Training Ground

Back when I was in college, a few of my friends had asked me to join their team to run a race that was coming up in a few months.

They told me that it was going to be a fun 5K race with obstacles that you had to complete as a team at multiple checkpoints throughout the course.

No problem! I thought. I had run cross country in High School, so I figured I just needed to work my way back up to being able to run 3 miles in a decent time so I wouldn’t slow my team down.

So over the next couple of months, I went to the gym affiliated with our college, hopped on a treadmill, and followed my well-thought-out plan to reach my 3-mile time goal by Race Day.

I figured that when I got there I’d just take on the obstacles as they came.

Boy, was I wrong!

Turned out I was not even close to being prepared for what was in store.

I started out fine when the starting gun shot off and it was just a big crowd of people running through the mud.

And then I looked up and in the distance, I noticed something blocking the path.

But no one was slowing down or avoiding it, we were all still running towards it.

To my shock, the very first obstacle was a 10-foot wooden wall that we were supposed to all get up and over using only our teammates!

No amount of running on a flat surface prepared me for this wall standing in front of me.

Nothing in my training taught me the skills to make a three-person high human ladder and get the rest of my team safely up and over so we could run on to the next obstacle together as if we just jumped over a measly puddle. 

I quickly realized I was not ready for this race’s course.

But I was on it regardless, and there was no going back now!

My months of training seemed ridiculous as each obstacle came up and I was yet again completely caught off guard.

My after-run cool down stretching never desensitized me to the claustrophobia I’d face as I army crawled my way through 100 meters of plywood-covered muddy trenches.

Nor did running hands-free on a stationary treadmill ever strengthen my hands’ grip to swing across a drop off while death-gripping a 3-inch thick rope.

No amount of lacing my shoes improved my balance to be ready to walk toe-to-toe across a slippery log avoiding a 4-foot pool of mud underneath.

Needless to say, I made it to the finish line a total wreck and my team really carried me through most of the race!

My whole goal for months leading up to the race was to dedicatedly train so I didn’t let my team down because I was too slow.

And I didn’t deviate from my training plan. But I had no idea the obstacles we were going to face. So my training came up short and left me as the obvious weakest link on my team. 

Had I known what was coming, my training would have looked drastically different.

This embarrassing memory came flooding back to my mind as I was reading a passage in Psalm a few weeks ago:

“For who is God, but the Lord? And who is a rock, except our God?- the God who equipped me with strength and made my way blameless. He made my feet like the feet of a deer and set me secure on the heights. He trains my hands for war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.” Psalm 18:31-34 (ESV)

Did you see it?

HE trains my hands for war.

I trained how I best thought would help me successfully face what was coming. I put my energy into training for what I thought I was going to face.

The problem was I had no idea all that was coming. I only knew pieces.

My well-intended training came up short because my knowledge of what I was training for came up short.

I was not the right trainer to prepare me for that race.

In a way, how we treat our lives is similar to this. Especially in times of waiting, we tend to choose for ourselves how we want to pass the time until our waiting is over.

But what if our time spent in waiting is actually our training ground?

And the only One who is qualified to be our Trainer is the One who knows what’s ahead?

You don’t just leave a bow of bronze propped up in a corner, and then pick it up for the first time when it’s time to use it.

You’ll never be able to do it. 

It takes intentional time of strengthening and skillful learning in order to bend that bow.

So instead of thinking of our periods of waiting on God as a waste of time, what if we trust that He knows what type of terrain is ahead much better than we do and knows exactly how we need to train in order to face it well?

This means we take Him seriously when He asks us to do things that may not make sense to us.

Maybe it’s to get involved in something that seems totally irrelevant to where you want to be, or to spend your resources that you’ve diligently saved up for what you think is coming in your future on someone else’s need that He brings to your attention.

When it comes to your own preparation for your future, who are you trusting as your trainer?

What an amazing, overqualified Trainer we have who knows every second of what we’re going to walk through and every weakness we have that needs to be strengthened so that we will be able to pick up and bend the bow of bronze when we need to.

When we see our times of waiting as our training ground equipping us for what’s to come, it no longer seems so unimportant or inconvenient.

Instead, it becomes indispensable, precious time where we need our eyes to be more open and aware than ever! Or else we’re choosing to show up to the starting line inadequately trained and unprepared.

Remembering this passage has brought me to a time of remembering some ways that God has asked me to train and use my time that I haven’t prioritized or taken seriously because it didn’t seem applicable to what I expect my future to look like.

I’ve needed to repent of my stubbornness and blatant disobedience, and ask God to help me get back on HIS training schedule for my life instead of trusting in my own. 

I pray you are able to take time as well this week. Get somewhere quiet and alone and humbly ask God, “In what ways have you asked me to train and I’ve shoved it off because I didn’t see it as important or worth my time?”

The last thing that we want is to be staring up at a 10-foot wall in our path wishing we had taken our Trainer at His word and followed what He asked of us to do to prepare for that moment.

From one of His children to another,

Christi