Flying to Canada yesterday for the Sweat RX Competition I got the chance to spend some time reading. My Bible plan landed me in Psalm 56 where this verse hit me like a Tyson right hook.
Verse 9: “Then my enemies will turn back in the day when I call. This I know, that God is for me.“
GOD IS FOR ME! There are so many time in my life where I have been met with what seems to be insurmountable or testing tasks. Injury at some of the most critical times in my training. Moving across the country 1 month after getting married. Family loss. All of these things when presented before me at face value seem devastating. However, the truth is that if my hope and my greatest joy were founded in these things I would be devastated. In success as a weightlifter. Success as a husband. Success as a son. However, my hope isn’t in those things. I find much greater fulfillment and completion in my relationship with the Lord. What’s more. He’s for me.
He doesn’t have to be for me and I have given Him every reason to be against me. Yet, He is for me. He is so much in my corner that He sent His son to die for me that I might live.
When I think about the coaches who have been a part of my weightlifting career (Luttrell, Stockel, Flemming) I can’t help but see some of the same truth in their character. In as much as God is for me, these men are for me. They have been in my corner, patiently enduring my antics and mood swings but remaining faithful to me. These coaches model what I see in God’s faithfulness to me. They remain faithful to me when I bomb out or when I have a bad training week or when I fail to make the weight I need to hit. They remain “for me.”
I pray that one day this line would embody who I am as a coach. I would mimic the faithfulness and steadfastness of the Lord in my relationship to my athletes. Mimicking the relationship so many coaches have had with me. Displaying the nature of who God is in how I interact with my future athletes.