Muscling Through Adversity: Building Inner Strength with Faith and Sports (Part 2)

This is part two of my recent article series. In the previous article, “Finding Strength Through Weakness: What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger,” I talked about how our weaknesses and challenges can become some of our biggest opportunities for growth. I want to take that a little further because I think we sometimes miss how God actually develops the things we're constantly asking Him for.

We pray for strength, but we don't want anything heavy. We pray for patience, but we don't want to wait. We pray for courage, but we don't want to be scared. We pray for perseverance, but we definitely don't want anything difficult enough to make us want to quit.

See the problem?

Sometimes we're asking God to develop something in us while also asking Him to remove every situation that could possibly develop it.

Romans 5:3–5 (ESV) says, “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”

I don't read that as Paul telling us we're supposed to walk around excited when life punches us in the face. Suffering hurts. Losing hurts. Failure hurts. Injuries hurt. Disappointment hurts. Paul isn't pretending otherwise. He's telling us that God can use what we're going through and that the hard stuff doesn't have to be wasted.

For athletes, this should make a whole lot of sense because almost everything we develop in sports requires some kind of resistance. You don't build endurance without getting tired. You don't learn how to handle losing by winning all the time. You don't develop patience when everything happens exactly when you want it to. You don't learn how to fight for a spot if one is handed to you, and you don't find out much about your character when everything is going your way.

We love talking about resilience, grit, toughness, and perseverance in sports, but none of those things are developed in comfort.

That's why I think there's a big difference between asking God to get us out of something and asking God what He's doing in us while we're going through it.

That brings me to 2 Corinthians 12:9–10 (ESV), where God tells Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Paul eventually gets to the statement, “For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

The context matters here because Paul had already asked God three times to remove what he called a “thorn” in his flesh. Scripture never tells us exactly what the thorn was, so I'm not going to pretend we know. What we do know is that Paul wanted it gone and God didn't take it away.

That's a pretty uncomfortable answer to prayer.

Paul basically said, “God, please remove this,” and God's answer wasn't removal. His answer was grace.

I think athletes can relate to that more than we sometimes realize. How many times have you prayed for the injury to heal faster, for the starting position, for the scholarship, for the coach to notice you, for the slump to finally end, or for the opportunity you've been working toward?

Sometimes you get exactly what you prayed for. Sometimes you don't.

That doesn't mean God wasn't listening, and it doesn't mean He's absent because the answer didn't look like the one you wanted. Sometimes we're so focused on God changing our circumstances that we completely miss how He's changing us through them.

The easiest comparison for me is the weight room because athletes already understand this concept physically.

We intentionally put our muscles under stress because that's part of how the body adapts. Resistance training creates mechanical tension and can produce microscopic muscle damage. With appropriate recovery, nutrition, and continued training, the body adapts and muscle fibers can grow stronger and larger over time.

We don't walk into the weight room, pick up something that requires absolutely no effort, put it down ten times, and wonder why we're not getting stronger.

There has to be resistance.

I think that's a pretty good picture of what Romans is talking about when Paul connects suffering to endurance, endurance to character, and character to hope. I'm not saying God causes every terrible thing that happens because He wants to teach us a lesson, and I'm definitely not saying we should slap “everything happens for a reason” on somebody else's pain. That's not what these passages say.

What they do tell us is that God can work in the middle of hard things, and sometimes the very thing we're begging Him to remove becomes a place where we learn to depend on Him differently.

Think about what we actually ask God for. If I'm asking for patience, there are going to have to be situations where I don't get what I want immediately. If I'm asking for courage, at some point I'm probably going to have to face something that scares me. If I'm asking for perseverance, there has to be something difficult enough that quitting sounds pretty good. If I'm asking God to strengthen my faith, there may be times when I have to trust Him without understanding what He's doing.

That's where sports can expose us really quickly.

Sitting the bench will show you whether you can still be a good teammate when you're not getting what you want. Getting injured can show you how much of your identity was wrapped up in being an athlete. Losing can show you whether you know how to take accountability or immediately start looking for somebody to blame. Getting pulled from a match can show you whether you're coachable when you're angry. Watching somebody else get the opportunity you wanted can show you whether you can genuinely celebrate another person's success.

Competition has a funny way of bringing stuff to the surface.

That's one reason I believe adversity can be such a powerful teacher. It doesn't automatically make us better. Plenty of people go through hard things and come out bitter, angry, or defeated. Growth isn't automatic just because something was difficult. We still have to decide what we're going to do with it.

Are you going to learn from it or just complain about it? Are you going to let somebody coach you through it or shut everybody out? Are you going to take accountability for what you can control or spend all of your energy blaming what you can't? Are you going to keep trusting God when He isn't answering the prayer the way you wanted Him to?

That's where the real work happens.

And there's another piece of 2 Corinthians that I think is especially important for athletes because sports culture loves the idea of being tough. We're taught to push through, suck it up, compete harder, and figure it out. There's absolutely a place for toughness, and anybody who's played at a high level knows you're going to have to get comfortable being uncomfortable.

But Christian strength isn't pretending you never need anybody.

Paul isn't saying, “I was weak, I toughened up, and now I can handle everything myself.” He's saying almost the exact opposite. His weakness taught him that Christ's strength was greater than his own.

That's a huge difference.

Sometimes being strong means pushing through something difficult, but sometimes it means admitting you need help before you completely fall apart. Sometimes it means taking the rest day your body needs instead of proving how tough you are. Sometimes it means telling your coach you're struggling. Sometimes it means asking a teammate to pray with you. Sometimes it means accepting that you're not going to understand why something happened right now.

And sometimes it means getting up tomorrow and doing the next right thing even though the situation hasn't changed yet.

That's the part of faith and adversity I think we miss when we reduce everything to “what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.” Hard things don't magically make us stronger. It's what happens in us while we're walking through them that matters.

Romans tells us suffering can produce endurance, character, and hope. Corinthians tells us God's power can show up right in the middle of our weakness. Neither passage promises us that God will remove every obstacle, fix every situation, or give us the outcome we want.

What they do promise is that weakness doesn't mean God is finished working.

So when adversity shows up, whether that's an injury, a loss, getting benched, getting cut, struggling with confidence, or watching an opportunity go to somebody else, absolutely ask God for help. Ask Him to change the situation. Ask Him for healing. Ask Him to open the door.

But maybe add another question to the prayer.

“God, if You're not taking this away right now, what are You trying to build in me while I'm here?”

Because sometimes we're praying for God to make us stronger without realizing the weight we're asking Him to remove might be part of how He's doing it.