Resistance training

Years ago, while training with my inline racing team, our trainer came to us with a number of new techniques for improving our strength and endourance. One of the ideas, wearing a parchute on our backs, facing the wind and using nature's resistance. In keeping with the message heard yesterday from Pastor Furtick (www.elevationchurch.org), how when needing to change we have to provide solutions to fill what is being removed. Good luck following the tangability on this one, by no means is this representative for the message! Pastor spoke of our teenage generation, fitting to all generations, not to sell our birthrights. Not to seek instant gratification for the long term promise. Esau was hungry, starving (so he thought), he saught the immediate gratification rather than holding steadfast to his birthright, instead settling for a bowl of beans & branded with a label (Gen. 25: 27-34).
Ok here goes a parallel in my mind.
I hated the thought of dragging the wind. I was dedicated to train, winning and all that was needed to win. Winning is a process, leading us to the point of success. You get to a point in training specifically for "your event." You start with many things to alter and tweek, doing these you will make incredible strides, to cut time off your mile. You reach a point where it is not reducing time by a minute(s), but to remove seconds becomes difficult. You've become so lean at your discipline, seconds make a difference. So years and months of training and now I was faced with how to trim time further, taking seconds off. "Strap that parachute on your back and let's train." Into the wind, training on the shore, so there is plenty of wind to try and hold you back.
You find that your form and technique have to be in absolute unity. If you get your head up, you become more upright, catching air, it will pull you back. If your arms are not in sync you expend valuble energy, off from the cadence of your legs. Focus your leg motion on power, 90 degrees to your body so they do not create drag, but complete the energy transfer. Refine the technique for complete function from your form. See this parachute will now expose the techniques that I must change to improve, without this refinement I become more vounerable to the forces around me.
To me this parachute is like life in a way. We face all sorts of challenges that will expose us, our character. Make changes in my life and heart, so that I can be more in tune with truth, His truth. To know that all of my actions may need to be refined, remove old behaviors, replace with the refined. Habits that must be exposed to grow (improve), changed. Inclusive to this change, I need to know what to put back in it's place, refined behavior, etc. or there is no winning. So the parachute is on my back, I am pulling the wind. Knowing that if I take the steps required in this training, I will cut seconds off my time. In this case the seconds are the things that pull me from my objective, straining my focus. The parachute is life as it pulls against me, my form and focus is what will refine my outcome. Filling in what was missing with new solutions, new methods of training, finding additional ways to win. Find the advantage from this parachute, do not be branded by what is around me in my life wanting to pull me back. Stand steadfast in my birthright......my heart is in His direction and so must all of my actions. Expose me for what I am , that I become what I can be..................
It is a journey as in my daily walk with Him, I accepted Him and began to see the larger changes, now disclosed are the more subtle details. Standing taller in front of me are these subtle forms which require additional change. They require more devotion to change, greater understanding of how to truly refine, grow stronger and more steadfast in Him. I must dig deeper.