Grease the Groove: Spiritual Strength Training for Extreme Times (Ep 364)

Extreme times demand spiritual strength training. Discover how elite athletes "grease the groove"—training their central nervous system through frequent sub-maximal exercises—and how this same principle can be applied to training your spirit. Brian Del Turco reveals how micro spiritual workouts build resilient, responsive faith.

Learn the power of prayer bursts throughout your day, why gratitude becomes magnetic when practiced consistently, and how small acts of obedience compound into kingdom impact. This isn't about exhausting yourself—it's about training your spirit through short, frequent practices that optimize spiritual efficiency and maximize power.

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See the full episode transcript below.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: Grease the Groove: Training Your Spirit for Extreme Times

I don't think anybody is going to disagree with me that we live in extreme times right now. Do you sense that? I think most people sense that. Extreme times that demand real strength and impact.

The same principle that elite athletes use to build efficient power—we can really learn something about how we can train our spirit to meet this hour. Welcome to Jesus Smart X, the podcast. I'm Brian Del Turco. Thanks for connecting with me today.

I think you're going to enjoy this and be inspired by it, and I think it's something that's timely for us. Before we dive in, don't miss the Smart Edit newsletter. I'd really love to have you on the list—elevate your faith, how to live smart, making an impact in our personal world. We're all questing on these edges. It's free, it's weekly, five minutes to grow. You can simply subscribe at jesussmart.com/smartedit.

If you missed our last episode with Terry Hoggard on building a pathway to your preferred future, even as you relate in covenant relationship with God, go back and catch that powerful set of ideas and content.

Jesus Dynamics: Psalm 110 and the Reigning King

Before we get into this quick episode today, let's dive into today's Jesus Dynamic. I actually have a rather long article that's in the oven baking, and this Jesus Dynamic is taken from that article. It's unlike many things I've written. I think it's going to be unusual and unique. It's a lens through which we can view our experience with Christ in our times.

Most Christians picture Jesus in heaven doing primarily one thing right now—interceding for us. We know the New Testament Scriptures tell us that, and we appreciate and value that. And we imagine Him patiently waiting for the day when the Father says, "Go get Your bride," and He takes up His role as a king on the earth during the millennium and then the new heavens and new earth to follow.

What if this understanding is incomplete? I don't want to say it's fundamentally wrong, but incomplete.

There is one Psalm that shatters comfortable categories—Psalm 110. It's the most quoted Psalm in the New Testament, and the early church treated it as the Master Key that unlocked what happened for Jesus after the resurrection, meaning His ascension, His session in terms of His enthronement as king, and His current role.

I'll read just the first verse of the seven verses in Psalm 110: "The Lord said to my Lord, sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies Your footstool."

Now this isn't symbolic language. This is what we could call throne language, governmental language. Peter actually quotes this Psalm in Acts chapter 2 on the day of Pentecost, after the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the newly born church. He quotes this Psalm to explain what just happened. He doesn't say that Jesus will sit there someday. He says that Jesus is sitting there now, and that's why everything has changed. He's ascended, He's been enthroned. He's waiting for all things to be put under His feet, and He has now poured out His Holy Spirit.

Paul uses this language: "He must reign until He has put all enemies under His feet"—alluding to Psalm 110 in 1 Corinthians 15.

Now here's what's startling. Not only the most oft-quoted Psalm in the New Testament, but the most often quoted Old Testament passage, period. So this should speak to us. We should be paying attention to this.

Psalm 110 describes a king who rules while His enemies still exist and are even actively resisting. You see, the Father says in Psalm 110, "Rule in the midst of Your enemies." That sounds, does it not, exactly like the world that we're living in? Christ reigns, but opposition remains. The throne is established, but resistance continues.

Here's the picture: Jesus isn't waiting to rule. He's been ruling all along from the moment that He sat down at the Father's right hand. Yes, it will reach its zenith during the millennium and the new heavens and new earth to follow. But make no mistake, it doesn't start at His second coming. It started at His ascension.

What Is "Greasing the Groove"?

So with that kingdom framework in mind—Jesus reigning right now—let's talk about what it means to grease the groove in the Holy Spirit. What on earth do I mean? Am I making this phrase up? No, I'm not. This comes from Eastern European athletic programs.

Back in the day, sports scientists and trainers in the Eastern European nations and in Russia discovered that frequent sub-maximal exercises in terms of strength training—they called it greasing the groove. The Russian Pavel Tsatsouline came to the West and popularized this concept of greasing the groove in terms of training.

Greasing the groove trains not just our muscles but our central nervous system—our CNS. And this is the key: What this does is it optimizes muscle efficiency and it maximizes strength.

Now I'm on a personal experiment right now. I've been on a health quest since April of last year when I got hit with shingles.

Here's how it works: You get your maximum number of push-ups that you can do. In my case currently it was like 31. Then you take 50% of that amount, which would be 15, and you do these really quick short sets throughout the day—15 push-ups spread throughout the day in multiple sets, maybe separated by an hour, an hour and a half in between. And it's easy to do, of course. But what we want to concentrate on is form and technique, and it trains our central nervous system.

Now what I'm doing is I'm going through this process for two weeks, like six days a week for two weeks, and basically doing about a total of about 100 push-ups a day. But it's spread out throughout the day. It's not that difficult to do, although I am feeling a little sore and my body's not used to it. But hey, that's okay. It's good to be sore. It trains your central nervous system.

And then I'm going to test my max again after a two-week period. I'm sure it's going to jump from 31. I'm guessing it's going to jump to 35, 36 after these two weeks, and I'll be thrilled if it jumps to 40. But we'll see. My ultimate goal, Lord willing, is really to get to 70, 80, 100 push-ups max over months like this year.

Now today, this concept of greasing the groove—hey, it's not like I'm some kind of great physical specimen or great fitness person. It's not that. But I do value strength training and walking and exercise.

This concept is used across different domains now, including learning a new language or learning new anything. So for example, if you're learning a new language, you know how challenging that is. And maybe you got 60 minutes a day that you can budget towards language acquisition. Instead of studying for 60 minutes straight, it's better to study for four 15-minute segments. That's called greasing the groove. And the constant recall spread out throughout a day actually accelerates your learning and solidifies it.

So this can be applied to anything—learning a musical instrument or some techniques and processes in business efficiency or anything related to personal discipline and more. It started out in physical fitness, and now it's spread across different domains.

Training Your Spirit Man

Now likewise, small repeated spiritual practices can train your spirit to respond with precision and power. You know, the Apostle Paul tells us to be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus in 2 Timothy 2:1. Strength in our spirit. And boy, do we need that today. It isn't a one-time surge. It grows through faithful repetition.

Each short prayer, for instance—you know, Paul said to pray without ceasing. How do we do that? Well, I think we need to have a dedicated time of prayer daily, preferably in the morning, but whatever works best. But then when he says pray without ceasing, what does he mean? Well, we have things to do. Of course we have to work, we got chores, we got things, projects, whatever—we got things to do.

In what sense do we pray without ceasing? Well, I think this could be it: remaining in a prayerful spirit throughout the day and then pulling aside for 60 seconds