If you're like most people, you probably have a drawer
or two or three of old T-shirts.
You know, the ones from the run/walk you did back in 2009,
or the bar league volleyball T-shirt that you have with the clever name
from your buddy from college. Most T-shirts we don't wear,
we stick them in drawers. But I want to tell you today about
a T-shirt that I hope makes a big impact in a lot of ways.
Time of Grace is offering T-shirts that can
be yours if you request one through your donation.
A generous donor has offered to match, dollar for dollar, the first
$1,000 that we collect through these T-shirts.
And our hope is to spread the Gospel of God's timeless truth
to more and more people in the year to come.
We pray that your donation helps people understand Jesus,
his unconditional love and his crazy mercy.
And we pray that as you wear this T-shirt around, maybe someone asks,
"What's Time of Grace?"
And we don't want you to tell them just about a ministry
or website. We want you to tell them about the real reason,
the real roots of what we do:
God's grace,
the crazy love that just doesn't quit,
the joy that we have every morning because Jesus still cares,
he's still for us and he's not against us.
So we pray that we can give you some great fashion this summer.
Even more, we pray that you can give one more way for us to spread
God's amazing grace.
If you're part of a health club, you can guess that 20 million people practice yoga a year.
So the question is not, "Is yoga popular?"
The question that I get, "Is it okay for a Christian to practice yoga?"
Now, there's different types of yoga.
On the one side we have a purely physical form which is called Ashtanga yoga.
Ashtanga yoga is usually a series of poses that are linked together very closely
or you might see it in your gym as power yoga.
Those can be completely separate.
However, the most popular form of yoga is called Hatha yoga.
So, this is not to be confused with hot yoga but you could practice hot Hatha yoga.
Hatha yoga is spelled H-A-T-H-A.
This is the most common in your gyms and around the country.
Hatha yoga has a long history of being very closely intertwined with Hindu worship.
And the purpose of Hatha yoga, through this series of poses, meditation and discipline,
And the purpose of Hatha yoga, through this series of poses, meditation and discipline, is to connect your true self, your Atman they call it,
is to connect your true self, your Atman they call it,
with your divine, kind of this interpersonal spirit called "Brahman."
For a lack of a better term, it's like the force in Star Wars.
You're trying to connect yourself with the Brahman.
And, in fact, yoga itself means a yoke or bonding.
So where does this put us as a Christian?
While it might be possible to practice just the physical aspects of yoga,
maybe you go to your gym and they don't mention anything about meditation and
they simply go through a series of poses, you could probably do that.
However, the most popular form, Hatha yoga may use terms like, "connecting to the divinity within you,"
" your inner self,"
or "focusing on your third eye for healing."
Anything like that is just as integral a part to the Hindu religion and its practice
as bowing and worshiping five times a day in an Islamic mosque.
Now ask yourself this,
Would you go five times a day to an Islamic mosque if it made you more fit?
I think you'd say no.
So now ask yourself a little bit different.
Would I go to yoga three times a week, even though it's directly connected, in many cases, to Hindu worship?
I think you know your answer.
Our battle is not against the physical, our body.
Our battle really is against spiritual forces and when it comes to your own spirituality,
there's other ways to get fit rather than glorifying a practice of a fake religion.
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