Lift heavy. Push hard.

The neighborhood had a garage sale Saturday, so we pushed everything back an hour. Bible at 9:30, bars at 10:00. If anybody used the extra hour to sleep in and skip, you couldn't tell. It was a big group. Two dozen dads, a few kids on shoulders, a driveway full of iron, and sun for once.

The Word: thirsting for the Spirit

Reid brought the Word, and it was about thirst.

We thirst for a lot of things. The next promotion. The number on the bar. The truck, the house, the weekend, the drink at the end of a long day, the next thing after that. None of it is wrong on its own. The problem is none of it quenches. You get it, you're satisfied for about a week, and then you're thirsty again, usually for a bigger version of the same thing.

Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst.

John 4:13-14

That's Jesus at a well, talking to a woman who had come back to it every day of her life. The thirst isn't the problem. God built it into you. The problem is what you keep pouring into it. Reid's point was simple: thirst for the Spirit the way you thirst for everything else, and watch what happens to everything else.

Worth sitting with on a Tuesday, when the thing you're chasing is right there and still doesn't fill the tank.

The workout: lift heavy, push hard

Rassel programmed this one, and the instructions fit on a sticky note. Lift heavy. Push hard.

Buy in: a team 1K, then 50 squats, 40 push-ups and 30 V-ups. Gym: round one at 50 to 75 percent to warm up, rounds two and three as many reps as possible. Barbell bench, belt squat, trap bar or sandbag deadlift, dumbbell hammer curls, assault bike to 100 before you switch. Turf: sandbag bear carry, heavy ball slams, cable lat pulldowns, cable overhead tricep extensions. Elements: landmine chest press, heavy walking lunges, weighted GHD extensions, heavy EZ bar curls, and 15 to 20 seconds on the treadmill before you move. Buy out: another team 1K.

Heavy means heavy. Nobody got a trophy for the lightest bar. And push hard means the man next to you is watching, which is the whole reason this works.

Big group

Look at the photo at the top of this post. Count them. Now count the kids.

That's the part worth remembering. The standard isn't being set in a vacuum. It's being set in front of a boy in a red shirt and a little girl on her dad's shoulders, who watched a driveway full of grown men lift heavy and push hard and not quit. They won't remember the board. They'll remember what their dad looked like doing it.

If you were there: good. Bring somebody next week.

If you weren't, you know how this works. You have to know a dad. Ask him. Or reach out and we'll start there.

Show up. Don't quit. Be a good person. Lift heavy. Push hard.