Playing Through the Pain: Growing in Darknessಮಾದರಿ

If I learned nothing else in my years of playing in the NFL, I realized that if you’re willing to push through the pain, amazing things will begin to happen.  It is no small feat getting up every day going to a job full of the world’s most athletic 1% in physicality. However, once you’re there, playing in it isn’t the real accomplishment, the real accomplishment is playing through it.

Tenacity and perseverance are critical inside and outside of the league. It’s more about mental strength, than it is about physical strength.

Are you familiar with resistance strength training?  

According to Google: Resistance strength training is a form of physical activity that is designed to improve muscular fitness by exercising a muscle or a muscle group against external resistance.  In other words, resistance makes you stronger. It’s true in life, just as it is in the gym.

Sometime after David had been anointed to be king and then so strangely sent back into the dark nights of the field, his presence was requested by King Saul. Saul was depressed and he had heard that David was a skilled musician. So, David was sent by his father, Jesse, to the palace to serve the king. Isn’t it interesting that one king was blinded by the dark and the other king was being developed in the dark?

After a short time of serving as the King’s personal musician, David returned again to work in his father’s field while Saul went to war with the army against their neighboring enemy. Their enemy was the Philistines, a notable force and well known throughout that territory as professional warriors. Their country was equipped with some of the most skilled blacksmiths in the area, outfitting their army for battle. The Israelites were professional shepherds, farmers and fisherman, but they were not warriors.

Battles like these would go on for days… like a standoff, the two forces constantly sizing each other up. But this battle was different. The Philistines had come equipped with a champion, a giant of a man known as Goliath.  

On one particular day, David’s father summoned him from the field to send him with food to the front lines where his brothers were serving in King Saul’s army.  David went as he was instructed… obedient, willing, and surrendered, still just a boy and not old enough to join the army himself. The darkness had prepared him for this moment. Upon his arrival, he heard the commotion from the battlefield. He heard the champion challenging his people and mocking his God.  

Naturally David volunteered to fight the giant. He was prepared. But King Saul questioned his ability and tried to outfit him with his own royal armor. David explained that the king-sized armor would inhibit his movement and explained that he had already killed the lion and the bear with just his sling and his knife. The darkness had accelerated his growth. All that time, it had been producing, developing, & building something in David.  

What has the darkness been developing on the inside of you over these last couple of days?  What still needs to be developed?  Can you see that God has been at work even in the darkness?