ChristFit North Devotional – 7/14/2013

Training vs. Trying – Part 2 of 2

[compiled from The Life You’ve Always Wanted by John Ortberg]

–          Trying hard can only accomplish so much.  If you are serious about seizing the chance of a lifetime, you will have to enter into a life of training.

–          There is an immense difference between training to do something and trying to do something.

–          Spiritual disciplines are to life what calisthenics are to a game.

Mr. Ortberg defines a spiritual discipline as “any activity that can help me gain power to live life as Jesus taught and modeled it.  How many spiritual disciplines are there?  As many as you can think of, a few of which are practices such as solitude, servanthood, confession and meditation on Scripture.  But we can turn almost any activity in a ‘training exercise’ for spiritual life.

Signs of Wise Spiritual Training:

Wise training respects the freedom of the Spirit.  To speak of spiritual growth only as the product of training could make it sound like something we can engineer.  Anytime a frog is turned into a prince – or even just a gentler, kinder frog – there is always something mysterious and awesome at work.  In spiritual growth that ‘something mysterious’ is the work of the Spirit.  An analogy from Scripture… “The wind blows wherever it wants.  Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.” – John 3:8.   Consider the difference between piloting a motorboat or a sailboat.  We can run a motorboat by ourselves.  We can fill the tank and start the engine.  We are in control.  But a sailboat is a different story.  We can hoist the sails and steer the rudder, but we are utterly dependent on the wind.  The wind does the work.  If the wind doesn’t blow – and sometimes it doesn’t – we sit still in the water no matter how frantic we act.  Our task is to do whatever enables us to catch the wind.  Spiritual transformation is that way.  We may be aggressively pursuing it, but we cannot turn it on and off.  We can open ourselves to transformation through certain practices, but we cannot engineer it.  We can take no credit for it.  Our primary task is not to calculate how many verses of Scripture we read or how many minutes we spend in prayer.  Our task is to use these activities to create opportunities for God to work.  Then what happens is up to him.  We just put up sail:  ‘The wind blows where it chooses….’ 

Wise training respects our unique temperament and gifts.  We need the freedom to discover how God wants us to grow, for his design will not look quite the same for everyone.  Perhaps God speaks to us in special ways through nature.  Perhaps he made us to be formed by music.  We may have an above-average capacity for silence and prayer.  Or we might respond most strongly to images, symbols and fine arts.  C.S. Lewis once surmised that each person is created to see a different facet of God’s beauty – something no one else can see in quite the same way – and then to bless all worshipers through all eternity with an aspect of God they could not otherwise see.

Wise training will take into account our season of life.  Our season of life – whatever it is – is no barrier to having Christ formed in us.  Not in the least.  Whatever our season of life, it offers its own opportunities and challenges for spiritual growth.  Instead of wishing we were in another season, we ought to find out what this one offers.  Life counts – all of it.  Every moment is potentially an opportunity to be guided by God into his way of living.  Every moment is a chance to learn from Jesus how to live in the kingdom of God.

Wise training respects the inevitability of troughs and peaks.  There will be times of consolation and times of desolation.  In times of consolation we like to pray because God seems so close, the Bible seems alive, sin looks bad, and stoplights all seem green.  Times of desolation are just the opposite:  The Bible seems dry, prayer grows hard, and God is far away.  Both seasons are inevitable, and both seasons can bring unique growth.

Wise training begins with a clear decision.  Jesus confronted people directly about the choice to become a follower.  He came with the gracious announcement that it is now possible to live in the presence and under the reign of God – that was his Good News.  It is possible to live in such a way that when people see us, they will say to themselves, “Wow!  I didn’t know that a life could look like that.”  It indeed happens.  It has happened for many who have followed Christ, and it really is possible for us.  This is the ‘pearl of great value’ that Jesus spoke, for which any sensible person would sell everything.  This is the race for which we were born.  But we will not drift into such a life.  We must decide.

ChristFit North Devotional – 6/30/2013

Training vs. Trying – Part 1 of 2

[compiled from The Life You’ve Always Wanted by John Ortberg]

“For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.  If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Jesus Christ, being trained in words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed.  Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths.  Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.” – 1 Timothy 4:4-8

“Imagine a group of people coming to your home and interrupting your Twinkie-eating, TV-watching routine with an urgent message: ‘Good news!  We’re from the United States Olympic Committee.  We have been looking for someone to run the marathon in the next Olympics.  We have statistics on every person in the entire nation on computer.  We have checked everybody’s records – their performance in the president’s physical fitness test in grade school, body type, bone structure, right down to their current percentage of body fat.  We have determined that out of two hundred million people, you are the one person in America with a chance to bring home the gold medal in the marathon.  So you are on the squad.  You will run the race.  This is the chance of a lifetime.’

You are surprised by this because the farthest you have ever run is from the couch to the refrigerator.  But after the first shock passes, you are gripped by the realization of what’s happening in your life.  You picture yourself mingling with the elite athletes of the world.  You allow yourself to imagine that maybe you do have what it takes.  At night you dream about standing on the podium after the race and hearing the national anthem, seeing the flag raised, and bending low to receive the gold medal.

You begin to feel a sense of urgency.  It will be your body wearing those little racing togs, with a billion people watching on television.  But greater than any external pressure is the internal drive that says, ‘This is the race I was created to run.  This is my destiny.  This is why I was born.  Here’s my chance!’

This race becomes the great passion of your life.  It dominates your mind.  It occupies every waking moment.  To run the race well – to win it if you can – becomes the central focus of your existence.  It is what gets you out of bed in the morning.  It is what you live for.  It is the chance of a lifetime.

Then it dawns on you: Right now you cannot run a marathon.  More to the point, you cannot run a marathon even if you try really, really hard.  Trying hard can accomplish only so much.  If you are serious about seizing this chance of a lifetime, you will have to enter into a life of training.  You must arrange your life around certain practices that will enable you to do what you cannot do now by willpower alone.  When it comes to running a marathon, you must train, not merely try.

This need for training is not confined only to athletics.  Training is required for people who want to play a musical instrument or learn a new language or run a business.  Indeed, it is required for any significant life challenge – including spiritual growth.

There is an immense difference between training to do something and trying to do something.

Following Jesus simply means learning from him how to arrange my life around activities that enable me to live in the fruit of the Spirit.

1) Spiritual disciplines are not a barometer of spirituality.

The true indicator of spiritual well-being is growth in the ability to love God and people.  If we can do this without practice of any particular spiritual disciplines, then we should by all means skip them.  We are free of having to impress God or anyone else with our spiritual commitment.  Spiritual disciplines are to life what calisthenics are to a game.  Once the game starts, basketball players get no bonus points based on how many free throws they shot in practice.  The only reason to practice them is to be able to make them in the game.

2) Spiritual Disciplines are not necessarily unpleasant.

Many of us got the impression somewhere that for an activity to count as a spiritual discipline, it must be something we would rather not do.  However, if we are training for a life characterized by joy, peace, and affection, we should assume that some of the practices are going to be downright enjoyable.  Many of us need to discover ‘disciplines’ such as celebration that will regularly produce in us rivers of wonder and gratitude.

3) Spiritual disciplines are not a way to earn favor with God.

Spiritual disciplines are not about trying to be good enough to merit God’s forgiveness and goodwill.  They are not ways to get extra credit, or to demonstrate to God how deeply we are committed to him.  They exist for our own sake, not God’s.  Spiritual disciplines are simply a means of appropriating or growing toward the life that God graciously offers.