What are you trying to prove?
What are you trying to prove – Four or five times a week I work out at a gym. John Glidewell graciously and patiently allows me to workout with him. This is not a new experience. I been involved in exercise programs for over 20 years.
What are you trying to prove – Why? Why exercise all that time? Why go to a gym and get into a physical fitness program? Why pay someone to sweat and strain and get sore? Different people have different reasons–and there are many, many reasons. Let me note just three reasons.
What are you trying to prove – Some people work out to compete or to prepare for some form of competition. If you work out at the gym to compete with other people who work out, you will always meet someone who is stronger, bigger, and better developed than you are.
Some people work out to feel better about themselves. They use exercise to build their self-esteem, self-image, or self-confidence. That has merit. But it also has risk. With age and time, we lose physical ability. If we completely invest our concept of self in our physical bodies, we face a major crisis when our bodies decline.
Some people work out for the sake of their health. They want to become and to be the healthiest that they can be.
I knew before I began to work out that I had no interest in competing with anyone. I surely am glad I realized that! Competing is not an option for me! Sometimes I struggle to lift the bar with no weight on it! But this is true: if I could lift ten pounds more than someone, that would not make me more significant than that person.
I also realized that I did not want to define my person with my body. With my body, that is also fortunate! My body is just the house I live in while I am on this earth. “Me” is the person who resides in that house. “Me” will continue to live after this body dies.
Physically, I wanted to be the healthiest person that I can become. I want to be the healthiest I can be because I want to use my life to its fullest. There are many things I yet want to do with my life, and a healthy body is critical to doing those things.
Making a long term commitment to working out is the commitment to becoming and being. That becoming and being is based on a number of discoveries. Each discovery opens a door to new possibilities.
In that there is an important parallel between the long term commitment to exercise and the long term commitment to being a Christian.
A Common Cause Of Great Joy And Great Suffering

* In the New Testament, the Christians who were the church at Colossae had difficulty understanding a basic truth about Christian existence. Paul talked to them about their misunderstanding in Colossians 3:5-11.

* They had a hard time understanding that their existence before they became Christians and their existence after they became Christians were contrasting existences.
* The person each of them was before becoming a Christian and the person each of them was after becoming a Christian were distinctly different persons.

* When they became Christians, they did not become members of a club, or a fraternity, or a social organization–it was not a membership thing, it was a becoming thing.
* Becoming a Christian was much more than changing habits or accepting responsibilities.
* As a Christian person, he or she actually became something that never existed before.

* Since they as persons had become something that never existed before, their behavior, their moral conduct, and their relationships should reflect this new existence.

* Since what they now were had not existed previously, a radical transition had occurred.