In the fall of 1975, I remember entering the University of Nebraska weight room as a freshman football player and being introduced to my new strength coach, Boyd Epley. I had no idea he would not only help my football career but also revolutionize weight training in sports.

My football coach, Tom Osborne, hired Epley in 1969 while serving as Nebraska’s first-year offensive coordinator. Osborne noticed that injured players were recovering more quickly when using strength-training methods developed by Epley, a pole vaulter. Epley became the first full-time strength and conditioning coach in college football. This forever changed the college football landscape in human performance.

Epley started an entire industry that included thousands of professional coaches and large, state-of-the-art equipment rooms nationwide. While Boyd Epley didn’t coin the motto “No pain, no gain,” he helped build an industry around the idea that every football program needed to lift weights during the season. While a few athletes were lifting weights during the offseason, he showed that even during the season the “pain” of training produced bigger, faster, and stronger players.

When I started lifting, it soon became clear that I was growing faster and stronger during my freshman year. Similarly, Scripture teaches us not to run from our pain but to recognize that it is essential to our spiritual maturity. Our struggles help us identify with Christ’s suffering. We’re conformed to His image through suffering and equipped to help others in distress.

1 Thessalonians 3 – Stand Firm

The Thessalonians were enduring pain and affliction in many ways. Rather than isolating themselves in chapter 3, they embraced the authority of the apostle Paul and Silas, who had planted the church. While Satan had put pressure on the Thessalonians, Paul knew nothing could force them to abandon their faith. He said, “For now, we really live, if you stand firm in the Lord” (3:8).

The Kingdom Coach and Athlete stand firm in the Lord. They thrive through pain, seeing it as an opportunity to become more like Christ.

Bible Memory Verse – “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.”1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 (LSB)

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