Striving and straining for the weight of glory is the best workout you can have.
Lately I have been thinking about the physical aspects of my life. I have never been very good in sports. I recently had this confirmed by one of those commercial DNA tests. The company tested my muscle composition and told me that my composition was uncommon in elite power athletes. No surprise there. I guess that’s why I have normally enjoyed long distance running versus sprinting and other fast-twitch muscle type exercise.
About three years ago, I transferred to a job where lifting weights was beneficial to my job performance. I also learned that my father was suffering from osteoporosis, so I decided to start strength training on a regular basis.
I looked at a variety of sources and decided that I needed to actually build strength for health and for my profession. I started doing compound weight-lifting exercises with light weight initially. At first, I thought it was easy, and I was able to finish my workouts very quickly.
It didn’t take long for the workouts to catch up with me, though.
I suddenly found myself having to deal with heavy weights. The lift that I hate/love the most is squats. I found myself dreading my workouts because the weights would feel like they were crushing me into the ground!
As I squat with an obscene (to me!) amount of weight on my back, I realize a simple truth: I could not think about anything other than the big heavy weight on my back that was going to crush me into the ground if I lost focus on it.
I began to ponder this, and I realized that God wants us to focus on Him in the same manner I need to focus on the weight on my back. God wants to be so big in our lives that everything else seems small to us. He wants us to focus on Him, so that we can survive through our daily struggles in this sinful world. He calls us to His glory that makes this world fall into obscurity. Our lives and our struggles are absorbed by His grandeur as His Kingdom became bigger and bigger in our lives.
I discovered Isaiah 26.3, that expressed the mindset I had reinforced through the squat, “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you” (ESV).
God wants us to be totally focused on Him, so that we may have perfect peace as we walk through this world. I know I fail in this daily when I allow my daily events to overwhelm me. God wants to be the “heavy squat” – the weight of His glory – in our lives, directing us to focus on Him.
With Him in focus, every other thing in our lives achieves its proper perspective.