Looking Up When It's More Natural to Look Down

Four months ago, I started working with a personal trainer. Having health challenges and not purposely exercising for over fourteen years, I’ve discovered muscles I didn’t know I have.

Once a week, I hear things like, “This will be challenging, but you can do it!”

And once a week, my brain talks to those muscles and says, “Val says you can do it. You have to do it!”

“Brain to Leg. . . “

This is the conversation that goes on in my head once a week.

It doesn’t feel natural to purposely use a muscle I don’t have to use very often or to make myself move in ways I don’t move on a regular basis.

It’s more natural to just live life as it comes.

But the more I work those muscles, the more Val pushes me to do the challenging thing, and the more I have these conversations with my brain, the stronger I’m getting. Those muscles are starting to work properly.

The unnatural is becoming more natural.

Life's the same way.

We waste our lives if we just take them as they come.

When we forget what they’re all about.

Or Who they’re all about.

The only way I can make certain muscles move is if my brain tells them to move. If I concentrate and make them do something completely unnatural.

And the only way to look up to God when it’s more natural to look down is by having those same kinds of conversations.

“Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.” (Col. 3:2))

“Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Rom. 12:2)

To exercise those muscles that turn our eyes to the One who rules over all, we have to set our minds on God’s truth and not let life come as it will.

We have to tell ourselves to look up.

Not once a week.

But every time we begin to look down.

This world is distracting. Our busy lives are distracting. It’s more natural to just take life as it comes.

But God gave us a Book—not to give us something to do five minutes every day—but to guide our lives and to renew our minds.

We have to be exercised by it.

We have to let its truth move our lives and turn our eyes upward instead of downward.

It’s the only way looking up will become natural.

It’s the only way our lives will be characterized as unwasted.

“The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters.” (Psalm 93:4)

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