5 Things Strength Training Taught Me About Spiritual Growth
God uses our life experiences to teach us and grow us
When I was in high school, like many young men, I wanted to get bigger, stronger, and faster so I could be better at sports; especially football.
When one of our coaches opened up a summer weight lifting program, I joined immediately. I’ve never stopped.
Missionaries and pastors haven’t always had a reputation for consistent workouts (that has changed over the years). I saw the benefits and have made working out a regular part of my routine for decades now.
The Bible often uses everyday examples to teach spiritual lessons. Working out is one of them.
“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.” (1 Corinthians 9:24–27, ESV)
Paul uses training and athletics to teach spiritual truths.My lifting capacity for every exercise tripled within just 2 years of strength training.
Here are 5 lessons I’ve learned from strength training that help with spiritual growth.
1. You can get much, much stronger.
It is very common that the average person can increase their strength by 300%.
After 2 years of strength training, I could triple my lifting capacity in every exercise. If I started out lifting 50 lbs, I was now lifting 150. If I started with 100, I was now doing 300.
That is pretty amazing, but it is very common.
The same is true of spiritual growth. I remember when I first started learning to pray. I prayed for everything I could think of in 5 minutes.
After a few years, I could pray for hours.
When I first came to Christ, I did not know what God was like or why I existed. Within a few years, my understanding and experience of God’s character and my life’s purpose expanded greatly..
With weight training, however, at some point we cannot physically get stronger. We have genetic limits. There is no one who keeps getting stronger forever, otherwise human beings would be bench pressing 10 tons. That just doesn’t happen.
But with spiritual growth, we never have to stop growing. There is always something new or deeper in God. We keep growing from “glory to glory” in God. (2 Corinthians 3:18, ESV)
2. It’s a balance between stress and rest
When you lift a weight, you stress the body. The goal is to increase how much we lift gradually, which forces the body to adapt and become stronger.
What many don’t realize is that the body doesn’t get stronger when doing the exercise itself. Strength training is a stimulus.
The body gets stronger during the rest time after stimulating the muscles. That’s why there is a sweet spot we have to experiment to find.
If we work out a muscle too soon, before it has recovered, then we don’t get stronger. If we give the muscle enough time to build back up and compensate for the stress; then we experience growth.
It is possible to train too much.
There is a similarity to spiritual growth. God is not working in every area of our life, all at the same time. He knows how we are made. He understands that working n 30 different areas of our life at once would overwhelm us.
He focuses on growing, training a few areas of our life, maybe even just one area at a time.
He knows we can only handle so much growth “stress” at a time, so He builds in stressors to stimulate growth, but also rest times.
James 1 tells us “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for YOU KNOW that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete lacking in nothing.” (James 1:2–4)
The testing or stressing of our faith produces amazing results. Who doesn’t want to be perfect, complete and lacking in nothing? That’s what the stressing of our faith produces, so we can rejoice. We can rejoice when we KNOW that fact.
But aren’t you grateful that these faith tests are not all day, every day?There are seasons of testing and seasons of rest.
Working out stresses the body. Resting builds it. God knows how to do that perfectly in our spiritual growth and we can work with Him when we know it too.
3. Consistency matters
You do not have to strength train every day, but it needs to be consistent. No one gets stronger, working out once every three months.
The same is true with spiritual growth. Jesus taught us to pray for our “daily bread.” (Matthew 6:10)
It’s better to spend 15 minutes a day in devotions than once a month for several hours.
4. The fastest gains come early
If we apply the right stress with the right frequency for our bodies, we will see the greatest improvements in the first two years of working out.
We can still see smaller improvements for years to come, but at the beginning, noticeable results come much faster.
When I came to Christ, I had a lot of very noticeable sins. Those “visible” sins were quickly repented of, and removed from my life.
But the deeper work of God, that goes into thoughts,motives,internal beliefs and responses, typically takes longer and are less visibly noticeable to us and others.
God is always working in our lives, but the internal changes that allow for greater growth in Christlikeness are slower to see and observe; but they are happening.
5. You can’t work off a poor diet
Did you know an average person has to run the equivalent of a marathon in order to burn off just ONE pound of fat?
I wish I could just workout more to lose weight, but I don’t have the time or energy to run a marathon three times a week to lose three pounds.
Most adults in the western world want to lose weight. Strength training helps because every pound of muscle we add burns more calories. Muscle takes more energy to maintain.
But no matter how much we exercise, we can’t out exercise a poor diet. If we want to lose weight, at least 80% is diet and 10–20% is exercise.
The same is true spiritually. No matter how hard we work at serving God and trying to live godly lives, if we are eating spiritual junk food, we won’t get healthy.
To get in spiritual shape, to be spiritually healthy requires a good spiritual diet.
Regularly studying and meditating on Scripture is an absolute essential for everyone. Jesus said, “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4, ESV)
God’s word is essential for spiritual health.
Garbage in, garbage out strongly applies to our spiritual growth.
Those are five of the things I’ve learned about spiritual growth in strength training and working out. There are many more.
What is God teaching you through your experiences?
If you’re interested in more spiritual growth resources, including a free, short book on how to grow spiritually when life is moving fast, head over to www.TruVineMission.com
