Building Strength

I recently worked out with my cousin, a veteran/physical trainer. What was probably a 45-minute light work out to her felt like a 2-hour slow death to me. She had me doing lunges, jumps, and thrusts…a bunch of words I did not do during my three days a week workout in the gym. As I struggled during the work out with her, I kept asking myself, “What have I been doing in the gym all this time?” because it was not clearly helping me during that moment. Joking it off, I told her, “I am clearly not doing something right.” As I laid collapsed on her floor, it hit me,

“You may have been losing weight, but you have not been building strength.”

 I did notice some improvements in my body weight, shape and figure but the strength was not there. Although I was doing weights and incorporating resistance in my cardio, I was not pushing beyond what was comfortable. Strength is accumulated through resistance, resistance beyond our comfort levels. Through this strength, we increase our levels of endurance.

These last couple of weeks, my spiritual walk and energy levels hit a plateau. In areas that required my most attention, I did not have the energy for: getting up at 5am to spend time with God, journaling, no desire to listen to worship, not compelled to watch sermons, not waking up in time to attend church, going to the gym, reading for leisure… nothing. I was just mentally drained and I couldn’t understand why. I kept saying prayers to God, asking for energy and the fruit of discipline and obedience, but it did not appear these things were coming forth. Then I realized, though I spent much time cleansing and removing ungodly thoughts and behaviors from my life, I was not building strength.

As with exercising, it takes consistency and resistance to build strength. The commands God had given me: waking up early, intentionally setting time aside to work on my blog and book, serves as the weights used to help build my spiritual strength. Therefore, when those hard times come, I will have the ability to resist and endure, building more strength. Initially these things, though inspiring and exciting, grew to be just another task on my list of things to do, I hit a plateau. Instead of trailing off, as with exercise, it was time to up the ante: incorporate more worship and sermons, anything that will increase my ability to resist, on top of what I was already doing.  

“The joy of the Lord is your strength.” Nehemiah 8:10

Now that I think about, He told me the extra weight to add on. Recently and what appeared to me as out of nowhere, God has been compelling me to start painting. To start expressing my joy of His word through learning how to paint in calligraphy. As you can see, the ways the Lord uses to strengthen our walk with Him are not so cut dry, black and white, “by the book”. They are innovative and endless.

My prayer for us is that as we hit a spiritual plateau, we seek the Lord for our next step; asking Him how much more we should add to the bar. We have clearly bore the fruit needed for that season and it is time for something new to take on. Jesus is there to spot us. I pray that we don’t trail off and see His commands as “more things to do”, this is reflective of a heart far from Him. I pray that we see them as new ways the Lord is seeking to reveal Himself to us, and with hearts that are near to Him, we obey and trust how much He has called us to lift.  

*Note: Want to get in shape at home?! Check out my cousin’s website for workout plans, practical meal preps and more! www.justtammya.com