Coaches know that serious athletes serve their time in the weight room, concentrating on becoming stronger. One measure of your growing strength is what the lifters call your bench press, how much you can lift over your head as you lie on a weight bench. I’ve seldom met a football player or weight lifter who’s content to keep the amount they can lift where it is. They’re always adding a little more weight to that bar. If your bench press is 170 pounds, you want to go to 180, 190. If you’ve been lifting 200, you work to get it to 210 or 220. Always pressing more.
It’s a principle of physical strength – and a principle in God’s gym as well. If you want to get stronger, you constantly have to be lifting something heavier than you’ve lifted before. God isn’t building biceps and triceps. He’s building the one kind of strength in us that opens up all He has for us. He’s building faith muscles – the ability to trust Him more than you’ve trusted Him before.
“Without faith it is impossible to please Him.” (Hebrews 11:6) If you’re just proceeding on the basis of what you can see, what you can figure out, what you can pull off, then God isn’t very happy with you. God’s will requires moving by faith, which is by God’s definition, “being certain of what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1)
You may have been wondering why God has allowed such a heavy burden into your life right now. It may very well be not that He’s unhappy with you, but that He loves you enough to help you become stronger than you’ve ever been before. He’s building your faith muscles. If He only trusted you with what you’ve lifted before, you’d only have as much faith as you’ve had before. And He’s growing you for greater things, for future battles, for more miraculous victories. But you have to serve your time in the weight room.
God’s your spotter. He won’t allow you to have more weight than you can handle right now. He’s promised that. But He will give you something heavier than you lifted before, so you can become more powerful in Him than you’ve ever been before.
Some, including me, have been content with our current weight. It’s been a long time since I’ve added weight to the bar. Some may not realize how important it is to stay in condition and gain strength. Others are overwhelmed by the weight, and won’t even try it. Some have walked away from the bar, saying weight lifting isn’t my bag.
Have you walked away from the weight bench?
(Continued next week – What’s our exercise regime?)
