Lifting Weights With Jesus

         Growing spiritual muscle hurts.  Not many of us are willing to go to the gym with Jesus and lift the spiritual weights in which God invites us to.  Working out and lifting weights causes our muscles to first break down.  The pain and soreness we feel afterwards are our muscles breaking down and then growing new tissue.  If we don't feel soreness after a workout, we then question if we needed to work a little harder.  Growing spiritual muscle is much like the same.
          God invites us to lift spiritual weights for our health, our wholeness, our well-being.  But it hurts.  There is pain, soreness, sometimes resistance, sweat, and tears.  God asks that we push on to finish the workout.  In America not many desire to go to the gym with Jesus.  Churches and many pastors rather invite us to sit with Jesus in the sun on the deck and sip a cold beverage.  Its all pleasantries, comfort, and assurance but there is more; God wants us to discover more in Him.  God wants us to workout with Him.
          Loving God and learning of God's character both past and present should feel like a workout! If you aren't occasionally wrestling with God and breaking down spiritual muscle, you must be going too light.  Studying theology looks a lot like daily weight lifting with Christ.  I've watched friends and peers get ripped apart by studying it and having to face the tough questions and the unfathomable in God.  I, myself, have been gutted by it.  I am observing my peers in Seminary "go to the gym" and come back rugged and beat up.  I, too, am building spiritual muscle and it hurts.  The more we learn the less we feel we know and that is ok.
          We must first get torn down to be built back up. God invites us to the gym for consistent building of our minds, hearts, and souls.  The trick is to have faith that every time our muscle gets torn down that God is going to build it back up.  I know and trust that when I go to the gym and workout that I am going to be sore and also get toned. It never ceases to happen and so it is with God.  We are invited to lift weights with Jesus but we have to drive ourselves to the gym and be willing to be torn down in order that we may be built back up.

The Crucifixion of Kim Davis

       I am a Christian.  I am gay. And I've got a large distaste in my mouth for those that are having a hay day bashing Kim Davis.  If you don't know the name Kim Davis, I'm sure you have heard of the  Kentucky Clerk who has refused to marry gay couples due to her Christian beliefs.  She's been stoic in her stance against gay marriage and has refused to budge so much so that she is now in jail due to her refusals.  Kim Davis has also become the classic controversial whipping post for our progressive society. AND GOD BLESS IT that we are progressive! But there is another side...
       Kim Davis is a fairly new Christian.  I don't know this woman's life nor claim to know the details of her story but I do know what's been swirling around Facebook and social media.  She is the butt of a lot of jokes.  She is our latest whipping post of bigotry - sorry Josh Duggar, you're not in first place right now.  Her 4 marriages, kids by different men, etc. etc.  exemplify only hypocrisy at its finest....or does it?
       Many Christian believers have had their moments, especially when relatively new to their faith, where they feel like they are on the mountain top.  We (and I use we because I've been there), WE can get so swooped up in what we are told is to be right in God's eyes and the passion that swirls when we learn that the Creator of the universe might ACTUALLY take some sort of interest in us. Many of us caught up in that moment with Christ desire in our infant minds to please God in the ways that we are told will.  I believe that Kim Davis is HUMAN and perhaps may suffer from some of the same delusions I did when "on fire for God"; dogma somehow trumps love, compassion, and grace.  We can tend to error on the side of Christian legalism founded in ignorance and fear. Kim Davis is a human.
     Think about how every single one of us desire our lives to amount to something. Clearly, this misguided woman is reaching for some greater purpose in her life.  Perhaps she is attempting to redeem her previous sins by being this warrior for God?  Perhaps she has felt lost for most of her life, just recently found God's love, and is seeking to please Him in whatever trash can way she was taught to?  Don't we all do that to some point? Aren't these things that we all wrestle with at some point or another?
      My point isn't to agree with Kim Davis or turn a blind eye.  My point is to quit persecuting her, having a hay day ripping this woman's life apart and blasting her faults.  Maybe she's a loony toon bitch that is hiding behind "God" or maybe she is as I painted her above.  What if it's the latter?  We can report and we can fight against what she is standing for and that is ok and just but crucifying this depraved mind is certainly not proper nor Christian.  You can never act more right and justly than when grace, compassion, and love are exercised.  I think Kim Davis deserves that.