Banks Vaults and Movie Heroes
From his home the man had an unobstructed view of the new construction site. It appeared to be a commercial building of some kind. And though the work had begun normally enough, the man’s curiosity was soon aroused by something odd. With the help of a crane, a silver box was maneuvered into the center of the slab. It was the size of a large living room, and taller than any of the men. In the days that followed, as the crew began to frame the building and add drywall, the huge, glistening box was gradually hidden from view. Still curious, the man decided to walk over and ask what it was.
From his home the man had an unobstructed view of the new construction site. It appeared to be a commercial building of some kind. And though the work had begun normally enough, the man’s curiosity was soon aroused by something odd. With the help of a crane, a silver box was maneuvered into the center of the slab. It was the size of a large living room, and taller than any of the men. In the days that followed, as the crew began to frame the building and add drywall, the huge, glistening box was gradually hidden from view. Still curious, the man decided to walk over and ask what it was.
He learned that the building was to be a bank, and the
silver box was its vault. The vault was not only large in size, it was central
to everything the bank stood for. The building was therefore being constructed
around it. The vault lay at the heart of the bank, defining its purpose, giving
it value, and making it distinct from every other building in the area.
Discipleship is about building our lives around Jesus. He
is our treasure and great reward. And like the construction of a bank around
its vault, all the various parts of our lives should be built around Christ and
the certain hope of eternal, unfading riches that are ours in him.
Why is it, then, that we who claim to follow Jesus so
often fail to organize our lives around him? If he really holds the center of
gravity in our souls, then our thoughts, habits, schedules, and routines should
orbit around him. The spiritual disciplines enable us to center our lives on
Jesus, becoming like him in his self-giving love. The disciplines are not the
end themselves. They are practices that help us remember the gospel and apply
it to our lives as we develop our relationship with God. They are also our
focus of this chapter.
A Rocky Wannabe
As a boy, I had a powerful attachment to the Rocky movies. Sylvester Stallone’s
character may have been an unlikely role model for a scrawny twelve-year-old
kid living on a dusty farm in West Texas, but that didn’t stop me from making
him an idol. I owned a scratchy tape recording of the first Rocky soundtrack, and I listened to it
for inspiration as I did push-ups, strained through sit-ups, and sweated
through jumping rope and lifting weights.
Why in the world was I doing this? Being twelve, I never
got far enough in my thinking to have a clearly defined goal. If you had asked,
I probably would have said, “I want to look like Rocky,” or, “I want to be the
heavyweight champion of the world.” Needless to say, I never achieved either.
Why? Probably lots of good reasons. But for our immediate purposes, I want to
focus on just one: Apparently, two weeks isn’t long enough to transform a
skinny weakling into a stallion, and that’s about as long as I stuck to my
vague plan. I never became Rocky because I didn’t keep up the exercise routine.
Too often the same could be said of our spiritual lives. You
hear a sermon, attend a conference, are inspired by a missionary, or read a
stirring book. An image forms in your mind of who you could become. You
envision yourself as a genuinely Christ-like person, a spiritual giant, marked
by the depth of your love, the maturity of your faith, and your unruffled joy
and peace. As the music rises in your soul, you resolve to get disciplined:
read through the Bible in a year, memorize a verse of Scripture each day, pray
thirty minutes every morning, fast every Thursday, increase your giving by 10
percent.
But before long, like a twelve-year-old briefly obsessed
with body-building, you quickly lose steam and your new routines sputter to a
halt. Consequently, you never become the spiritual giant you envisioned. Sound
familiar?
If talk about spiritual disciplines is more intimidating
than inviting, I understand.
Yet there is also something inside me that finds
discipline attractive. I respect disciplined people who eat nutritious meals
and exercise regularly. I also admire people who practice these calisthenics
for the soul called spiritual disciplines – and I’ve slowly discovered how
important these practices are to my ongoing spiritual transformation.
Training vs. Trying
Suppose you were to ask me to run with you in a marathon
next week. I could say yes, and have every intention of doing so. But I would
never make the finish line. My good intentions couldn’t possibly compensate for
the lack of training. Now if you asked to me to run a marathon that is ten
months away, I could do it – if I spent adequate time in training. But trying
harder simply wouldn’t work because, as John Ortberg observes, “There is an
immense difference between training to do something and trying to do
something.”[i]
Respecting the distinction between
training and merely trying is the key to transformation in every aspect of
life. People sometimes think that learning how to play Bach at the keyboard by
spending years practicing scales and chord progressions is the “hard” way. The
truth is the other way around. Spending years practicing scales is the easy way
to learn to play Bach. Imagine sitting down at a grand piano in front of a packed
concert hall and having never practiced a moment in your life. That’s the hard
way.[ii]
Living the Christian life is about training, not trying.
But we often forget this. We try to be patient with our children, to show love
to people who irritate us, to refrain from lust when confronted with
sensuality, and to not feel anxious about difficult circumstances. But try as
we will, we won’t succeed if we haven’t strengthened and shaped our souls
through spiritual training.
Listen. You’ll never become like Christ by simply
exerting more effort in trying harder to be a better person. You have to
develop new capacities in your character. And that requires the power of the
Spirit in forming your soul through disciplines. Spiritual disciplines, “those
personal and corporate disciplines that promote spiritual growth,”[iii] are the means God has given us for training to live as Jesus lived. These
practices are called disciplines
because they involve our deliberate participation in training for the purpose
of godliness. They are called spiritual
disciplines because their effectiveness depends on the gracious work of the
Spirit of God.
So, the key word is train.
As Paul says to Timothy, “Discipline
yourself for the purpose of godliness” (1 Tim. 4:7, NASB). The Greek word for “discipline”
is gumnazo (our words gymnastics and
gymnasium derive from its root). Translated “train” (ESV, NIV), “exercise” (KJV), and “discipline” (NASB), gumnazo was used to describe the intense
discipline of athletes in first century Greco-Roman culture. Competitors in the
Olympic or Isthmian games were so relentless in pursuit of a champion’s wreath
that they trained in the nude, part of a strict environment that eliminated all
non-essentials.
The New Testament urges us to adopt a similarly radical
regimen in the spiritual life. We are called to discipline our bodies, keeping
them under control as we pursue an imperishable crown (1 Cor. 9:24-27). We must
strip off “every weight” and the “sin which clings so closely” and run the race
set before us (Heb. 12:1). We should forget what is behind and strain forward
to what lies ahead as we “press toward the goal for the prize of the upward
call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philip. 3:13-14). As we have learned, God’s
ultimate goal is to glorify himself through transformed human beings. We
further that goal as we deliberately engage in practices that train us for
godliness. If we’re serious about this pursuit we will train with intensity,
like an Olympic athlete.
[i] John
Ortberg, The Life You’ve Always Wanted:
Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan,
2002) 43. All of my thinking on training vs. trying, including the marathon
illustration, is dependent on Ortberg. His book is a helpful and accessible
introduction to spiritual disciplines.
