The Barbell of Heaven

This teaching is so powerful, I simply must share.

I will preface prior to "preaching", that in every way I have been broken.  There is no wisdom here that I do not need to hear every minute of every day.  Sometimes, we just need to hear it from a different source to penetrate in a new way.  I was very humbled by this teaching, and at the same time completely encouraged!

You must break through the limit of your present capacity, in order to build greater capacity.  This particular teaching, was referring to manifesting God's kingdom.  I thought it was interesting that the process of building muscle was part of the illustration!

Training implies pain.  If you want to build a muscle, it's a process of tearing down the existing development to build a new capacity.   You condition muscle by exercise, you grow muscle by pushing past your current capacity.  It made me think of an instance over the weekend during a circuit training.  The weight was heavier than one of the girls had ever used in that particular exercise.  She had assessed her current capacity and had never tried to lift heavier.  The heavier weight was a challenge, but her new knowledge took her out of conditioning, and into growing!  And she was pretty excited about it!  Training will take you right up to the place of discomfort and push you past it to build!

If you are not willing to be uncomfortable, you will never grow.  Are you surrounded by people who reinforce your comfort zone?  Are you buried somewhere in the middle of someone ahead of you, and someone underneath you?  If you want to grow, you have to be intentional!  Break into relationship with someone who has achieved a measure of the success that you wish to achieve, and let them speak into your life with love, and listen!  And I am not just talking about weight training.  If you want to know God's glory, He can not play big, if you play small.

It is with much tribulation that we enter the kingdom (paraphrased) Acts 14:22   This is not for our defeat but to expand our capacity to manifest the potential inside of us!  We are sent into a battle we are ready for, yet would rather avoid!  Patience is developed through practice in trying situations.  We are set before people we can hardly tolerate to learn how to love.   Life is our holy sandpaper by which we learn how to grow in character.  How can we have faith for provision if we are never in need?

Stage one: The dream

Stage two:  Distress!!  It is the process of expansion!

Transformation is a process.  It is not made by continual perfection.  It is made by blowing it enough to know how to master it!  Mistakes are not failure.  If you have never failed, then you haven't been doing it enough!  Jesus trained the disciples for 3.5 years, and there were a few times, by his commentary, it was obvious, they were blowing it!

If your road is beset with side tracks, flops and fumbles, take heart!  You are on a path to being transformed if you allow it to be.  I have been tracking my food and exercise on Facebook for buddies of Boot Camp Academy 101.  I admit, the last few weeks I have had some major fumbles.  Keeping a record not only keeps me accountable, it hopefully sets an example, AND shows me where I am struggling myself.

I wish I could take credit for this teaching, I only put it into the context of what it meant to me with regard to fitness, I would need a whole other blog for what it meant to me spiritually!  I hope it will mean something to you too!  A little heavier that a quick fit tip or recipe, but lighter than a kick in the teeth, eh? Amen?  Amen!