Victoria Osteen - Strengthen Your Inner Man
You know, it's interesting that there's so much information out there bombarding us on how to take care of our physical bodies. How to eat right, what supplements to take, if you read articles, they're saying you need to get in this many hours of sleep, do your exercises, just so many ways, these days, to take care of our physical bodies, and that is so important. Our physical bodies are a temple to house our spirit. It's the temple of God, so we need to take care of our bodies the best we can.
You know, you can have, though, a very strong physical appearance outside. You can look really great on the outside, but you can be weak and weary on the inside. You see, we have an inner man, and that inner man is the core of who we really are. That inner man is how we respond to life. Not long ago, I hurt my shoulder so bad that I literally couldn't lift it. It was crazy, I couldn't believe it was happening to me, but my muscles just weren't firing. Something I had done, I just must have moved a funny way, I don't know, but my shoulder was hurting so bad.
Now, you all, I am not telling you all my woes, okay? I'm making a point. About the time my shoulder started feeling good, it took about five days for my shoulder to feel good, I got up the next morning so excited, and my back, my lower back was killing me. I could hardly even bend up. I thought, "What is happening to me? I'm falling apart, this can't be".
So, I went to the doctor, I said, "Doctor, I mean, I don't know what's going on with me", and I began to tell him what was happening. He gave me an X-ray, he looked me over, checked me over, and he said, "You know, I'm going to write you a prescription to the physical therapist". He said, "It doesn't look like that any of your muscles are tore, your discs seem to be fine, nothing's bulging, nothing's happening, you need to go to a physical therapist". So, I went to the physical therapist, and I gave him my paperwork, and I was like, "This is what the doctor said, look at it, and maybe you can help me out".
So, he was reading the instructions that the doctor gave him, and then he began to ask me to do a few movements, just daily movements, things we do all the time, reach to the side, bend over, stretch up, just some different things, walk back, walk forth, then he looked right at me and he said, "Victoria", he said, "Your core is weak". He said, "You need to build up your inner core muscles". He said, "You know, when we go through the day, we feel like that, you know, our extremities do all the work. So, we'll grab something, we react to something", and he said, "But really, if you have a strong core, it engages your core first, and then your core helps your body move without injury", and he said, "If you don't engage and start working on this core", he said, "These injuries could become more frequent and they could get worse with time".
Do you know that's how our inner man works? See, our inner man is the core of who we are, it's our identity. Our inner man controls our attitudes and it regulates our thoughts. See, when we have a strong inner man, it engages the rest of our life and helps our life become easier. In fact, the injuries that we suffer sometime is because we're not engaging our spiritual man. We're saying things we shouldn't, we're in strife with our spouse, we're pushing our children away, we're not liking our job, so it's not helping us any, because, see, our extremities are doing it, it's called the flesh. We need to engage this inner core, this spiritual man, so that we can quit having these unnecessary injuries. We do not want them to be frequent in our life. We want to take this command center, this spirit man, and we want to walk in a posture of faith. We want to walk in a posture of self-discipline, of confidence.
See, that's exactly what happens when you engage your core muscles. He said it helps you posture yourself, it helps you find the strength to move throughout your day. My physical therapist said if you will do these exercises I'm about to give you and show you, then this will help you tremendously. He showed me how to do the plank, all different ways to do the plank. He showed me a few other exercises, and he said now do those exercises and they'll help you. You see, if I do these exercises, if I make a habit of doing them, if I find space in my day to do them, and take time to do them, they will help me. But if I don't, it's going to stay the same. I'm going to stay weak in my core.
You see, Paul prayed for the Ephesians in chapter 3:16, and he prayed this, he prayed that they would be strengthened with God's power through his spirit in their inner man. You see, Paul talked a lot about the outer man and the inner man in his writings. The inner man is strengthened by God through the spirit. You see, we have got to make time, we have got to find room in our busy lives to let the Spirit of God minister life to us, to be touched by the Word of God and the very presence of Almighty God, because that's what strengthens our inner man. We cannot neglect this inner man. We don't want to look fine on the outside but be weak, undisciplined, weary, our soul on the inside.
You see, so I want to encourage us and challenge us today to find that personal relationship with God on a daily basis. Make it a habit to renew and strengthen your inner man, because that's how it's going to happen, and if we don't, we're going to stay the same. You see, we need to read the Word of God. We need to decide that God's word is the living, breathing Word of God, and mixed with his spirit, it feeds our inner man. You see, Joel's dad used to say it like this, he used to say, "Some people feed their physical bodies three hot meals a day, but they feed their inner man one cold snack a weak". Inner man is going to make you strong. That's where we're going to get our strength.
I love what it says in John 1:1, it says, "In the beginning", before it all began, "Was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God". When you spend time opening your Bible and getting in the word, you're spending time with God. Ask him, ask him to speak to you through his word. Ask him to develop this relationship with him. Say "God, I want to have a personal relationship with this invisible God", because he may be invisible, but his rich blessings are quite visible in our life. They will manifest in strength and power.
So, my encouragement to you today is get some scriptures, put them on your mirror, put them on your refrigerator, meditate on the Word of God. Get it in you when you don't need it so it'll come out of you when you do need it. Listen, build your personal relationship with God. I know that he loves you and he's a great father. He's not looking at what you're doing wrong, he's looking at what you're doing right. He doesn't want to condemn you, that's not his job, his job is to convince you how special you are to him through his love. I believe when we strengthen our inner man, we'll find that renewed vitality and we'll find that power of God in our soul, amen?