Here's what most people misunderstand about the cross: it wasn't just a transaction where God zeroed out your account. It was an exchange. Jesus took your sin — all of it — and credited you with something you could never earn.

His righteousness. His perfect record. His standing before the Father.

Become. Not just receive. You don't stand before God as a pardoned criminal still covered in mud. You stand before God as the righteousness of Christ. That is your legal standing. That is your identity. Not because you earned it — but because He gave it.

This is the great exchange. The Old Testament saints knew God was holy and they were not. They had the law to show them the gap. Every sacrifice was a band-aid on a wound that needed surgery. The blood of bulls and goats could cover sin temporarily. But it couldn't remove it. It couldn't make you righteous.

This changes how you train. You don't drag yourself to the gym to prove you're worthy. You train from a place of worthiness already given. You don't perform for God's approval — you move from His approval. That's a different kind of motivation. That's a different kind of strength.

At Iron Faith this summer, every session is built on this foundation. The body and the spirit train together — and both are fueled by the same truth: you are right with God because of Jesus.

Jesus stood on a mountain and gave two of the most striking identity statements ever spoken — not to kings or priests or the spiritually elite. He said them to fishermen, tax collectors, and ordinary people who probably didn't feel like much.

Salt and light. Two things that only matter by what they do to everything around them. Salt doesn't exist for itself — it exists to preserve, to flavor, to bring out what's already there. Light doesn't exist for itself — it exists to expose what's hidden, to guide, to make the dark navigable. Jesus didn't say you should be these things. He said you are. That's your nature now. That's what you were made to be from the moment you stepped into His story.

But here's what that doesn't mean: it doesn't mean you are impressive. It means you are connected to something that is. The moon doesn't generate light — it reflects the sun. You are not the sun. Jesus is. Your identity in Christ is the identity of a mirror perfectly angled toward Him — and salt that draws its preserving power from being seasoned by Him first.

This matters because it frees you from the exhausting project of building yourself up. You don't have to be the strongest, the most successful, the most spiritual. You have to stay aligned with the source. When you do — when you are deeply rooted in who Jesus is and what He's done — people around you experience something they can't fully explain. They feel it in how you carry yourself. In how you don't crumble under pressure. In how you treat people when it costs you something.

The world around us has a desperate identity crisis. People are building their sense of worth on performance, appearance, approval, achievement. All of it is sand. All of it will shift. The person who knows whose they are can stand in the storm and not move — not because they're strong, but because they're anchored to someone who is.

At Iron Faith, we train that anchor in. Week 3 — The Mountain — we go through the Sermon on the Mount and ask hard questions: What is the foundation your life is built on? Would it survive a storm? Every rep this summer is a chance to reinforce an identity that doesn't bend.

Be the salt. Be the mirror. Reflect the light. That's the mission.

Jesus spent three years with twelve ordinary men — not lecturing them, but living with them. Eating, traveling, arguing, working. And in the final moments before He ascended, He gave them the only commission that matters:

Go. Make disciples. That's not just for pastors. That's not just for missionaries. That's the call on every person who has received what Christ gave. You've been made right with God. You carry His light. Now you're sent to do for others what someone did for you — point them toward Jesus.

And here's the thing about the mission: it is the cure for a small life. Anxiety grows when your world shrinks to the size of your own problems. Depression deepens when the story is only about you. God wired us to live for something bigger. The command to make disciples isn't a burden laid on top of your already-full life — it's the thing that gives your life its deepest meaning.

Iron Faith's final week — Risen & Sent — closes the whole 40-session journey with the Great Commission. We re-test the baseline. We remember where we started. And we walk out the door with one question still ringing: where is God sending you?

The workouts are the vehicle. The mission is the destination.

Jesus said He came so that we might have life — and have it to the full. Not a cautious, barely-holding-on kind of life. Not a life spent managing fear and tracking worst-case scenarios. Life to the full.

Anxiety is what happens when we forget who holds the outcome. Worry is what happens when we trust our own assessment of the future more than God's sovereignty over it. And the antidote — the specific, practical antidote that Paul gives — is not willpower. It's not positive thinking. It's gratitude combined with prayer.

Start with what you already have. Gratitude rewires the way you see the world. When you begin each day naming what's been given to you rather than cataloging what's been taken, something shifts. The anxious mind is a closed fist. The grateful mind is an open hand. And an open hand can receive more than a fist ever could.

From gratitude comes the capacity to love. When you are no longer consumed by fear and lack, you have something to give. You can be present with people. You can absorb their pain without drowning in it. You can be generous because you trust the source won't run dry. You can love because you've been loved first — completely, freely, permanently — by a God who held nothing back.

That's the life God intended. Not perfect circumstances. Not zero suffering. But a deep, unshakeable joy that makes no sense to people watching from the outside — and draws them toward the source without you saying a word.

This is what we're building at Iron Faith. Not just stronger bodies. People who know who they are, know what they have, know what they're here to do — and wake up at 6 AM grateful for the chance to do it.

Iron Faith starts June 2. 40 sessions. Every workout, every scripture, every 6 AM conversation in this program is pointing toward this: a life lived from the goodness of God rather than toward it.

You don't have to earn your way there. You're already there. Come train like it.