Momentum

Reading: John 4:1-42

Momentum is powerful. As a coach, I look for opportunities to both create and sustain momentum in our athletes. Each of those requires a unique approach. It is one thing to create momentum and quite another to sustain it. When it comes to fitness, motion is key, because it’s the catalyst to getting fitness started. No motion, no fitness. This is based on Isaac Newton’s First Law of Motion – An object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion. Your kettlebell isn’t going to swing itself. Although that would be kind of cool if it did. It requires a force to act in opposition to it sitting there on the ground and guess who provides that? You. You create momentum!

To understand where momentum can take us in our physical lives, we need a bigger picture view of fitness. Fitness does not exist by itself. In other words, I don’t just wake up one day having arrived at fitness, as if it’s my only option in life. Fitness is at one end of a pendulum known as health. When we consistently abandon our healthy behaviors, we will no longer remain fit. Instead, that pendulum will swing to wellness, and eventually to sickness. Sickness, wellness, and fitness form the framework of the health continuum. Fitter people have a better chance of living longer, more productive lives. They have the lowest chance of developing diseases such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or diabetes. Momentum is what carries someone away from sickness and on to fitness. It’s also what must be sustained in order to remain fit.

Spiritual Fitness functions on the same continuum, but with different underlying conditions. Pride, selfishness, external self-worth, and self-reliance are all classic presentations of a person who is spiritually sick. Like any disease, people learn to live their lives around their conditions. Some will simply blame their life on their circumstances or the people around them. For them, the glass is not even half full, it’s empty. But it doesn’t have to remain this way. All it takes is a little spiritual momentum to get things going. That’s as simple as reading a Bible verse, praying to God, or stopping to observe nature realizing it's all from a Higher Power. As you gather momentum, you’ll no longer live a spiritually sick life. You’ll begin to see the world differently. You’ll put other’s needs before your own. You’ll set a positive example for your family and friends. You will abandon old habits or mindsets realizing they won’t take you where you want to go.

To be spiritually fit is to live a life ordered in and around the rhythm of God. You’ll find more peace and more freedom than you ever knew possible. And your way of living will have a long-term positive impact on everyone around you, even though you may never see it. Don’t copy the customs and behaviors of this world. Rather, allow God to transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will come to know God’s will for you – His good and perfect and pleasing will. That, my friends, is powerful momentum.

Questions for Reflection: Post your answers to the comments below

• How has spiritual momentum impacted your life? Can you recall a moment where you made a decision that began positive momentum? 

• In today’s reading, how does the spiritual momentum of the woman at the well affect those around her? 

• If you could “get the ball rolling” with God in one area of your life, what would it be?

It's Hard For Everyone

Reading: Matthew 25:14-30

Last week in the gym, I had a moment of clarity. At first, I thought I might have been hallucinating, which doesn’t seem that uncommon for me. High intensity exercise has been known to send me to some dark places. This, however, was a moment of clarity. I don’t remember exactly what workout we were doing or how far along we were in the workout, but I remember I was tired. And honestly, I wanted to stop. Which is why I work out with other people, because I find it harder to give into my temptation to stop when surrounded by others who press on. But none of that mattered in the moment. As I stood there bent over trying to recover my breath with sweat dripping off my nose, I heard coach say something. Something I’ve said to athletes myself, only this was different. When he said it, it was as if the entire gym had gone silent and all I could hear was his voice and these words – “It’s hard for everybody.”

Fitness is hard. It doesn’t matter if it’s your first workout or number 5,000, if you are in the pursuit of fitness, you better learn to embrace suffering. There’s this misperception that the fitter you get, the easier the work gets. In some ways that’s true, but it’s a bit more complicated. The fitter an athlete, the more stimulus required to produce a result. And the resulting gains are incrementally smaller compared to new athletes. That’s because fitness is a byproduct of increased work capacity, and capacity is where the magic happens.

The reason my coach was right that it was hard for everyone was because everyone was working at around 70-80% of their work capacity. 80% of a fit athlete’s capacity might be 30 kettlebell swings at 53 pounds over one minute. 80% of a new athlete’s capacity might be 15 kettlebell swings at 22 pounds over that same time. In CrossFit, we call this scaling. Scaling a movement to a less technical movement, or a weight to a lighter weight allows us to coach classes of all ability levels while still driving everyone to the same goal - increased work capacity. Given sound mechanics and consistency in training, athletes who challenge their work capacity will achieve new levels of fitness.

