No Fear. Trying versus Training. {Day 7}

Almost every day of this series I sit down, ready to write in a certain direction. But then I reread the previous day and I think, “oh wait, we need to talk about this layer first, we need to spend more time here”. So much so that I am still working my way towards what I thought we would start on Day 3. We may not get through it all in 31 days!

Before we move into discussing types of fears we have in our daily life, I wanted to bring up the concept of training versus trying.

In his book The Life You’ve Always Wanted: Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People, John Ortberg shares the following illustration. Imagine you have been asked to run a marathon to represent your country. Up to this point you have been a couch potato. You imagine yourself crossing the finish line and get excited about completing a marathon. You could then decide you are going to give it your all and show up the morning of the race and try really hard to run 26.2 miles. What do you think would happen? What would happen if instead of trying, you trained? How does that parallel our walk of faith?

We can approach life with a try harder mentality. The world encourages that in many aspects and we transfer it over to our Christianity. Try to be a good Christian. Try to be patient and peaceful. Try to have joy. Trying to not be fearful. Trying ends up being a heavy burden. We will eventually burn out on trying on our own effort and willpower. And I know for me I then go in one of two directions. When I try to be patient, have self-control, be serving, fill in the blank and I fail, then I either:  Give up. “I knew I couldn’t do this”. Or Pretend. Don’t let anyone know I don’t have it all together. We end up exhausted and feeling like if we were doing this faith thing right, we wouldn’t be.

What then would training look like?

First it recognizes God has a part to play and I have a part to play. The analogy of a farmer helps here. He prepares the soil and plants the seed. Nothing will grow if he doesn’t do his part. But there is also the dependence on rain and sun. If God doesn’t do his work, nothing will grow. God could of course do it all, but he has created us to be co-laborers with him in his Kingdom work.

Second, training is intentional. As Paul encouraged Timothy “train yourself in righteousness.” There is an effort and a commitment on our part. (Keeping number one in mind, we don’t make the transformation happen. Only God does. But we can make ourselves available to it.)

Third, training is individual. We have different gifting and temperaments and life experiences. We also pass through different seasons of life. Training ourselves to let more of Christ in our life plays out differently for a mom with small children than to one who is retired. God’s in both places and all seasons of life.

Well, there is most likely a fourth, fifth and sixth point, but I am going to let go of my fear of not covering all the bases. For our purposes today, this can lay the foundation as we begin to talk about types of fears. Take a deep breath. Our goal is to not to try really hard to not fear.

May we let go of trying and embrace the ways the Spirit leads us to train.

Ok, really tomorrow we will get into types of fears in our daily life and the impact of them. Next week we will begin to discuss practices, or ways we train, for embracing a life of not acting on fear.

I am participating in Write 31 Days. Click right here to see all the amazing topics!  I am writing on 31 Beauty Full Days.  You can read the intro post here.  And you can also always click on the button on the sidebar to see all posts in the series.

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