God and the Weight Room

(Photo by Cyril Saulnier on Unsplash)

One of the most disciplined and dedicated times I’ve had in my life was ten years ago. I was a fanatic for working out in the gym. Hitting the weights while the likes of Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, and Van Halen belted out from the gym’s stereo system became a haven for me. 

I was a pretty scrawny kid growing up. High metabolism and being on the cross country and track team will do that to you. However, there was a year that I decided to test my limits by going out for the high school football team while competitively running.

Playing both JV and Varsity football wasn’t for me exactly (I rode the bench in most games), but it did introduce me to the gym. Part of the requirements for being on the football team was exercising with weights in the gym.

Both the music and the sensation of pushing my body to grow stronger built a love for going to the gym. The songs of DMX, Ja Rule, Jay Z, and even Metallica echoed in the tiny room where linemen were squatting 275, where linebackers were curling 50 lb dumbbells at three sets of 20. 

After going through a year of football, I decided that it wasn’t for me. I concentrated my athletic efforts into running cross-country in the fall and track in the spring. 

Little did I know that being on both of these teams also required strength training in the gym.

Overjoyed, I would run the usual 2.5-3 miles during practice and immediately head over to the gym, greeted with the rhythmic guitar strumming of AC/DC as I walked in. Usually, other athletes were in the gym when we had our chance to go, but it never deterred me from enjoying the experience. I was there for one reason: to push myself further than before.

This love for going to the gym carried on passed both my high school years and college years. Being on an athletic team no longer tethered me to having mandatory gym time. This was all completely up to me and my choice to keep going with it.

I was so dedicated to this that I was willing to get up at 4:30am just to go to the gym.

Yes, I was a little ecstatic, you could say.

To help this level of dedication, I enlisted the accountability of a friend whom I was a co-worker with at the local grocery store.

At the store, we would both look through the latest issues of Men’s Health and Muscle and Fitness to see what workouts celebrities and really jacked guys were doing. Our goal was to never look like we had muscles on muscles on muscles: we just wanted to be in better shape.

So, we committed to working out together in the mornings before our morning shifts at the store started. 

At first, those mornings were hard, getting up groggy and deflated from the previous days’ workout and work, but we soon discovered the supplemental world. Products like nitric oxide and creatine helped us fight through the morning fatigue.

This boost was especially needed one particular morning. Arriving to do the dreaded “leg day” (no weight lifter enjoys leg day), we looked at our workout from Muscle and Fitness and saw that the workout called for pushing a car 40 yards.

A new level of insanity.

We looked at one another, cranked up Jumpin’ Jack Flash, and went out to the ’97 Mustang. 

We took turns steering the car. One would get in the driver seat, throw the car in neutral, and drove. The other would be behind, hands on the trunk with legs pumping in agony before the sun had even touched the sky.

To this day, that is one of the hardest (and weirdest) workouts I’ve done.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that level of dedication to weight-lifting would be a cornerstone for my level of dedication in my journey with God.

Throughout my life, I’ve been involved in church. Whether it be a lay person, serving on the deacon board, or being an interim director of a collegiate ministry, I’ve had an aptitude to serve God. 

There have been times where I’ve worked on Saturday nights from 7pm to 7am Sunday morning, gone home and taken a nap, and gotten back up at 9am to go and teach the Adult Sunday School Class AND preach the message in the Adult Service that morning! 

God had instilled in me the drive and the desire to honor Him through my service to the church through (I believe) being so dedicated to the gym.

To this day, I’ve had some of the most powerful, holy moments while working out in a gym or at home. There is some kind of heavenly connection for me when I submit my body to be broken down by activity. 

In my latter years of exercise, I’ve married weight lifting and worship together. My sets and reps are filled with words of petition and prayer, praise and worship. As I sweat through pushups, I ask the Lord for strength in the trials I face. As I lunge, I thank the Lord that he knows every detail about my life—seen and unseen to me.

There have been times where I’ve gone to the gym to exercise and spent more time in prayer over a situation or for a friend than I have actually worked out. Praising in a gym may not seem like the holiest of things to do and may seem highly uncommon, but God is not limited to a church building or a meeting of religious leaders at a conference. 

I’ve discovered that God meets us in obscure places, and sometimes those places are unbeknownst to us.

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.” When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.” “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” (Exodus 3:1-6)