The Importance of Intention

I am now two days into a 12-week commitment to eat well and exercise regularly. It was my daughter's idea. She emailed me a "Body for Life" plan with guidelines for food choices, cardio exercise and strength training. "What do you think?" she asked.

After work we discussed the plan and what it would mean for our schedules. The next day I went shopping for "approved" foods and then, on the morning of October 1st, we were up early, took turns on the treadmill and shared a breakfast of egg white omelets, multi-grain toast and the first of our 10 cups of water for the day.

It struck me that this change of daily habits and the benefits over twelve weeks are due to one thing: intention. William Law, the Puritan writer, observes, "If you will stop and ask yourself why you are not so devoted as the primitive Christians, your own heart will tell you that it is neither through ignorance nor inability but purely because you never thoroughly intended it." (Serious Call, p. 22).

Intention, like the tongue in James chapter 3, steers a life like "a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go."