Original: August 8, 2007
McMinnville OR
5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. Deuteronomy 6:5
As a weight lifter I am constantly reminded of the strength of myself and others. Guys at the gym notice these things. For some reason guys like to use a fairly worthless (when it comes to strength) lift called the Bench Press as a standard of strength. Currently I use the maximum weights my gym offers for my dumbbell press at l25 pounds on each arm, but this was inspired by an embarrassing moment.
A while back I was doing my dumbbell press sets of 10 with 100 pounds on each arm. I noticed a gym buddy named Emil staring at me. Emil is a literal giant standing at 6’2” and weighs well over 340 pounds. When I asked him what he was doing he simply said, “I just thought you could lift more than that.” Even though Emil is much larger than I his capacity or potential is not that much greater than mine (or so I thought) and he too had mistakenly assumed mine would be somewhere up there with him as well. He was disappointed to discover, however, that I was not nearly as strong.
In that moment I realized that I had not been putting forth the effort that matched my capacity.
Have you ever noticed that God has given men different capacities?
A man’s strength is limited to who he is and he can only have so much energy, effort and physical strength before his reserves are depleted. Capacity is synonymous with “potential” strength. I would define one’s strength or capacity as “how much” they are, or how much potential they have. Just as the human brain operates far beneath its potential or capacity, far too many men pace instead of push, rest instead of run, and jog instead of sprint for God.
God has not called the man of God to a slow pace but to run for the prize at full capacity (Philippians 3:12-14, 1 Corinthians 9:24-26). A man will never know or understand his full potential in Christ if he is unwilling to discover what that potential is.
The late coaching great Tom Landry once said, “Leadership is helping those around you do what they don’t want to do, in order to get to where they want to get”
Coaches do this in sports. Teachers do this in education. Parents do this in the home. But what happens to the man when he becomes an adult? Besides his employers who will push him?
He has to.
That is what a man does. He learns the art of pushing himself. He discovers his capacity by pushing himself to the limits of strength. The greatest tragedy in life is to leave this world with potential.
It is only at the end of the rope that we discover the beauty in tying a knot and holding on. The overwhelming majority of Christian men are pace runners and not pace setters. We are so afraid of burning out that we rust out instead. God tells us to do everything with “all of your heart” (Colossians 3:23) and I wonder how may of us have really taken the word to heart.
As a coach I often say and hear, “Leave it all on the field.” I wonder how many men leave it all out there for God. Is God getting all of “how much” you are or is He getting some and lesser capacity.
