Training

I’ve been preaching short messages before Theological Fight Club for the past few weeks. I thought i would post my notes. This week God taught me a lot about my desire for him and revealed to me the idols i love more and the reasons i have been slack lately.

“My conviction tonight for what I’ve chosen to lift up and what I’ve chosen to leave out is that, though many things are necessary, ultimately only one thing matters, and whether you have this or not determines the profit of anything else I could say. That one thing is the truth that Jesus is the most satisfying and glorious being in existence. If in the deepest part of your being this is true, you will joyfully make any and every sacrifice that gives you more of Jesus, until ultimately you have Him fully. And if this is not ultimately true, you will either blatantly sin and refuse to repent because you believe your idol is better than God, or you will white-knuckle obedience without joy and use “godliness” as a means to obtaining your idol, using God as a means to what you really want, and testifying to yourself, others, and God that something God made is more satisfying and glorious than Him. One or the other, and it all depends on whether that one truth sinks in to the deepest parts of your being. I echo the words of Paul to all of us tonight: “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves” (2 Corinthians 13:5).

Every sacrifice a person makes is sustained by the hope of a future reward. So why are you here making this sacrifice to study the Bible? What is the ultimate thing you are hoping to obtain from training in godliness?

Physical training gives us something tangible that we can see, experience, and understand. Despite popular belief, the greatest athletes are not just born great, they become great after thousands of hours of practice. A CNN article stated that “There’s no evidence of high-level performance without experience or practice…the most accomplished people need around ten years of hard work before becoming world-class, a pattern so well established researchers call it the ten-year rule” (Colvin, http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/10/30/8391794/index.htm).   

It does not only take years of practice to become great, since many people practice for just as many hours and years and don’t improve. It takes thousands of hours of deliberate practice that is “explicitly intended to improve performance, that reaches for objectives just beyond one’s level of competence, provides feedback on results and involves high levels of repetition. For example: Simply hitting a bucket of balls is not deliberate practice…Hitting an eight-iron 300 times with a goal of leaving the ball within 20 feet of the pine 80 percent of the time, continually observing results and making appropriate adjustments, and doing that for hours every day – that is deliberate practice” (Colvin).

One example is Tiger Woods. “Because his father introduced him to golf at an extremely early age – 18 months – and encouraged him to practice intensively, Woods had racked up at least 15 years of practice by the time he became the youngest-ever winner of the U.S. Amateur Championship, at age 18. Also in line with the findings, he has never stopped trying to improve, devoting many hours a day to conditioning and practice, even remaking his swing twice because that’s what it took to get even better” (Colvin).

There is nothing profound about what I just said. Most people can see the wide-ranging truth of these observations and conclusions across all fields, from sports to academics to business, and as the Scripture notes, to godliness.

People who are most godly, that is, ultimately, most like Jesus, were not always so. They were not “just born that way.” Every person is born just the opposite, as David attests to in Psalm 51: “Behold I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (v. 7). When Jesus saves us, He begins transforming us to be like Him through the Word by the Spirit. The “deliberate practice” Jesus gives us to become more like Him is to “Repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). All life is a continual practice of repenting and completing that repentance by believing in the gospel, a transforming belief that will “produce fruit in keeping with repentance” as John commanded (Matthew 3:8; Martin Luther). People who are most like Jesus have spent years of their lives practicing repentance and belief in the gospel. The fruit of their lives are the result of this “deliberate practice,” acting as a witness to their repentance and belief.

The same principle requirements of physical training are demanded of those who desire to grow in godliness. And, like great athletes, there are few who stick to a lifetime of deliberate practice in repentance and belief and therefore few who we emulate as great men of God. If the way to becoming like Jesus is as simple as repentance and belief in the gospel, why are there so few who devote their lives to this practice and become accurate reflections of Jesus? This is the same question researchers of great athletes ask and cannot answer: “We still do not know which factors encourage individuals to engage in deliberate practice…Some people are much more motivated than others, and that’s the existential question I cannot answer – why” (Colvin).

In the words of John Piper, “Present sacrifice is sustained by the hope of future reward.” Great athletes sacrifice many comforts and pleasures for the pain and suffering of practice because they believe that whatever they hope to gain is worth more than all the pleasures and comforts they are presently sacrificing. The source of motivation varies. Some do it out of fear (communists), others for money, and some for status. If their ultimate motivation and future reward is anything other than an intrinsic delight in the pleasure of the game itself, they are like a mercenary, using the game as a means to gaining the thing they delight more in. The one whose ultimate joy, reward, and motivation for sacrifice is the delight of the game itself glorifies the game by his denial of all things to obtain that which is most glorious and satisfying to him.

The Bible calls this worship.

The same applies to training in godliness. Those who do not consider the future reward of training in godliness, namely saying no to sin and yes to Jesus, will not make the sacrifices necessary because they believe that their sin is better than what their repentance could obtain. This is idolatry. Some will make sacrifices and produce lives that seem to be the outcome of godly training, though they grit their teeth and white knuckle-their way through obedience. They are like the athlete who does not honor the game because, though they “do” the outward obedience, they do not delight in God himself and the experience of knowing him, thus testifying that obedience is a means to obtaining some greater reward, whether it be for money and status, marriage and kids, or self-righteousness. Still, those who continue training in godliness, “for the joy set before them,” delighting in God alone ultimately, glorify God by showing that the pleasure of knowing him is worth every loss imaginable, from money to illicit sex to the ultimate loss of one’s life. Or, as God himself says in Psalm 50:23, “The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me.”

If in the deepest part of your heart you believe anything is more satisfying than the pleasure of knowing Jesus, repent and believe in the gospel, namely the truth that Jesus is the all-satisfying glorious reward and end of the gospel. See, believe, and respond to the gospel that takes away your sin through the blood of the Cross and makes you clean with the righteousness of God, so that through it you can NOW have Jesus:

He is, as Piper says in his message “How the Supremacy of Christ Creates Radical Christian Sacrifice”,

God’s final revelation (Hebrews 1:2).

The heir of all things (1:2).

The creator of the world (1:2).

The radiance of God’s glory (1:3).

The exact imprint of God’s nature (1:3).

He upholds the universe by the word of his power (1:3).

He made purification for sins (1:3).

He sits at the right hand of the Majesty on High (1:4).

He is God, enthroned forever, with a scepter of uprightness (1:8).

He is worshipped by angels (1:6).

His rule will have no end (1:8).

His joy is above all other beings in the universe (1:9).

He took on human flesh (2:14).

He was crowned with glory and honor because of his suffering (2:9).

He was the founder of our salvation (2:10).

He was made perfect in all his obedience by his suffering (2:10).

He destroyed the one who has the power of death, the devil (2:15).

He delivered us from the bondage of fear (2:15).

He is a merciful and faithful high priest (2:17)

He made propitiation for sins (2:17).

He is sympathetic because of his own trials (4:15).

He never sinned (4:15).

He offered up loud cries and tears with reverent fear, and God heard him (5:7).

He became the source of eternal salvation (5:8)

He holds his priesthood by virtue of an indestructible life (7:16).

He appears in the presence of God on our behalf (9:24).

He will come a second time to save us who are eagerly waiting for him (9:28).

He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (13:8)”