Swole with Conceit & Blackbeard's Bounty Hunter

🔎In This Fit Tip Friday 

Inside you'll find:

• Tip: Swole with conceit

• Finds: Why am I gaining weight after working out? (and more)

• Story: Blackbeard’s bounty hunter

• Quote: What Ben Franklin thought of Blackbeard’s bounty hunter

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🪞Swole with Conceit

The physical results of stewarding your body well are both natural and good.

• They are natural in that your body responds to exercise, rest, and eating well with physical results, created within God’s order.

• The results are good in the sense that God was the one who designed your body this way.

Building muscle and strength through stewarding your body wasn’t an accidental design flaw. This is how God created the body.

But sin’s pattern is to distort the natural and the good. And with fitness, there’s a particular temptation to conceit.

In 2 Timothy 3:4, Paul warns Timothy of difficult times ahead, and lists conceited men amongst the warnings:

Conceit is a self-exalting, self-adoring, self-worshipping attitude of the heart. This inflated view of self is what 2 Timothy 3:4 describes.

The word used for conceit in 2 Timothy 3:4 is a verb metaphor that takes the concept of rising smoke and uses it to describe someone who is inwardly puffed up with it.

The conceited man is swole… but not with substance. With smoke.

But the solution to conceit is found within the problem.

Conceit is misdirected worship.

Conceit aims adoration towards self. We were created to worship God, to steward our bodies for His glory, and to use all of our physical strength to love Him (Luke 10:27).

Click here to read the full article I wrote on this

🔎Finds This Week

Here are some of my favorite finds this week:

• Why am I gaining weight after working out? (Forbes article)

• Fit for what? The spiritual habit of physical exercise (desiringGod article)

• This pesto & turkey sandwich on Ciabatta bread (Nutritionix recipe)

• Why your weight can fluctuate a few pounds every day (Healthline article)

• If I could use one fitness tool for the rest of my life it would be a kettlebell (Fit & Well article)

• Fitness trend: Home gyms have a leg-up over gym memberships (Civic Science article)

• Kettlebell Tip of the Day: Mastering the Clean, Part 1 (Youtube video)

🏴‍☠️ Blackbeard’s Bounty Hunter

Click here to read the following post online

Stories of strength, heroes, risk takers, and bravery inspire us to get off the couch and get into action. This is one of the reasons I share a story in every newsletter.

This week’s story features a man who received an assignment that would have made most men resign and certainly all men feel the rush of fear in their gut.

This is the story of Lieutenant Robert Maynard.

Maynard was born in 1684. He joined the English Navy, and served as a British Royal Navy officer as a third lieutenant.

When Maynard was 34, he was tasked with hunting the pirate Blackbeard.

Edward Teach, infamously known as Blackbeard, was a pirate who roamed the Caribbean up to the eastern coast of Britain’s North American colonies.

Blackbeard looted merchant ships up and down the Caribbean and Atlantic. He built wealth through thievery, and built his reputation through his appearance.

• He was tall, broad-shouldered, and wore his thick beard long. He often braided it in pigtails, tying it with colored ribbons

• He lit slow-burning candles under his hat, so that smoke seemed to rise from his figure

• In battle, he wore several pistols slung over his shoulders, with a long coat of bright colored velvet or silk

As one man described him:

In 1718, Maynard found the pirate on the island Ocracoke, off the coast of North Carolina. He entered the channel at daybreak, but was spotted by the Blackbeard and his crew, and a battle ensued.

Blackbeard was a calculating commander. Even with the surprise, he regrouped his men, turned his cannons against Maynard’s boats, and in an instant killed a third of Maynard’s party. Blackbeard latched onto Maynard’s boat with grappling hooks, launched an assault of grenades, then boarded the ship.

Maynard appeared to be left with only a few men at the stern. But Maynard had wisely hid most of his crew under the ship, and at his signal, Maynard’s crew came up on deck and surprised Blackbeard.

Blackbeard and Maynard engaged in 1/1 combat. Both shot at each other, Blackbeard missing, but Maynard hitting his target. But this seemed to have no effect on Blackbeard, who drew his sword and broke Maynard’s cutlass.

While Blackbeard was about to deliver the death blow, one of Maynard’s crew members jumped on his back and injured him. Soon, Blackbeard was finished by Maynard and other members of the crew.

As the story goes, Blackbeard’s head was placed on a pole at the entrance to Chesapeake’s bay, as a warning to pirates.

It’s said that Blackbeard’s head was there for years.

👍 Did You Like What You Read?

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I also enjoy hearing about what others are doing with their health and fitness. Hit reply and let me know what you’re working on.

I’ll see you next week.

Be strong,

Don

P.S… I launched the Kettlebell Strength System last week, which is a program that helps Christian guys lose 10+lbs with at-home kettlebell workouts.

And there are only 5 spots left.

If you want to learn more, click here.