Not long ago, I’m not sure what I did to my shoulder, but it started to hurt so bad that I couldn’t lift it. It took about five days for my shoulder to feel better, and then my lower back was killing me. I could hardly stand up straight. I went to the doctor, who couldn’t find anything wrong, so he sent me to a physical therapist. After the physical therapist had me do a series of movements—reach to the side, bend over, stretch up—he said, “Victoria, your core is weak. You need to build up your inner core muscles that support the movements in your extremities and help your body move without injury. If you don’t start working on your core muscles, these injuries could become more frequent with time.” Then he gave me some exercises to strengthen my core.
That reminded me that we can look great on the outside, but we can be weak and weary on the inside. We have an inner man, and that inner man is the core of who we really are. It is our identity. It controls how we respond to life—our attitudes and our thoughts. When we have a strong inner man, it engages the rest of our life and helps our life become easier. In fact, some of the hurts that we suffer come because we’re not engaging our spiritual man, but rather our flesh. We are saying negative things about ourselves. We’re in strife with our spouse. We’re talking about how much we don’t like our job. We need to engage our inner core, our spiritual man, so we can quit having these unnecessary hurts. We need to take this command center, this spirit man, and walk in a posture of faith, of self-discipline, of confidence.
Paul prayed for the Ephesians “that God would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man” (Ephesians 3:16). The inner man is strengthened by God through the Spirit. We have to take time; we have 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 our inner man or we’ll be weak, undisciplined, and weary on the inside. Today I encourage you to develop your personal relationship with God on a daily basis. Make it a habit to renew and strengthen your inner man because that’s how your life will be transformed.