel 6, is a way to get outside ourselves and push our limits of understanding of the love of God.

Learning and living in childlikeness, while being a warrior for the King of Kings, is another combination for us to find balance. Understanding and maintaining a level of innocence as we trust our Heaven Father, we learn about believing the best in people and situations. 

At the same time, we cannot forget how the first humans were birthed in the garden with free will. Our free will places us in the middle of the cosmic battle between trusting Our Maker and taking matters into our own hands, because of the lies of the enemy. We are eternally grateful for Jesus while we wrestle not with flesh and blood as we grow into maturity. 

Our posture of being humble, forgiven, royal, priestly, childlike-warriors matters. We are always in process along this marathon we call life. We are in the eternal Kingdom already, but we have not yet finished our race here. Yielding to, even resting in, the God of love, inviting Him to breathe holy life into and through us matters. In this process we make a difference here every day.

Join me in praying for our spiritual posture for ourselves and for those around us using Paul’s prayer:

“When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.”Ephesians 3:14-19 NLT