Weight Lifting

“For you know that when your faith is tested it stirs up power within you to endure all things. And then as your endurance grows even stronger it will release perfection into every part of your being until there is nothing missing and nothing lacking.” (James 1:3-4 TPT)

This morning I woke up early for a trail run. I thought about all the reasons why this workout was going to be hard: I had done several intense runs in the last few days and my legs were sore, I had not slept well, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to keep up with the other runners, etc. All of my excuses were legitimate, but they were not going to help me. I needed a different paradigm. I thought about a friend who does weightlifting. She intentionally adds heavy metal plates to the bar she is lifting. I decided to think of my burdens as weight plates. This allowed me to acknowledge that each of these factors added a degree of difficulty to what I was doing. I was choosing to do hard things, knowing each layer of resistance would make me tougher. 

When the burdens of life get to be overwhelming, our natural instinct is to become discouraged. The weight we carry is legitimate. However, dwelling on their heaviness is unproductive. We need to see each of these trials as weight plates that we add to our workout. When our faith is tested, it stirs up power within us to endure all things. And, as our endurance grows even stronger, it will release perfection into every part of our being.