Putting in the work

I wasn't that excited about the winter olympics. I generally enjoy the summer games more but, it took less than 24-hours (two of which were spent watching ski jumping on Saturday afternoon) for me to catch Olympic fever again.

There is something remarkable about watching the athletes compete. Most spend countless hours each day perfecting their craft and improving their skills to prepare for their seminal Olympic opportunity, which is usually over in a matter of minutes. All the time they spend training and preparing is time they have to sacrifice other opportunities. The opportunity cost of being an Olympic athlete is huge; their moment to shine comes only every four years and so few achieve Olympic glory.

When I was at the gym the other day a gentleman was talking to me about his routine. He said he forced himself to go to the gym seven days a week because, at age 32, he began to worry that his eating habits and lack of exercise were going to kill him. He talked about all the times when he was tired or burned out, but forced himself to hit the gym.

Both the man at the gym and all these Olympic athletes competing in Vancouver put in the time to achieve their goals. Even when it was hard; even when they didn't want to, they committed themselves to doing the work necessary to accomplish something important to them. That is the kind of commitment each of us should put into our spiritual lives.

Michael Phelps wouldn't have won eight gold medals if all he did was show up at the pool for practice for an hour a week. The man I met at the gym wouldn't have lost 68 pounds in eight months if he had just gone and lifted weights for an hour each week. And you and I can't have the relationship with Jesus Christ that we need if all we do is come to church once a week. It takes work, through the good times and the bad.

I was at a conference recently where the speaker talked about interviewing a soldier just back from the front. He asked the soldier how he was able to figure out what to do once the action began. The soldier replied that, when the shooting starts, you revert back to your core training, operating on instinct. I think the same is true for our spiritual lives. Unless you put in the hard work and the training, when the shooting starts, metaphorically speaking, you won't have a solid faith foundation to fall back on.

Over the last year I have worked on a passion project, looking at different films and exploring how their messages compare to our faith. At first it just seemed like a great creative outlet, but as I've dug into it I've realized how much God is using this exploration as a way to grow my faith and bring me closer to him. Through this blog I hope to share some of that exploration.

We are committed to making 2010 the year of personal discipleship, and my prayer is that each of us will find a way to dig deeper into our faith and find new ways to grown deeper in him.