The same principle applies to Spiritual Fitness. If you want to handle life better, you need to challenge your spiritual work capacity. Just like you go to the gym for an hour to do things you don’t normally do like jump on boxes, swing from bars, and lift heavy weights, you need to set aside daily time for spiritual training. In the beginning, it may be as simple as reading a few verses from the Bible and saying a prayer of thanks to God. And while that’s sufficient to start developing some spiritual work capacity, if you want spiritual fitness, you’ll need to increase your capacity. You’ll need to incorporate a set of practices the early Christian church developed called the Spiritual Disciplines. These are the muscle-ups, overhead squats, and Turkish get-ups of Spiritual Fitness. The result of these disciplines is a richer, deeper, more personal connection to God, which will lead to increased spiritual capacity. Capacity not to yell at your kids. Capacity to turn your brain off and go back to sleep. Capacity to apologize first. Capacity to see opportunities where you used to see obstacles. Increased spiritual capacity does not lead to an easier life, but it will reveal your resiliency when life gets hard. And remember, it’s hard for everyone.

Questions for Reflection: Post your answers to the comments below

• Is there an area of your life where an increase in spiritual capacity would help you? If so, where?

• Share an experience where you tried a new Spiritual Discipline. 

The End State Is Shalom

Reading: John 14:15-27

Last week, we talked about desire, specifically our core desire, or core motive. I made the case that everything you do in your life flows from your core desire. If you want to reorder your life, you need to start with being honest about what you desire and why. As I thought about that this week, I realized some of you read that post and probably thought, “That was a good message Trey wrote – for someone else.” Because let’s face it, you’ve made it. You’re living the ‘good life.’ You’ve got the nice house; You’ve got the pool in the backyard; You’ve got the financial stability to buy what you want, pretty much when you want it; You and your spouse don’t really fight that much; You’ve got decent kids; And to top it all off, you’re RXing the WOD’s and finally have a Fran time under seven minutes. Life is good – or is it?

I heard a speaker use a great illustration about life. She talked about life being like a ladder. As you accomplish the things in life you believe make you successful according to your view of the world, you climb another rung on your ladder. Slowly, you make your way to the top. But what’s at the top for you? In other words, what wall did you lean your ladder against? Before you start any journey in life, you need to stop and ask yourself this question – what do I want from what I’m about to do? In the military, they call this the end state.

The end state is the specified situation at the successful completion of the final phase of a military operation. Simply put, it’s the final outcome. When the military starts an operation, they know what success looks like because they have determined in advance what they want. Now, whether they get it or not is another story, but any military commander would tell you it’s pointless to send troops into combat without a clearly defined end state. So, what’s the end state for your life? I don’t mean death, rather what’s it going to look like when you wake up and realize you’re living the ‘good life.’ In Spiritual Fitness, the end state is shalom.

I love the word ‘shalom.’ For most people, this word means peace. And while the end state of a spiritually fit life is one filled with peace, it’s so much more, because shalom means so much more. Shalom is an ancient Hebrew word that encompasses not just a state of the world, but a state of how we are to exist in the world. In addition to peace, shalom means wholeness, fullness, completeness, prosperity, welfare, tranquility, and it can also be used to say both hello and goodbye. Shalom describes a state of flourishing, and it is in this context that it becomes so relevant both to Spiritual Fitness as well as defining the ‘good life.’ The reason people end up in a mid-life crisis or chained to their social media or bitter about life is because they stopped flourishing. When they achieved what they thought was the ‘good life,’ they woke up the next day with a void. Despite all their efforts, they couldn’t maintain a constant state of joy. In an effort to placate the pain or disappointment, they took their ladder and started searching for something else to climb. I know because for 39 years, that was me. I climbed the ladders of success in corporations, athletic competitions, and material possessions only to come to the same conclusion – fleeting happiness. What I came to realize is that I had the wrong end state in mind. Your ‘best life’ isn’t ordered around self-fulfillment, it’s found in the flourishment that comes from the shalom of Jesus. You will discover a richer, deeper sense of who you are and what you can achieve in this world when you make your end state shalom, and that’s a tranquility and peace that only God can bring. No corner office, no heart on Instagram, no PR in the gym, and no vacation will bring you shalom. So if shalom is not your end state, from one ladder owner to another, take it down, cast it aside, and ask God to make you complete in the fullness of His love alone. The end state is shalom.

Questions for Reflection: Post your answers to the comments below

• Growing up, who influenced your view of what the ‘good life’ was? What did it look like?

• Can you recall a time in your life where you realized you had your ladder against the wrong wall? What was your next move?

• Is it reasonable to believe that God can bring us shalom? Of all the words shalom can mean, which one do you struggle believing God could bring you?