Strength Training at the Y

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I thought it was supposed to get easier. 

My husband and I are taking strength training at the YMCA.   Every student in the class starts with their own base weight, no matter how scant or heavy, lifting it over and over. But our instructor reminds us that these are progressive exercises.  Add a little more weight, a few more repetitions, strength upon strength.   One set of exercises, and then yet again.

Blessed are those whose strength is in You, in whose heart are the highways to Zion....They go from strength to strength.  Psalm 84. 5, 7  

But just when I feel like I am getting a handle on an exercise, feeling a little more confident, the routine changes up.  And it gets harder still. 

What if I'm wasting my time by doing this?  But what if I'm not?  One of our adversary's most powerful weapons is shouting at us, "It doesn't matter."  Just when it always does.

For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.  Hebrews 12. 11 

In strength training, running, hiking, and other pursuits, I have discovered over and over that the physical is always seamlessly woven with spiritual truth. "Look out for the Holy," said author and pastor Eugene Peterson. 

We don't just exercise our bodies, but our souls.  Discipline in any form extends over everything we do. When we can see discipline in light of eternity, we begin to do things differently,  In each repeated set of experiences, we learn how to stay faithful on repeat in giving hard grace to others, how to help with impossible and inconvenient tasks, or simply to find joy not in having to do something, but getting to.  And ultimately we realize that Jesus is the ultimate heavy-lifter of our souls.  

Strength training is not about us becoming stronger, but training us to go forth in His strength. Seek Me in in this. That's the kind of muscle we need to exercise.

Sometimes it is just plain hard to finish a repetition.  "Almost done," I repeat to myself. "Almost done.  Just one more."  A little more effort.  And that is how we get there.  God enlarges His strength in us, even when we don't yet realize it.  It resides in the daily rhythms and grows steadily in the everyday repetitions.  And gradually, oh so gradually, we find that we can do a little bit more.  As a writer friend told me this week, "I know there's redemption in this somehow." 

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.  Psalm 46. 1  

The difficulties we face are rare and holy opportunities to seize, grow, and learn to respond differently.  God skillfully weaves the deep and glorious in what we are going through.  What we read in Scripture rewires us.  What we pray -- even for others-- forms something new in us. God's strength allows us to respond differently when the road gets tough and the barbells of life even heavier.  Not pridefully claiming "I can do this," but realizing He does.

Progressively harder.  Progressively longer.  Progressively stronger.  Repetitive exercises are not random,  but get us ready not just for tomorrow, but what is right now before us.  far beyond what we can imagine. We have no idea what is coming. My friend Elizabeth reminds me "Everything is always layered with more meaning than I can know."

There is a grace in that.  There is His strength for that. 

For precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, and there a little.  Isaiah 28. 10

And before we know it, we are not there yet, but getting there. 

Our help is in the LORD our God who made heaven and earth.  Psalm 124. 8  That is what strength training does. Realizing that truth.