Spiritual Strength Training 

Life gives us unique—very unique—opportunities to develop the special strengths each of us needs. What determines the strengths we need is our unique, God-given destiny: the part we are assigned to play in His grand whole. That assignment determines the strength you must develop throughout life.

Life then gives you the unique set of challenges intended to develop that strength in you.

Take, for example, a bodybuilder who needs to develop physical strength to achieve a goal. They willingly put themselves through strength training with progressively heavier weights in the gym. They know it is time to move to the next level when the current weight no longer requires the same effort it once did. Eventually, it requires very little effort because the mind and body have united in strength to conquer that weight.

Then they move up to a new challenge and repeat the process until what was once difficult becomes easy, and they have grown stronger.

They succeed because they cooperate with the weights rather than resist them. They understand what the weights are producing, and they persevere until the goal is achieved.

Now expand that analogy to life.

Life—and the circumstances and situations we encounter on our journey—is a gym for spiritual strength training. The individual circumstances you face are your weights. Each one is uniquely curated and designed to produce a particular character in you. The strength of the character produced is commensurate with the strength of the challenge you face.

How do you pass through those challenges and produce character?

By having the right mental tools and the mindset to cooperate with them—not to resist them, but to yield to the character they are producing.

Duck your head under the bridge so you are not knocked down. Ducking your head is like humbling yourself under the mighty hand of God, accepting the weight He has allowed to rest upon you.

KEY: You can differentiate what to resist, from what to humble yourself under, by prayer. In prayer, God will tell you what to do. That weight can feel heavy also. 

But rather than resisting or running away from the challenge, discern that it is for strength-building. Every challenge has the potential to build strength. Once you discern that purpose, the wise response is to humble yourself beneath it so the weight does not crush you in resistance. Pass underneath it by exercising the grace of God, the gift of God, and the fruit of the Spirit required to carry you through that particular challenge.

Each fruit of the Spirit required for that season is like a boat. Get into the boat of that fruit, and row it until you reach the other side of the challenge. By the end, that fruit will have been greatly strengthened within you.

Now you possess a greater measure of that fruit, enabling you to carry an assignment from God that requires its exercise and demonstration in proportion to the weight of that assignment. If your assignment still carries greater weight, then you will pass through more challenges until you have developed the strength required to carry it faithfully.

Any mismatch in this process—or any attempt to skip ahead into destiny without preparation—can lead to disgrace, embarrassment, and forfeited destinies.

Determine today to see your challenges as weight-bearing exercises of the Spirit. Lift them. Grow in the fruit the Spirit is seeking to produce.

When you see life through this mindset, you rise above your challenges because you now see purpose in what is happening. Before, from a diminished perspective, you saw only pain. Now you see purpose.

Yes, the pain is worth the purpose.

The character being formed in us is worth more than gold and more than silver. It is the character of Jesus.

Yes, it is worth the process—every single part of it—because what we gain through the formation of Christlike character benefits us both in this life and in eternity. In contrast, physical training benefits the body only for this life, but spiritual formation bears fruit forever.