You don’t have to be an avid sports fan to appreciate the hard work and dedication required to become an elite athlete. Whether we’re watching football, baseball, basketball, soccer, one of the Olympic events or some other sport, we see competitors displaying feats of skill and physical prowess most of us could never imagine attempting, let alone accomplishing.
Right now, another football season is winding down, with only the NFL playoffs and college football championship game remaining. But each year it seems the players’ athleticism rises to another level.
How does this happen? Innate talent and physical giftedness are part of it, no doubt. As they say about basketball players, you can’t teach height. Being able to leap more than three feet in the air isn’t something they can teach in gym class. And you’ve either got “fast-twitch” muscles or you don’t.
But natural ability can take a person only so far. Many high school jocks never succeed at the collegiate level, and only an infinitesimal percentage of college stars ever advance to the professional level, much less become superstars.
Many things factor into the making of stellar athletes, but one they all share is massive amounts of physical training, something we couch-potato fans never see and rarely appreciate. All we see is how they play on game day, not the behind-the-scenes workouts, practices, conditioning, weight training and other elements designed to maximize their performance. There’s no substitute for this – and no shortcuts.
Have you ever considered that this is true for spiritual growth and maturity as well? Think of your favorite radio Bible teacher, conference speaker or Christian author. Even if they’ve just recently gained wide public recognition, they didn’t become overnight spiritual successes.
Think of Abraham, who received God’s promise that he would become “the father of many nations” (Genesis 17:4-5), even though his son Isaac wasn’t born until he was 100 years old. Or Moses, who after killing an Egyptian in defense of a fellow Hebrew, fled to Midian where he lived for 40 years before the Lord called him to be His instrument in freeing the Israelites from more than four centuries of slavery.
The apostle Paul, following his life-changing encounter with Jesus Christ while traveling with the intent to persecute more Christians, spent about 12 years being ‘seasoned’ in Damascus before Barnabas stood up for him and introduced him to Jesus’ disciples in Jerusalem.
In each instance, God used extended period of waiting to prepare those men for instrumental roles of leadership. It might not have seemed like it at the time, but they were being trained for what the Lord wanted them to do. This is one reason Paul would later write to his protégé Timothy, “…Train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come” (1 Timothy 4:7-8).
Some of us are diligent in pursuing physical training, whether going to the Y or gym regularly or enduring long periods of running to prepare for events like marathons or triathlons. That, as Paul said, “is of some value,” but are we as consistent and determined in the pursuit of godliness through spiritual training?
What does this spiritual training look like? It can take many forms, and it varies from one person to the next. But we can’t draw closer to the Lord unless we spend time with Him in the Scriptures, in prayer, and in the company of fellow followers of Jesus.
In another of his letters to mentor young Timothy, Paul wrote, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). Understanding the Scriptures and knowing how to apply them doesn’t come by osmosis. We need to read, study, meditate, memorize and strive to put what we learn into practice.
Many times in the Bible we see the fathers of the faith devoting much time to prayer. Jesus Himself regularly set aside time for praying and communing with God the Father, admittedly one of the sometimes hard to understand aspects of the Trinity. But if Jesus found prayer essential, how can we think otherwise? This is why we read in 1 Thessalonians 5:17, “pray continually” or “pray without ceasing.” Prayer should be as foundational for our spiritual well-being as breathing is to our physical welfare.
And we can’t succeed in the pursuit of godliness on our own. The Lone Ranger might have been a TV icon of the 1950s, but trying to thrive as a ‘lone ranger’ Christian is a sure path to failure. This is why the writer of Hebrews admonished, “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:24-25).
Jesus Christ is going to return. The Bible promises this, and God has never failed in His promises. It may be soon, or maybe not. Either way, we must resolve to devote ourselves to spiritual training, just as an athlete must be dedicated to rigorous physical training so he or she can excel on the field or arena of competition. Only in that way can we be confident to excel as “God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10).
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