Hardest Workout Ever

Burpees. The worst. 
Push ups? Wish I could. Not really. 

Does anyone really like working out? I know many do (or at least they say they do) because it’s all over every social media feed. I like the results from it, but the actual moving of limbs and contorting my body? Eh. It takes a really unique combination of circumstances to say I enjoy it in real time.  

What I’ve learned this year is that taking care of your body is a choice… but so is taking care of your mind. In a world where pain is more common than peace, we do have a choice. 

I’m on day 546 of hard. Definitely my longest season of hard yet, but I don’t point that out for a violin serenade. Some seasons of hard are brief, but most that test you to the core are not limited to a calendar year. When you lose someone, everyone says they’re sorry for a couple of weeks… but the hole doesn’t go away when the people do. Do you recover from a divorce quickly? Hardly. Does a disability or illness vanish? It can, but more often God gives us the grace to weather adversity rather than remove it. You get the point. 

So, what are our options? 

To exercise our minds or fall into a pit. 

Quite honestly, I have a hard time figuring out a third option. The way you think through your wilderness will be the greatest determining factor in the length and the success of your recovery. 

The good news? 

God will give you what you need. Every. Single. Day. He will not leave you. He will not forsake you. He'll give you direction where to leave the burden. Sometimes, He'll even give you people to lean on and encourage you to exercise your mind. Occasionally, He provides people to encourage us, but we don’t let them in. The amount of positive God sprinkles in our day is actually not as powerful as what we do with it. We must choose to see the good. 

There have been days when good things have happened that I’ve minimized. There are other days some smaller “God wink” carries me through. The difference is what I choose to dwell on. We must exercise our muscles of faith. We must stretch our minds to see with God’s heart-eyes. 

If you’re in a hard season, I want to urge you to take back control of your thoughts. God has given you the strength to resist a spirit of fear. He has given us His Word so we’re never without truth to feed our mind. 

Luke 10:19 tells us that the Lord gave His disciples authority to trample every serpent and scorpion and power over all evil so nothing can harm us. Don’t allow the enemy to use pain in this world to be weaponized to take you down. Pain will come. But our willingness to take our thoughts captive and exercise God’s authority is in our hands. 

I refuse to give the enemy any more than he's already taken. What about you?

Taking every thought captive is harder than any burpee, but what hangs in the balance is far greater than any muscle group or macro count.