Make a Fist

Go ahead, make a fist…

Now, tighten your fist…

A little tighter… squeeze a little harder…

More…

More… don’t stop there… squeeze it tighter…

I could go on and on and guess what… you will not find the end to your ability to make a tighter fist. I can’t explain why that is, I only know it to be true. I’ll never forget when my football coach hit my team with the most inspiring pre-game speech I’ve ever heard. We were severe underdogs but he said that should not affect our effort. He told us that no matter how hard we thought we were playing we could always play harder… there was always a little extra somewhere inside us if we allowed ourselves to just push past a limit that was mostly in our mind…. “I can’t try any harder”, “I’m giving all I got”… Coach Kelly’s answer to that was “no you’re not, there is more… you can try harder”.

So, go ahead… make a fist… see if you can reach your limit. When you think you have maxed out… try harder, I bet your fist will get tighter.

Philippians 2: 12-13
“…continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.”

I doubt Coach Kelly got his inspiration from this verse, but when I read it I think of him and his fist in the air. This verse certainly provides evidence that his concept has merit especially when it comes to our faith. We are to work… to the point of physical/mental/emotional exhaustion… and when we think we can’t try harder, God empowers and helps us to “squeeze our fist” just a little bit tighter.

With this we can know that all our striving is not in vain and we can say with Paul, who wrote in Colossians 1:29, “To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.”