Most of you have heard the expression, “no pain – no gain”. Well, today we are going to see why that is true. I have a volunteer who is simply going to hold up these two pitchers of water at shoulder’s height.
As our volunteer is holding up these pitchers of water, his arm muscles are being strained. They don’t usually do this sort of exercise. And as time goes on, what’s happening – as those muscles are being pushed beyond their usual limits – the muscle fibers are actually being damaged. There are tiny tears that are forming. The muscles are literally breaking apart. But don’t worry – that’s perfectly fine. Because God has designed muscles to do exactly that.
I’m actually doing our volunteer a favour by having him hold those jugs of water up, because once his muscles have been damaged by the stress of holding up that water – once the tiny tears in your muscle fibers have formed – over the course of the next 3 to 4 days, his body will repair the damage – and in fact, his body will go overboard and make his muscles even better than they were before. They don’t want to get damaged again, so his body will build up the muscles stronger than they were before – strong enough to handle this kind of strain without being damaged. This is how muscles grow.
Now of course, the negative side to all this, is that damaging your muscles is uncomfortable. It’s not pleasant to tear your muscle fibers. There is going to be a measure of pain involved.
I remember when I started working at a greenhouse out by Penhold about 10 years ago. For the first two weeks of that job, when I came home from work at night, my body was sore. I was using muscles that I didn’t usually use – straining them beyond their usual capabilities. There was certainly pain involved – but after about two weeks, I wasn’t really sore anymore. My body repaired the damage done and built up my muscles so they could handle that strain without issue.
And this is exact where this concept of “no pain – no gain” comes from. Without the pain that comes from damaging your muscles, you will have no gain in strength. We call this exercise – or working-out. We purposely injure our muscles so that we can grow in strength. A certain amount of pain is required if you want to gain muscle.
And the reason that I bring this all up, is because the Bible teaches a similar concept. Over these next few weeks leading into Easter, our topic is going to be “no pain – no gain. Why Easter matters.” Because the principle of “no pain – no gain” is true not just in the physical realm – but it’s also true in the spiritual.
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