Understanding The Purpose

"Contrology (Pilates) is complete coordination of body, mind, and spirit. Through Contrology you first purposefully acquire complete control of your own body and then through proper repetition of its exercises you gradually and progressively acquire that natural rhythm and coordination associated with all your subconscious activities.” - Joseph Pilates

“If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have hard, and ye have preached to every creature that is under heaven, of which I, Paul, am made a minister” – Col. 1:23

“Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.”
-1 Cor. 15:58

“That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” –
2 Timothy 3:17

A.) Dedication to the task; B.) faith that repetition will result in the desired goal, Joseph Pilates tells his students that they will acquire a natural rhythm and coordination. And so we begin the painful contortions. Think about it, someone we have never met tells us this is good for us and we blindly follow. Oh, we’ve seen some results in others and so we hope the same might work for us – but we didn’t know it would be so painful and take so long to see the results!

Isn’t the correlation striking? The pain, the promise, the prize! And so we struggle; spiritual muscles fighting against us – rebelling at the thought of being stretched and torn. More satisfied to be relaxed, flabby and unusable. But we press on – with only faith to encourage us that the pain is not in vain, that all this work will ultimately do us good. That we might continue in the process of being perfected – no, not being perfect, but growing and abounding in preparation to enjoy His perfect will for our lives. It’s a stretch. But just as your body will gradually, progressively acquire that natural rhythm, you can be, “confident of this very thing, that He Who hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ!”