While traveling recently, I decided I should burn off a few of the bazillions of calories I was consuming, so in a fit of conscience, I visited the hotel fitness room.
As I was chugging along on the treadmill, I noticed a sign hanging on the wall, obviously displayed to legally cover some corporate backsides should anyone keel over while working out on their equipment.
The last sentences on the sign nearly caused me to convulse and fly off the machine. It read, “DO NOT OVER-EXERCISE. AT THE FIRST SIGN OF DISCOMFORT, DO NOT CONTINUE.”
Say what? At the first sign of DISCOMFORT? Is comfortable exercise even possible?
Hello — if I stopped exercising at the first sign of discomfort, I’d quit after 30 seconds!
After chuckling over the irony of the sign’s warning, it occurred to me that there’s an underlying message there that Christians too often take to heart. It goes something like this: “DO NOT OVER-EXERCISE YOUR FAITH. AT THE FIRST SIGN OF DISCOMFORT, DO NOT CONTINUE.”
Comfortable Christianity? What is that? I’ll tell you what it is: boring, irrelevant, vanilla, lukewarm religion. The kind God promises to spit out. (Think I’m making that up? See Revelation 3:16).
Living in a loving, dynamic relationship with God through Jesus Christ is amazing and fabulous, but it’s not always exactly comfortable. Jesus calls us to love Him more than anyone or anything else in our lives, to “take up our crosses” and follow Him, to release our death grip on earthly treasures, and to walk by faith, not sight. None of those sound particularly comfy to me.
Like well-intentioned but uncommitted folks who make lofty exercise resolutions and flock to gyms in January, some people jump into Christianity with a whole lot of wishbone and not much backbone, chunking the whole thing at the first hint of discomfort. They walk an aisle on Sunday morning during the 15th verse of “Just as I Am”… and bail out by Tuesday when the goosebumps are gone and someone mocks them for being a goody-two-shoes.
If we abandon our faith every time we experience discomfort, we won’t get very far in our journey with Jesus. Read the 11th chapter of Hebrews and consider whether the faithful people listed there were comfortable … as they were sawn in two, killed by swords, tortured, and ostracized. Yikes — talk about UNcomfortable.
Ask Jesus if He was “comfortable” leaving the glory of heaven to cram His perfection into human skin and endure life and death in this fallen world for 33 years. Ask the Apostle Paul if he was comfortable when he was imprisoned, shipwrecked, stoned, beaten, whipped, and left for dead.
Strength isn’t increased without resistance; endurance is all about going farther than you thought you could go, even when it hurts. The Bible doesn’t call the life of faith a “race” for nothing (Hebrews 12:1).
In the last book of the Bible, Revelation, we’re told that all the good stuff is reserved for those who “overcome.” Overcoming implies that there is something to “come over,” an obstacle or challenge we have to rise above. Victory implies struggle.
Anyone who thinks that following Jesus is for sissies hasn’t read the manual.
So, let’s go ahead and “over-exercise” our faith in Christ. Sure, it’s risky; but not nearly as risky as the alternative. And at the first sign of discomfort, let’s continue. Press on. Persevere. Endure. Build our faith muscles. Trust me – we’re gonna need ’em.