LESSONS FROM WORKOUTS
There are workouts on YouTube that are such good ones to do at home. Some easy, some very challenging, most well guided and elaborated, some slow paced, others fast paced and I dare say that they are fun or should be fun, but the fun goes out the window for me the minute my knees start cracking. Despite the challenges the workouts can come with, there are certain components in them that I derive various lessons.
1. The Guide and Hype-Man
The guide in the videos will show you how to do the workouts and at the same time cheer and psyche you up. I am sure before they shot and posted the workouts they knew how heavy they can get. They understood their complexity and intensity and they were well prepared to guide you and keep you going. The workouts can get really intense and you will want to give up, but somewhere in there you will hear someone say, “Don’t give up, you can do this, keep pushing, you’re doing great!!” And suddenly a bolt of energy hits you and you feel like you just started.
Similarly, GOD knows the intensity of the trials HE sends or allows to us. HE will always be right by our side to guide us through each one of them. HE walks with us and even cheers us on. We might grow numb and allow the pain we feel to overcome us and make us feel as though GOD is silent and nowhere to be found, but HE is an ever present help. Once we put down the walls and keep reading HIS Word, HE is loud and clear and very encouraging. How gracious is our GOD.
Be your own hype-man. Before you can have people encourage and stand with you, be willing to keep going. Have the discipline to see you getting to the finish line. Pray and study the Bible. Be alert and sober minded. The enemy has a way of taking advantage of our trials and can make us believe that GOD has forgotten about us.
Also, we need a community around us. We so need to hype each other in this walk with GOD. There is strength in unity. GOD did not intend that we go through this life on our own. Accept help from people when GOD sends them your way. The Church of CHRIST is, yes, made up of individuals, but the unit functions right when each individual joins with another and more. Never walk alone.
2. The Timer
There are two timers. One that alerts you to the next workout and another that shows you how far in the workout you are. If you keep looking at the timer and anticipating how long it takes to the next workout or to the very end of it, you will probably get discouraged. The anticipation can wear you out faster than the workout itself. But if you just keep going and forget there’s a timer, you pay attention to the workout and times passes by so fast, you won’t notice it.
In life, we do not know how long seasons will last. If we discontentedly keep looking out to the end of a season or to the next season, we will definitely never learn what we need to and we will get impatient. We will not have the privilege to enjoy the present and live life to the fullest.
Leave alone the anticipation and be content with the season at hand. Find the positives, leave the complaining, grasp the lessons and by the time you realize it, you have moved past the season without even noticing how much time has elapsed. Don’t be in a hurry to move out of the current season or to enter the next season. Never feel as if you have overstayed in one trial. Milk it as much as you can and get the best from it.
3. The Pacer Workout
The pacer workout is meant to be like a resting time between workouts, but it keeps your heart rate at a high constant. If the heart rate were to significantly decrease during the workout, it will take sometime to get back on the train and it might tire you out too quick. That will affect the quality and result of the workout. The instructor will tell you to do the pacer workout if the current workout is getting too hard on you. Basically, telling you not to halt the workout.
As you wait for the season to be complete, as you wait for the answers to your prayers, keep obeying and working for GOD. Keep walking with, communing with and devoting yourself to GOD. Keep praying and studying the Word of GOD. Find company, find communities, talk to someone, rest, but don’t stop. Don’t ever lose hope. Keep the mark timing even though at one spot, but don’t let the momentum come to a halt. Don’t ever give up. Keep going, keep pushing, keep the pace up. Get out and do what needs to be done, but don’t bail out on the journey.
4. It Gets Easier
The more you do a workout, the easier it gets. Your muscles get used to it and even your mental state of mind towards it is more positive. Then you reach a place and it’s not challenging you as much as it did at first and it’s time to move to an even more challenging workout, a lack of which does not benefit your body.
The more we are tested, the more wisdom, knowledge, endurance, resilience, patience, courage, faith and trust in GOD we attain and develop. We are better equipped and hence, the easier it gets to navigate through the following challenges that come at our Christian walk. The more we trust GOD, the more we know that HE is out for our good and not out to destroy us. That there is nothing that HE will allow or send our way that will be curated to see us fail. Everything HE curates is meant to make us stronger, more agile, more attentive, more present and more intentional with our walk with HIM. And when that lesson is learnt, only when it’s learnt, we move on to the next, which is more challenging, but even more beneficial to us and by extension, to others.
5. The Confusion
The first time you get into a workout, you probably have no idea how to do some, or even all of the steps and exercises they ask you to do. You might actually find yourself doing nothing close to what the workout is, and even the best dancer could feel like they have a double left leg! It could feel like a newborn calf learning to walk. But a second time at the workout and you go better at it than you did previously, then the next and you are acclimatized to it, and you even feel like you burst better moves than the guide.
How anxious, nervous, worried and confused where you when GOD threw that curveball you have in mind as you read this blog? Like me, you probably told HIM, “Wrong address LORD, wrong address!!” But how awesome was it, that midway through that trial, you found yourself with your feet firmly on the ground, you released the steering wheel, you stopped yelling directions, you could clearly see, you were finally laughing out loud and you were simply at peace, thanking GOD for all the wonderful lessons? You gained the momentum and all your steps were in tune with HIS Music and you better understood what it means when HE says, “MY grace is sufficient for you. MY strength is made perfect in your weakness.” What a wonderful feeling.
But to get there, you had to surrender your ways to HIM and be in line with HIS will and purpose, right? Otherwise you would have been doing crunches when the instructor was giving you cool off exercises.
May we surrender to GOD even that which we think we know, because most times, we actually don’t. May we allow HIM to reorganize us that we don’t get startled and disoriented when the boat starts to rock. That we will move close to HIM with our choice of duvet color and rest with HIM.
Workouts have their benefits and so do afflictions. If we stop the workout, the body suffers. If the afflictions don’t come, our spirit man suffers. To keep going or to stop, either way, the pain is felt, but I’d rather the pain that comes with benefits. When you stop working out and then you come back after a long while, your body feels the stretch, is in pain and you feel like you’re starting over. To avoid all of that, we keep the workouts, however little.
In the same way, don’t stop your walk with GOD. So much is lost along the way when you don’t find time with HIM. But even so, if you have lost the time, don’t wallow in that. Start over and GOD is gracious enough to take us back to where we were and even further. In the same way you will find yourself dancing through a workout to ease the pressure in your head to achieve, take the trials as an opportunity to dance in the rain. It is hard, but find the fun and the humour points in the trial and make sure to laugh heartily. Make the best of all of it.
More of GOD’s Grace, Love and Light,
Lydia Ndwiga
