Growth

Restarting fitness can be a daunting task, primarily because we try to do too much too fast. The fast approach to fitness often leads to failure. We get too tired and sore, dreading our upcoming workouts, until we give up because working out is too hard. This is what happens to many people who join gyms in January. They begin with high hopes, go hard for 6-8 weeks and then lose the desire to continue, mostly out of frustration. Frustration usually falls into one of three categories: they don’t see the results they were hoping to have 6 weeks ago, their bodies hurt too much from past injuries or they can’t think of any new workouts. This boom bust cycle can be prevented. When we take a slower approach to fitness our bodies have ample time to adjust to our new routines. When we go slow we can feel the changes in our body taking place. We have time to notice these subtle changes because we aren’t looking for a quick external change. Our measure of fitness becomes how our body feels versus how our body looks. When we focus on how our body feels, and give our body time to adapt and change, our external appearance takes care of itself. The key to external fitness is internal fitness. Try to sell that in an infomercial J

We live in an externally driven world. We have the perception that our external appearance shows our internal qualities. To some degree this is true, who we are manifests itself in our physical bodies and our internal struggles have external results. But the sum total of a person is not in their external appearance or visible qualities, it’s on the inside, a place most of us will never see. Man looks at external appearances, but God looks at the heart.

Too often we get caught up in appearances and never get to a place where we can see someone’s heart. Looking at a heart is difficult; we don’t often get a clear picture. Looking at a heart requires listening, discernment and dialogue. We need to listen so we can understand how and why someone behaves the way they do. We need to discern whether or not that person is telling the truth and is taking responsibility for their decisions. We need to stay in dialogue to notice changes in someone’s heart, for healthy hearts are not static.

Imagine looking at someone’s heart is like a workout routine. When we listen, that’s one workout. We get a decent picture of what that person is capable of at that point in time. Discernment would be the process and experience of a trainer evaluating the workout, deciding how much effort the athlete gave, pointing out any weaknesses, recommending adjustments or modifications. Dialogue is evaluating multiple workouts over time, adjusting training tips and methods as the athlete grows. Multiple evaluations give us a clearer picture of an athlete’s true fitness. It helps us recognize and compensate for unfavorable results. When we train with someone long enough we can recognize physical factors like sore muscles, lack of sleep, not enough food, life stress and illness. Without the experience of multiple workouts, we can’t give an honest evaluation. An athlete’s 100% while they are sick isn’t the same as 100% while they are healthy. If we evaluated an athlete when they were sick, and used that evaluation to make judgments about their fitness, we would be wrong about what that person is capable of. We would have accurately assessed them for one day, but have missed out on their potential and their heart.

In my quiet time I’ve finished reading three of the four gospels. I’ve been evaluating Jesus parables about spiritual growth and comparing them with the growth of the disciples. In the gospels the disciples aren’t very talented; their spiritual results are pretty anemic; it’s clear that although they spent time with Jesus, they didn’t understand his message. The gospels paint a weak picture of the disciples. They fear and worry, they ask Jesus to bless what shouldn’t be blessed, they try to steer him to more important people, etc. They miss the kingdom of God, even though it’s right under their noses. The Pharisees and teachers of the law also fit in the same boat. They don’t understand the kingdom of God and actively plan against it. If I were to make an evaluation of both the disciples and the Pharisees, they both get spiritual F’s. But the story doesn’t end with the gospels, it continues on.

There is an amazing transformation that happens in the disciples. They go from spiritual weaklings to spiritual greats. They go from failure after failure to unbelievable success. They suddenly get what the gospels are about, who Jesus is, what he came for and how that’s supposed to transform their lives. When they understand who Jesus is their actions transform as well; they had to understand who Jesus is before they could change. They had to understand him before they could experience success.

In contrast to the disciples, the Pharisees don’t change. They still oppose the gospel because it threatens the world they’ve created in their own image. They maintain where they are at because it’s too challenging to give everything up and start over. Even though they work out their spiritual muscles every day, they’ve reached a plateau, one they cannot break by their continuous routines. They needed the change only realizing Jesus can bring.

Changing our spiritual attitudes is just as difficult as changing our physical bodies. It takes effort to change. We have to be willing participants in our own change; it’s not a passive process. When we internally change our focus, our externals dramatically and drastically change. Not just for ourselves, but for the people around us. When we internally change, there are visible external changes. If there are no external changes, then it’s possible there have been no internal changes as well. It’s easy to get bogged down in poor workout routines and be overcome by our own state of unhealthiness. But when we focus on where we want to go, and don’t let any amount of failure get between us and where we want to be, God can change our hearts, spirits and bodies, just as he changed the disciples. This supernatural change occurs in an instant. It can be the product of years of research and study, but it culminates in the realization of a moment, deciding we no longer want to live by an external set of rules, but allowing God to govern and guide our internal mindsets. Make no mistake, internal changes have external results. There must be physical manifestations of change or there has been no change at all. Some of these changes may be instantaneous, others will take more effort. But when the deep internal change takes place, the externals will never be the same.