Spiritual Biceps

Ever since high school, working out has been a big part of my life; not only because I enjoy it, but the satisfaction that I get after a hard work out is hard to match.  When I entered into college, I thought that I knew a lot about working out and that my muscles were well trained. Well, I sure was wrong!  I realized that I was lacking, in what I never considered major muscles, my biceps.  Despite all of the sports that I was involved in during high school, I never had to develop my biceps!

Faith can be compared to working out.  When we leave one muscle group or aspect of spirituality out of our lives, the rest of the areas are affected by that weak link.  I realized that reading Scripture was my spiritual bicep and it needed to be worked on.  As I worked on my physical biceps, I realized that I could lift more weight as I used different muscle groups. This became a domino effect and allowed my whole body to get stronger.  As I dove deeper into Scripture, different aspects of my faith life began to grow in ways I had never known. I felt the Holy Spirit’s presence more than ever before. 

 It’s easy to get caught up in what we enjoy doing as we are strong in these areas.  However, if things were meant to be easy, everyone would be doing them.  If you enjoy working out, like I do, you know that finishing that last rep or adding weights isn’t easy; it is a struggle that sometimes feels like we can’t complete. If I was to only use weights and repetitions that I was comfortable with, I would never get stronger.  As we get stronger in our faith, we need to start piling on the prayers. God is our spotter. When the weight is too much that we can’t handle, He is there to grab it off of us. The most important thing is to not get discouraged when it seems that all of the weight is on us and we can’t lift it.  God is there!  He is constantly helping us so that we are still lifting the weight, even though we may not notice His presence.  What good is it if God relieved all the weight from us on His own? How would we grow? God will never give us more then we can handle.