I hope that all of you are enjoying the nice brisk weather we have been having the past week. It seem the cold has kept me inside for my workouts most of the week. That is until today. You see my first triathlon of the season is on February 14 and I really need to get some time in the pool so that I am ready. Well all week I have been going from YMCA to YMCA looking for a pool that was open. It seemed like every one that I went to was closed for the season. Well today I finally found out that the Campo YMCA in Brandon had their pool open, so I decided to check it out. Now mind you I am a pretty good swimmer, I was never on the swim team or anything but I felt I was ok. Keep in mind that it was like 38 degrees out this morning at 7:30am when I arrived and you could see the steam coming off of the pool. I have to admit it looked pretty cool. So I dawned my triathlon spandex shorts, grabbed my goggles and headed outside. I jumped in the nice warm pool all by myself and began to swim. 1 lap, 2 laps, 3 laps, "are we finished yet" I began to think. I was only at 150 meters and my body was telling me "you should have started working on this part of you training a whole lot sooner than now". Well I continued swimming for about a half an hour and I can tell you I was dead tired when I finished. But the story does not end there, you see as I was finishing my last lap the lifeguard came over to me and told me that I needed to get out because the fire alarm was going off. I said "but I only have my spandex on what about my clothes. They told me I could run in and get them and then change outside. So that is what I did. lucky for me (or maybe everyone outside) they had an outdoor restroom. That was my morning how was yours?
So I know you are all saying Paul what does this have to do with anything at Relevant. Well the fire alarm story was just for fun but the swimming story is the key. You see I have been telling myself for 2 months now "the swimming part of the triathlon is no big deal, just wait till a few weeks before the race and you will be fine" Well I am a few weeks before the race and my running and cycling are great and my swimming sucks. Do you know why? Because I have neglected that portion of training. I tried to skip a step in the process and now I am paying the price. Sure I will be ready and finish the race, but things could have been so much easier if I would have just been working on every part of the training a little bit at a time.
I think that the same is true in our spiritual journey. Maybe we have alarms going off all the time telling us something is wrong but we just ignore them. Many of us make a decision to become a follower of Christ much like I decided to become a triathlete but we leave certain steps out of the process that will help us maximize our experience with Jesus. We like the thought of being a Christ Follower but hate the training that goes long with it. Then we have an alarm that goes off and it reveals the problem that we have been ignoring. Well this week at Relevant we are going to be discussing the Spiritual Bailout that we receive from Jesus and also what process of spiritual fitness goes along with this Bailout.
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