Resuming Workout 1

Monday 5/27/2013 8:35 AM

The Nike running app on my phone helps keep track of how many times I run, how far I run and the time it takes to run.  When I start the app it gives a countdown of three seconds before a voice says, “Beginning workout.”  After that I usually turn my phone off and listen to music as I run.  Every mile the voice reminds me of the distance, the total time I’ve been running and the time per mile for the last mile I ran.  At the end of the run I turn the app back on, hit the pause button and then hit the end button when the voice tells me the final results of my workout.

This morning I turned the app off before the countdown ended.  Instead of saying, “beginning workout,” the voice said, “resuming workout,” as I began to run.  When I turned the app back on after my run the screen of my phone still had “3” showing and I could not pause or end the workout.  I tried leaving the app and starting it again but each time the voice would say, “resuming workout.”  Finally after about fifteen minutes I was finally able to end the workout but the total time was over 52 minutes long and my average time was nearly 13 minutes per mile instead of the 9:45 per mile it was when I finished.  I deleted the run from my history because I didn’t want to screw up my statistics.  This is the second time this app has done that.  It is almost like it gets stuck in a loop that can’t be broken.

The theme for my devotions this week is the mind of Christ.  Two lines from my hymn for the week caught my eye,  “I have one deep, supreme desire.  That I may be like Jesus.”  While this is my desire, when it comes to living it out in real life I feel more like the Nike app on my phone, stuck in one spot and constantly saying, “resuming workout.”  Oswald Chambers reminds me of God’s claim upon me and of my responsibility in the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.  He writes, “By sanctification the Son of God is formed in me, then I have to transform my natural life into a spiritual life by obedience to Him. … I have the responsibility of keeping my spirit in agreement with His Spirit, and by degrees Jesus lifts me up to where He lived – in perfect consecration to His Father’s will, paying no attention to any other thing.”

I have a long way to go when it comes to the obedience and staying in agreement with the Spirit of God part of things.  But, according the Chambers, even when I am doing that part well, Jesus lifts me to where he lived by degrees, not all in one fell swoop.  In nature God does things slowly, over long periods of time.  Evidently my sanctification is achieved through lots of practice too.  God doesn’t give up on me so I shouldn’t either.  Rather than becoming frustrated when I seem to be going through the same steps repeatedly perhaps I should embrace the phrase, “Resuming workout.”