The Biggest Loser has been a pretty popular television reality show for several years. I never followed or watched it just assuming it was another shallow reality show.
I caught a couple of the last episodes last season. The last few episodes are the episodes to watch because you get to see the before and after. It is an inspiring show in many ways. Extremely fat, overweight, and obese men and women are taken to a fitness ranch in California and given the opportunity to a second chance at a healthy life and a chance at $250,000.
The transformations of the people competing over the 12 or so weeks is amazing. Most look, feel and act like new people.
The transformations take time. The contestants don’t say some magic words and all of a sudden they are in good health.
The trainers Bob and Jillian are intense individuals who drive and inspire the contestants to achieve a transformation physically, mentally, and emotionally. A transformation most never had the discipline, knowledge, or environment to achieve at home alone.
Bob and Jillian push the contestants past their own perceived standards of what a human can accomplish. Bob and Jillian don’t let the contestants settle with excuses, apathy, or a false sense of accomplishment.
Bob and Jillian know what it will take for the contestants to be successful. They know that for the contestants to lose the weight it will take good pain and a lot of sweat. The intensity of Bob and Jillian is the engine that drives the the contestants to success.
Bob and Jillian won’t accept failure. If it means offending, getting in the faces of, or raising their voices with the contestants then they will do it because they care and see what is at stake. They are successful trainers because they care and won’t settle for less. They are willing to tear down a person’s weaknesses in order for the person to built true strength in its place.
Would the contestants take the intensity if there wasn’t a $250,000 cash prize to compete for? Some would and some wouldn’t. However, most of the contestants who are the least losers from week to week and have to leave the show are grateful for the experience and momentum pushing them in the right direction.
It is inspiring how Bob and Jillian inspire.
The contestants are only successful if they surrender the right to themselves – the right to comfort, the right to their way of doing things, etc.
Intensity is missing from so many lives and venues. As humans we have a propensity for fooling ourselves into thinking we are something we are not. We have become apathetic and believe standards to be excellence when the standards are nothing more that token jesters to make us feel good on the inside and give a facade of excellence on the outside.
We put up skinniness funny mirrors of ourselves to hide our true obesity trying to convince ourselves as well as others that we are something that we are not. We take short-cuts that lead to temporal success, but not true success. We adjust the scales of our lives to make us and other believe we have made progress when we have not.
We like the easier road of comfort, selfishness, and entitlement. Wrongly thinking it will lead to the same place as discipline, self sacrifice, and earning every step.
Jesus Christ was intense about life. He understood the obesity of sin in people’s lives and its consequences. He didn’t come so we could be happy, fulfilled, selfish individuals who give only lip service and give only to the point it doesn’t cost anything.
He said a life lived toward true success would be hard and would cost. He pointed out all those who proclaimed to be followers of God, but were far from it. Men who had fooled themselves into believing they had become something they were not.
Christ came so that we could become the biggest losers. Losers of ourselves which have been weighed down by our sin and selfishness. Christ won’t settle for a few pounds of good deeds (or not doing bad choices) here and there. He wants the transformation to an entirely new person. A person where He is the life.
In order for us to be made new we must surrender the right to ourselves. We must die to ourselves and workout with intensity what He is working in our lives.
When we first met, she wanted what I had. She had live a life of poor, selfish, and destructive choices. I wasn’t perfect, but I live life with discipline and intensity. I knew what true excellence was in all arenas and was willing to pay the cost to get there.
Her life had been tumultuous drama of living a double life of lies and deception. She told me how she had lied to cover up the true her and how she didn’t care about the choices she had made.
She had lived a life around weak and destructive men. She had filled her life with bitterness, anger, and vengefulness.
I wasn’t worried about the life she had lived to meeting me. It doesn’t matter what a person is as long as he/she is desire to and is heading in the right direction with an intensity that can’t be stopped or compromised. I saw the strong and stable woman she could be
I explained to her how I live my life and that it would be intense, tough and hard at times, but was worth it. It was worth more than $250,000. She said she didn’t care how tough it would be. She wanted what I had and wanted to go in the direction I was headed in. She wanted to be free from the obesity of the lifestyle and choices she had been living.
In order for her to succeed she was going to have to surrender the right to herself as far as what she had become.
I took her at her word.
My biggest mistake was I didn’t move us away from the surroundings where she had made such a mess of herself. We needed to go to a need place and a new environment to establish ourselves. A place where she could really free herself from the choices she had made.
She resented the intensity and direction we were heading in. She really didn’t want to change, but just wanted the fruits of such a change. She would project on me many of her faults trying to place the guilt onto someone or something else. I was the one who needed to lose her weight. She resented who I was and the choices I had made, instead of keeping her eyes on who she wanted to become and could become.
She wanted the change but didn’t want the sacrifice it would take to get there.
I supported and encouraged her as a woman, a nurse, a mother. I wanted her to succeed and supported her every way I could. My encouragement was never good enough. Her support of me always had conditions. Her encouragement was evident in word, but most of the time lacking in action.
I was loyal to her, always hoping and believing she wanted what she had said she wanted.
She lived for control for control’s sake because she couldn’t control who she had become. She was afraid to lose her old self because she was afraid of losing control.
I wanted her to be the biggest loser of who she had become. To be free of the weight of control, bitterness, envy, anger, hate and vindictiveness. To be free of every weak man and woman who enables her in her destructive choices.
She can only become the biggest loser by surrendering the right to herself to Christ. In Him is the transformation to a new creation.
No comments:
Post a Comment