PUBLISHER’S LETTER
My wife and I enjoyed watching the Tour de France on television this year. To be honest we like to travel so we were watching it mostly for the scenery. It is however an impressive display of endurance. Man and machine in non-stop motion for hours and days on end. To achieve that level of performance takes a lot of training and a lot of recovery.
The other day I spoke with a couple at the gym. I asked, “How often do you work out”? “We’re here everyday”, they responded. While their enthusiasm is to be commended, the honest truth is that “everyday” is just too much. Exercise is good but recovery is required. It’s a pretty simple concept: Working muscles tear them down. When those muscles rest and recover they build up and become stronger. THAT is the recovery phase. Most of us are familiar with it to some extent. But, do you realize just how important recovery is?
Consider this: recovery is an invention of God. It isn’t optional. You can choose to make it part of your life schedule or in an extreme case you may ultimately put yourself in the recovery room. Eight hours of sleep is recommended for good health but many people disregard the research and push into a continual state of exhaustion, weakness and less than peak performance. Biblically there is the, “six days shall you labor and on the seventh day you shall rest” mandate. We translate that into a recommendation at best or worse an old-fashioned religious practice that has no place in today’s culture. The result is that we lack the recovery phase of the Sabbath.
We take our lack of knowledge of recovery and our resistance or outright disregard for it much further than not getting a good night’s sleep or taking a day off during the weekend. Many of us don’t practice discipline in finances, careers, diet, marriage, family or faith. Like the driven bicyclist we refuse to slow or take a break even though we know there is a needed repair. We feel the pain and we blatantly ignore it. It is time to take time and recover. There are recovery resources to help you.
TIME TO GET INTO THE RECOVERY PHASE
Your physical body is easier to read than your spirit. You can tell when you’re tired, hungry, soar or hurt. When you feel the pain respond with an appropriate amount of rest, food or care. It is God-designed to be pretty simple. Observe your physical recovery and then apply that to your relational and spiritual needs.
Make the commitment. Get rid of the clutter that you have allowed, find focus then hold fast to it. The movie Courageous talks about tackling challenges with urgency. We’ve developed a special multi-page section called COURAGEOUS Men’s Fitness designed especially to help men grow in their commitment to exercise, family and God. The concepts are equally good for women.
The Bible gives many insights into how we are weak but God is strong. In many ways we’re like children playing a game of tug-of-war. We often think that it is by our own strength that we are overcoming and gaining the victory when in fact the powerful grace and love of God is what keeps us from falling. Like children, we don’t like to admit that we depend on a higher power. But, as Steve Jobs has said we must learn to trust in what we can’t see. In a Stanford University commencement speech he shared what he learned from his recovery phase, “ The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart you’ll know when you find it. Like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on.”
Don’t despise the day of small things. In recovery you’ll go beyond what you can do. You’ll find the greater greatness that only God can see and shape in you.
Train strong in Christ,
-Brad Bloom, Publisher
