Another shoulders day...I seemed a bit sluggish after the initial stretch out of the gate this morning. I began to turn it onaround 5AM before hitting the weights. After the routine, cardio was a breeze. There may be some sort of application to my morning warmup by adopting some sort of resistance...potentially even some sort of ab exercise, but I don't know if that would charge me up like a 40+ minute resistance routine. Then again, I could just be riding the coattails of the endorphins?

I finished a book on my new reading list: R.C. Sproul's Chosen By God. It's been a long time coming—not that it's a hard read or long for it's only 213 pages, rather, it's just one of those books that I enjoy reading, but then something else comes along and distracts me. It's a topic that I've studied a bit and I completed his video series on in the past. While I have the link posted elsewhere, here's the link to the 6-part video series, Chosen By God.

I'm liking the evolution of my site, from merely just a simple workout / weightloss / nutritional personal journal to the sharing of my faith. I've not done so consistently in the past because I didn't feel...good enough, I didn't want to tarnish the name of my God. But, look, that's silly...there's no one righteous, not one. Check out Romans 3:10-12. It's for that reason why NO ONE wants justice; we want grace. Beautiful, sweet, amazing grace. I've made mistakes...and like I've been hearing from a couple sermons yesterday from both MacArthur and Piper, my love for God isn't this balanced line toward eternity—it ebbs and flows; it's like a sine wave; a rollercoaster! I've had those joyous moments of basking in the sunny grace he pours down upon me; I've had those dark nights of the soul. This is the believer's life. I've sinned, then repented, and sinned again. Yet, still...I love Him. No, of course I don't sin so that His grace may increase (Romans 6:1-2). How often have I felt Paul's sentiment in chapter 7:

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

Of course, there's this tension for the Called, as we wrestle through our sanctification. And it makes perfectly good sense that it exists. There would be little need for justification if I had it figured out...and I would be unique to the whole history of humanity with the exception of Jesus—clearly, that's not me...

For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.