Momentum

April 16, 2008

By Gary Rogers

One of the two lifts in Olympic weightlifting is called the clean and jerk.

The "clean" begins when you stand with your toes under the bar, bend down, take a grip about shoulder width apart, drop your hips in order to lift as much as possible with your legs, and with all your might explode off the floor building momentum that will carry the weight straight up to about chest height. With the weight floating up due to momentum, you bend your knees and drop under the bar, thrusting your elbows forward and letting the bar rest on your chest and the front of your shoulders while in a squatted position. Standing straight up, the bar is now resting on the front of your chest and shoulders.

The "jerk" follows when you bend your knees again and push with such force to again give the weight momentum as you drop down under the bar, this time with the arms fully extended. To finish the lift your legs are brought up side by side and the bar is held overhead.

In the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, Tang Gonghong of China set a world record in the women’s division lifting 402.37 pounds. A young woman lifted more than 400 pounds over her head. Wow!

"Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all you who remain of the house of Israel, you whom I have upheld since you were conceived, and have carried since your birth. Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you" (Isaiah 46:3,4, NIV).

What a tremendous promise from God. God has carried us from our birth and God will carry us through our life. Gray hair does not mean God has forsaken us. God is able to carry us through any storm of adversity. Even when we are weighed down with the challenges and disappointments of this life God is able to not only carry us, but also carry every burden we are carrying.

Remember the momentum generated in the Olympic lift. The momentum carries the weight through the portion of the lift in which the body cannot physically support the weight. Even 402.37 pounds is weightless during that momentum.

We should see our lives in the momentum of God’s keeping power. Living in the momentum of God’s care takes the heavy burden of our life and places it completely on Him.

— Gary Rogers is senior pastor of First Assembly of God in Coweta, Okla.