Do you ever have those days where your body just won’t do what you want it to?

I do.

Last week I was doing a long interval run. I had done this same workout the week before with no issues. In fact, in the past few weeks, I had done this workout two or three times, and I had complete confidence in my body’s ability to complete the run.

I started out on the warm up feeling a bit slow but figured I just needed to work the tiredness out of my muscles.

After the warm up and a quick stretch, I started on the first interval. Instead of the tiredness working itself out of my body, I felt weighed down by the fatigue in my muscles. No matter how hard I pushed, my legs refused to carry me any faster.

Several minutes into the interval I checked my pace and found I was running more than 30 seconds per kilometre slower than usual. At this point not only did my body feel weak, but my mind began to succumb to the weakness as well. I managed to finish the interval but was discouraged by the amount of time it took.

I was then challenged with the decision to attempt to finish the workout or just to give up. After a bit of going back and forth, I decided to give up and make my way home. I felt defeated and shameful.

As I slowly jogged home, my mind was racing with thoughts: “Why am I so weak?”, “I should have been able to finish. I just did the same run last week.”, “Why did my body fail me?”.

Then as I was rounding the corner near home, I was overwhelmed by the bridge of a worship song titled “Give me Faith” (Elevation Worship).

“I may be weak, but Your Spirit’s strong in me, my flesh may fail, but my God You never will”.

I was humbled by this reminder that my earthly body is weak.

I had put all this confidence in its ability to perform the task of completing this run, but it failed me, and I don’t have an explanation why. Yet it allowed me to come to this realisation: it is in our weakest moments that we have the opportunity to lose all confidence in our flesh and place it instead in the only One who can make us strong.

I’m not saying that placing my confidence in Christ will make me a stronger, faster runner, but through this experience, I was reminded that my flesh is weak and will give up on me, but my God is strong and never will.