During 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 little idea that he would not only help my football career but revolutionize weight training in sports.

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

Epley started an entire industry with 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 on 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 led to bigger, faster, and stronger players.

When lifting was introduced, it soon became obvious that I was becoming faster and stronger in my freshman year. Similarly, Scripture teaches us not to run from our pain but to realize it is essential for our spiritual maturity. Our struggles help us to 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 experiencing 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 the squeeze on the Thessalonicans, 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 the pain and see 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)