Strength Through Stability

By Grant Gaines

I’ve mentioned before that I enjoy working out and one of the biggest reasons why is because I have a couple of good friends who also enjoy working out as well. The gym or track isn’t simply a place to push my body, it’s also a place where I get to hang out with some of my favorite people in the world.

One of my good friends is a guy named Pat who I get to work out with on a daily basis. While I love Pat and enjoy being in the weight room with him, we never actually do the same lifts or cardio sets because Pat played football in college as a middle linebacker and is an absolute muscle-monster. He has muscles on top of his muscles. To put it in the kindest way possible, Pat is a freak of nature in the best way possible.

With that as the backdrop to this story, you’ll understand why it was so strange when one morning when he went to do squats, he couldn’t even complete one rep of his warmup weight. He stretched out his legs, warmed them up on the exercise bike, and gave another go at it…only to fail once again at getting one single rep.

Just two days before, Pat was easily doing three times as much weight with no problem at the end of his workout. That day, however, he couldn’t even do one single rep of his warmup weight. What in the world happened?

Intramural basketball happened. You see, the night before when we were all playing basketball, Pat’s quad started feeling tight, but he continued to play through the stiffness because he wanted to be out on the court with his friends. What he didn’t know though, was that that “soreness” that he was feeling the morning after in the weight room was actually a pulled quadriceps muscle. And because his quadriceps muscle was injured, all his stability was thrown off which in turn threw off his strength.

It wasn’t that Pat was any less strong than he was one day earlier. Rather, because Pat’s stabilizing muscles were injured, all his strength was rendered useless.

What a great illustration that is for us as we strive to, “…be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power” as we are commanded in Ephesians 6:10 (NIV). No one wants to be known as that person who is always struggling with this sin or falling back into that temptation. We want to be known as men and women who stand firm in our faith and are continuously becoming more and more like Christ.

But just as was the case with my friend Pat, our strength is only useful if we are stable. What do I mean by that? I’m glad you asked! Let me use a snippet of Samson’s story to explain.

We all know Samson for pretty much two things: his incredible strength and his incredible hunger for women. I believe the two are actually more closely related than we might think at first blush. As you well know, Samson was a freak of nature when it came to physical strength. He ripped up a lion with his bare hands (Judges 14:6), killed 1,000 enemies by himself with a dried up donkey’s jaw bone (Judges 15:15), and tore off an iron city gate along with its foundations and carried it to the top of a hill like he was in CrossFit (Judges 16:3). No question about it, this dude would have been on The World’s Strongest Man competitions.

But what’s equally as impressive as his superhuman strength was his ignorance of his weakness. Sure, he knew that the Lord had made his long, flowing, Troy-Polamalu-like hair his source of strength and even did everything he could to throw Delilah off from knowing that truth before finally giving into her nagging (Judges 16:16). But if you look below the surface, I believe Samson’s downfall came well before Delilah’s Barber Shop was open for business.

His real downfall was that he constantly put himself in a position of weakness based on who he was hanging out with. Though the Lord had repeatedly warned the Israelites against associating with the Philistines, Samson not only befriended them, but also married one of their women (Judges 14), slept with one of their prostitutes (Judges 16:1-3), and hung around with a good-for-nothing Philistine woman named Delilah (Judges 16:4-22).

Time after time after time he set himself up for failure only to be delivered by God’s miraculous grace. Eventually, however, Samson’s poor community of friends ended up being the death of him because of how fragile the support system that he had been leaning on was. Because his foundation was unstable, his strength was sapped.

The same could be said about us – that just like my friend Pat and Samson, you can be the strongest person in the world but if you don’t have a stable foundation to lean on, your strength is useless. Take eating for example – you could have the greatest desire in the world not to eat sweets, but if your house is full of candy and baked goods, it’s only a matter of time before you give into temptation. Or how about healthy spending habits – you could have a giant desire to reign in your expenditures, but if you are always hunting online for new clothes or accessories, you’re one simple click away from being further away from your original goal.

If strength and stability are directly related in non-eternal areas like those listed above, how much more so are they related when it comes to our spiritual lives where we are daily under attack from and Enemy who wants to do nothing less than “kill, steal, and destroy” (John 10:10a, NIV) our lives?

It’s been said, “Show me your friends and I’ll show you who you will become.” 1 Corinthians 15:33 (NIV) says a similar truth when Paul wrote, “Bad company corrupts good character.” The bottom line is that who you hang out with and what you are leaning on as a source of support is going to either make you or break you as a believer in Jesus Christ. Let the story of Samson caution you to examine your life and your community to be sure that you are not leaning on a shaky foundation.

How is your stability?