KneePower
I try to exercise six days every week. I really wish that I could say that I enjoy it. But while I understand the value of working out and appreciate the results of doing so, to say that I enjoy exercising would be far from the truth. More days than not, I have to overcome the concert of voices in my head which seem to generate increasingly persuasive reasons why I shouldn’t go to the gym.
Lately, I have discovered that one of the most effective ways to overcome those voices is to remind myself of how much I enjoy the post-work out conversations that I get to listen to or engage in while I am in the sauna. I don’t know what it is about the sauna that makes people want to talk so freely about so many subjects. But I promise you—I’ve heard it all while sitting there, sweating in the sauna: relationship advice; business ideas, and political commentary. Some of the funniest jokes, amazing insights, astute commentary and piercing observations on and about the human condition have come to me while I have been sitting there, sweating in the sauna.
One of the best of those insights came from one of my long time sauna mates. He once said to me that you can always tell the age of the men in a conversation by the subjects they discuss. He said men in their 20s and 30s talk about women, cars, and sex. He said that men in their 40s and 50s talk about money, careers and their children. And he said that men in their 60s and 70s talk about what pills they are taking! LOL.
I thought about that observation earlier this week when one of my dearest friends and I (we are both in our fifties) were talking about our children. Both of us have children who recently graduated from college and are navigating the treacherous terrain of early adulthood. As we traded horror stories about our children’s various career and relationship struggles, my friend shared his dismay about a decision that one of his daughters had made. I don’t have any daughters, so I didn’t know what to say.
After a brief pause in the conversation, I offered some counsel that my mother once shared with me. She told me that whenever you advise your children, just remember that they will usually do the exact opposite of whatever you say. So if you want them to go left, tell them to go right. We both laughed, and then he said “yeah I figured that out a long time ago.” Then he said something that reminded me of why we are such good friends. He said “Joe, I don’t worry too much about what my children do or don’t do anymore. I just listen. If something is going on in their lives that I don’t like, I’ve found that I do my best fighting on my knees.”
What a statement! What a testimony! What a reminder!
And it was a reminder that I desperately needed. Far too often, we see prayer as a last resort. But prayer is anything but a last resort. Prayer should be our first response. Instead of worrying, complaining, strategizing, or manipulating, we should see prayer as the weapon that it is. Prayer is not surrender. Prayer is not compromise. Prayer is not resignation. Prayer is warfare! In 2 Corinthians 10:3-4. the Apostle Paul reminds us that
For though we walk in the flesh [as mortal men], we are not carrying on our [spiritual] warfare according to the flesh and using the weapons of man. The weapons of our warfare are not physical [weapons of flesh and blood]. Our weapons are divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.
Prayer is the mightiest weapon in the Christian’s arsenal. “More things,” the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote in his epic Idylls of the King, “have been wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.” So here’s my question for you today: have you prayed about it?”
May my friends’ testimony be the testimony of us all.
May we do our best fighting on our knees.
Fight for your children—on your knees!
Fight for your marriage—on your knees!
Fight for clarity—on your knees!
Fight for courage—on your knees!
Fight for insight—on your knees!
Fight for opportunity—on your knees!
The global empire of hell begins to tremble when you fall on your knees and pray.