Running on Empty
By Grant Gaines
When you work out, you really only have one goal in mind – to get your body in better physical shape. But do you know what you’re actually doing to your body when you work out? Whenever you physically exert your body, whether through lifting weights or through cardiovascular exercise, you are actually tearing tiny fibers in your muscles. The harder you work the more muscle fibers you tear – no wonder you feel so sore after a good workout!
As soon as your brain recognizes the torn muscle fibers in your body, it goes to work repairing the minor muscle tears. But God created our bodies so that they don’t just repair the muscles to the same strength they were before your worked them out, they actually are made stronger! That’s how you get in better shape – by tearing down your old muscle fibers so that newer, stronger fibers can be formed. So when you see someone who is physically strong, you are, in reality, looking at someone who willingly weakened themselves for a season for the purpose of becoming stronger in the long run.
In a similar sense, when you look at someone who is spiritually “strong” (a person who has an intimate relationship with God and is able to withstand temptations) you are in reality looking at someone who willingly weakened themselves for the purpose of becoming stronger. Let me explain this further by looking at the Gospel of Luke for Jesus’s thoughts on the matter.
After feeding the five thousand (Luke 9:10-17) and Peter’s famous, “…You are the Messiah sent from God!” (Luke 9:20, NLT) proclamation, Jesus was beginning to amass Himself quite a crowd. But Jesus wasn’t interested in having just anyone follow Him, He wanted committed followers who would not be, “…swayed by all kinds of evil desires” (2 Timothy 3:6, NIV) but would rather be able to, “… take [their] stand against the devil’s schemes” (Ephesians 6:11, NIV).
With this in mind, Jesus turned to the crowd of eager followers and metaphorically drew a line in the sand to separate the truly dedicated from the half-hearted when He stated, “If any of you wants to be My follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross daily, and follow Me” (Luke 9:23, NLT). There you have it, Jesus’s “workout plan” for becoming a stronger Christian – daily dying to self and living to serve.
You see, what makes you a stronger Christian today than the one you were last year is not that you know more Bible verses, give more money to the poor, or volunteer more of your time – though those are all excellent outward expressions of a strengthened inward faith. The true reason you are a stronger Christian today is because there is less or you inside of you.
Much like exercise, the more willing you are to daily “die” to or empty yourself of your selfish ambitions, the more room the Holy Spirit has to fill your heart, “…to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19, NIV). That’s where true strength comes from – not from your own will power or accomplishments but through the increased awareness of God’s power within you.
Paul does an excellent job of explaining where our true strength comes from in Romans 7:18-19 (NLT) when he says, “… I want to do what is right, but I can’t. I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway.” On his own, Paul admits that he could not break the chains of slavery to sin. He certainly tried to by following the 613 laws that the Pharisees followed in addition to the God-given laws of the Old Testament (Philippians 3:4-6).
However, despite his greatest human efforts, Paul was left with his head hanging in disgust at his repeated transgressions which led him to write Romans 7:24 (NLT) in which Paul desperately states, “Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death?”
Now if the story ended there, we would all be in big trouble because what Paul just wrote was that we cannot stand against temptation on our own no matter what we do or how hard we try. But thankfully Paul continues by giving credit to the only One who, “…is able to keep [us] from stumbling…” (Jude 1:24, NIV) when he says, “Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord…” (Romans 7:25, NLT). Only Christ can keep us from stumbling into sin.
I want to challenge you to personalize this truth – [ENTER YOUR NAME] is not a stronger Christian today because of my own efforts but because there is less of “[ENTER YOUR NAME]” inside me. The sooner we recognize who our Strength is, the sooner we will rely on His strength rather than to our own weaknesses. And as Proverbs 18:10 (NIV) says, “The Name of the Lord is a strong tower, the righteous run into it and they are safe.”
Is anyone else in favor of becoming a stronger Christian? Well here’s your workout plan for every day of the rest of your life: daily die to your selfish ambitions so that Christ’s power may be magnified in you. You on your own are not able to withstand temptations, but the God who lives in you can. Therefore make it your prayer today to say along with John the Baptist that, “He (God) must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30, ESV).
Comments? Questions? Suggestions?
©Grant Gaines 2013
