After my second episode of pulmonary embolism last summer, I decided to finally get serious about physical exercise. I’m on the thin side (understatement of the year), I’ve never really needed to watch my weight, and I’ve kept quite active, but I’d definitely become a bit soft and flabby. I needed to get my heart pumping and my muscles hardened to pump that blood around my system as part of my new medical regime to avoid more clotting. Apart from the obvious physical benefits, I’ve also learned some valuable spiritual lessons along the way.
1. We need group pressure. My previous attempts at exercise programs have always foundered after a couple of weeks, mainly because I was doing it on my own: jogging on my own, weights in the basement, etc. I just couldn’t keep it up. Last summer, though, I joined a group fitness class at the YMCA and despite the initial embarrassment of most of the (largely female) class being able to lift more than me, I found the group pressure to be highly motivating. I left the class in April to follow a more personalized weights program in the gym, but even there, people pressure helps as they watch you and you watch them.
For similar reasons, we need the church. We need people pressure. If we try to do Christianity on our own, we will soon peter out. God uses the community of believers to spur us on, to keep us going, to inspire and motivate.
2. Slow and small is better than fast and big. Like most guys, I want big and fast results. That might have been possible at 19, but not at 49. Doesn’t stop me trying though. But when I do try to be Mr. Universe some days, I usually either injure myself or I’m so sore the next few days that I can’t work out at all.
There’s something in us that wants big and quick results in our spiritual lives too. If only we can find a spiritual exercise that will raise us quickly to a new level of spirituality. If only I could do something that will accelerate my growth. But slow and gradual is the normal way, the best way, and God’s way.
3. Growth is often invisible. At least that’s my defense and I’m sticking to it. Despite playing many sports, I’ve always been skinny. So, although I’ve lost 10lbs or so over the year, it’s not really obvious. As for the muscles, well, despite all the pains, sweat, and tears, they don’t look too different either. But I sure do feel different. I definitely feel stronger and firmer, but it’s not that anybody would notice (sadly).
When I look out at my family or my students or my congregation, I sometimes wish I could see much more evidences of spiritual growth. There are some obvious encouragements here and there of course, but spiritual growth is often invisible. However, I believe that there is an inner strengthening and developing going on that is making a difference that the eye cannot see. Just because I cannot see growth, doesn’t mean it’s not there.
4. I’m inspired by strugglers. The people that depress me most at the gym are the six-packing, shredded guys. Some days I think I almost hate them. I confess. It’s not that I’m jealous of them. OK, I am. But it’s more the way they seem to look down on every lesser mortal. I promise myself that when I look like that 
I’ll never act like that.
I actually go out of my way now not to look at them, which I hope really bugs them. Instead I look at the gray- and no-haired seniors, daily pushing through their arthritis and other ailments. Or I look at the really overweight people lifting only a few ounces, or running slower than I walk, and I think, “Wow, If they keep going at this, why can’t I?” It must be so difficult for them to do this surrounded by so many body beautifuls. (I’m not including my own).
And it’s the strugglers that inspire me in the church too. Not the super-successful widely admired pastors, and the perfect homeschooling families that adorn the covers of the latest “Here’s how good we are” book. No, it’s the strugglers, the seniors pressing on through life’s challenges, overcoming multiple obstacles and excuses every week just to get to church. It’s the depressed believers who are hanging on with their fingernails, keeping on believing despite having no subjective helps to do so. The wife in a loveless marriage daily casting herself on the love of Christ. Strugglers, I salute you all, my daily inspiration.
5. Encourage one another. I don’t go to the gym to socialize, but when you see the same people every day, you get to know them a bit. However, I’m usually hardly able to breathe, so significant conversations are rare.
Last week, I noticed one of the strugglers looked a bit down. She’s a really overweight young woman, and one of my inspirational strugglers. But I’d never talked with her. I’d thought about it, just to encourage her, but I was afraid she’d take it the wrong way and slap me for suggesting she was fat. Next day she was doing even less in the gym and the following day she was just sitting in the hallway on her phone. She looked defeated. So when she looked up, I took the risk. “Keep going,” I said, “you’re my inspiration.” She looked a bit shocked and I prepared to defend my face, but then she smiled and said, “Oh, em, thanks.”
A few minutes later I was working out when she came up to me. “Oh, Oh!” I thought. But she surprised me, “Thanks for what you said to me. I wasn’t going to work out today but what you said, has got me going.”
We never know when a few words in season to a fellow-struggler might just pick them up, put some fuel in their tanks, and change their day, and even their lives.
There are many more lessons, but as my ego-puncturing wife said to me after I’d used gym illustrations in sermons two weeks in a row, “OK, David, they all know you’ve started going to the gym now. Doesn’t make you a world expert!”
