A complete spiritual workout

Your soul needs to be trained in multiple dimensions, just like your body does.

At a gym, you don’t just lift weights. You need:

Strength training (resistance work)
Flexibility work (stretching)
Endurance training (cardio)
Team play (working together)

Your soul needs the same.

Trexo organizes Christian practice into Four Dimensions of Closeness with God:

1. Orientation towards God

Practices: Hearts Up!, Sabbath

‘Worship’ is the technical term for orienting yourself toward God. Before anything else, we remember: God is God. And I am not.

Worship means re-orienting ourselves constantly toward God’s presence and power. It means lifting our gaze from the downward pull of anxiety, shame, distraction, and busyness. And fixing our attention on what’s real: God’s presence and power.

Hearts Up! (Sursum Corda) is our daily reset button. It comes from the earliest Eucharistic prayers (many of us have said this hundreds of times):
“Lift up your hearts.”
“We lift them to the Lord.”

In Latin, Sursum Corda literally means “Hearts up!” It’s not just a energizing slogan (though it is that…). It is literally the words and the orientation that our brothers and sisters used thousands of years ago.

We can say it anywhere, anytime: when we wake, when anxiety strikes, when we’re about to react in anger.

It’s the quickest way to remember what’s real.
Sabbath is your weekly rest. One day each week:
- stop working
- stop the busyness
- stop thinking the world will stop turning if we don’t get this one thing done…
  
  … and practice resting in God’s eternal changelessness.
  
  In our rest we declare:
  “I trust God. I’m not the center of the universe. God’s will is being done.”

2. Communication with God

Practices: Jesus Prayer, Bodily Prayer

Prayer is the technical term for communicating with God.

Prayer and worship - communication and orientation - are the absolute bedrock of life with God.

The goal - the exercise - is to stay in continuous dialogue with God throughout our lives.

The Jesus Prayer (”Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”) is the ancient Christian method for praying without ceasing. We strive to say it dozens of times each day: while walking, working, eating, waiting. It becomes the background hum of your consciousness: I’m talking with God. Always.
Bodily Prayer integrates our whole self into this conversation. When we kneel, cross ourselves, lift our hands, bow - our body becomes the prayer.

We’re not fragmenting spirit from body. We are whole in our relationship with God.

3. Communion with God

Practices: Eucharist, Vigil

Worship and prayer prepare us for something deeper: actual encounter with the risen Christ.

Eucharist is where Christ makes Himself sacramentally present to you in the breaking of bread and sharing of wine.
It isn’t memory or symbol. It is real presence.

We receive Jesus’ body and blood, and we’re incorporated into his body, the church.

(This practice also includes the Agape Meal: a lay-led meal of thanksgiving and fellowship, which you can do at home, or other settings. And we invite you to be present with a church community to receive the Eucharist.)
Vigil is deliberate wakefulness - especially when we don’t want to be awake! During Advent (our upcoming focus), we will stay awake with Jesus, watching for the light of the world, anticipating his coming again.

We will practice the cosmic and transcendent posture of the Christian: watching, waiting, ready for Christ’s return.

4. Surrender to God

Practice: Fasting

The deepest dimension of closeness to God requires complete honesty: I cannot do this alone. I need God more than I need food.

Fasting is when you deliberately abstain from food for a spiritual purpose.

It’s not punishment. It’s not dieting. It’s training.

Each time you feel hunger, you’re reminded:
I depend on God for my very existence.

Our hunger for food reminds us of our hunger for God.

Fasting trains us to listen to the voices inside us - and hear the voice of God, loudest of all.

The Workout: A Rule of Life

These four dimensions and their exercises form a complete, personalized Workout.

The ancient monastic Christians called this a Rule of Life:

a set of practices, guidelines, and rhythms that governs daily life.

Not just our spiritual lives - our whole lives.

Trexo practices are meant to be the grounding and center of everything we do: our work, our relationships, our community, our play.

At the center of life itself is the all-powerful, everlasting love of God.

And our Trexo Workout - our Rule of Life - keeps us oriented to that center. Just like the earliest Christians.