Disciplines

A New York Times article was titled, “The Meaning of the Boston Marathon Finish Line, Then and Now.” This was the opening line: “For many runners, the marathon finish line feels holy, and reaching it divine.” Then it said, “The Boston Marathon is arguably the most elusive finish line of all, and not just anyone can cross it.”

We are in a race like that! And the finish line is everything to us! Paul wrote, "I have finished the race."

It might be the most precarious race in sports. To win the 60-meter hurdles, a runner has to start strong, clear five barriers taller than a kitchen counter and then outsprint everyone else—all in less than eight seconds.

It’s the sort of unforgiving endeavor where even the smallest mistake or tiniest hesitation can prove fatal. Unless you’re Grant Holloway.

He’s won it 75 times in a row.

What makes Holloway so good? For starters, he’s tall—standing at 6-foot-2 and with long legs. But he also embraces routine, stays humble, and keeps improving. Holloway lives two doors down from his coach. Even with his pile of titles, he is working on tiny improvements to his form, like lifting his trailing knee higher over the hurdle and keeping his foot tucked closer to his body.

“He doesn’t take anything for granted,” said his coach, Mike Holloway—no relation. “He challenges me to challenge him daily.”

Pastor Lee Eclov writes:

I was surprised to read a Facebook posting from a friend in South Dakota named Diane. She wrote, "Had a nice surprise last night. At about 10:30 p.m. the phone rang. It was Governor Mike Rounds checking in with us to see how the road repair was going." There had been a lot of flooding in the area where Diane lives, and the roads were a mess—and the governor actually called her to see how she felt about the repair progress.

When I wrote Diane to express my surprise, she said it wasn't the first time a governor had called her. Another time, some years ago, one of South Dakota's previous governors called about some FEMA money for the area. She told me that when the governor called she was in the middle of a home perm, but couldn't very well tell the governor to hold while she rinsed her hair. She added: "That frizzy hair haunted me for weeks."

I know that South Dakota is a small state, but this was incredible to me. I asked Diane if she was in county government or something, and she said she wasn't. Sensing I was blown away by her interactions with the government, she had this to say: "I have found that shaking the tree from the top gets the fastest results. When there is a problem, I usually become the 'squeaky wheel,' and I think they just want to get me off their case!"

My conversation with Diane made me think of the parable Jesus told in Luke 18:1-8—the one about the persistent widow and the judge who finally relented and granted her request. Jesus concluded: "And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"

The issue isn't whether God cares or is listening. The issue is whether we have faith enough to persist in "shaking the tree."

What is the use of praying if at the very moment of prayer, we have so little confidence in God that we are busy planning our own kind of answer to our prayer?

—Thomas Merton, Catholic writer and mystic (1915-1968)

If prayer stands as the place where God and human beings meet, then I must learn about prayer. Most of my struggles in the Christian life circle around the same two themes: why God doesn't act the way we want God to, and why I don't act the way God wants me to. Prayer is the precise point where those themes converge.

—Philip Yancey

Eugene Peterson writes in “Eat This Book”:

At age 35 I bought running shoes and began enjoying the smooth rhythms of long-distance running. Soon I was competing in 10K races every month or so, and then a marathon once a year. By then I was subscribing to and reading three running magazines! Then I pulled a muscle and couldn't run for a couple of months. Those magazines were still all over the house, but I never opened one. The moment I resumed running, though, I started reading again.

That's when I realized that my reading was an extension of something I was a part of. I was reading for companionship and affirmation of the experience of running. I learned a few things along the way, but mostly it was to deepen my world of running. If I wasn't running, there was nothing to deepen.

The parallel with reading Scripture is striking. If I'm not living in active response to the living God, reading about his creation/salvation/holiness won't hold my interest for long. The most important question isn't "What does this mean," but "What can I obey?" Simple obedience will open up our lives to a text more quickly than any number of Bible studies, dictionaries, and concordances.

Amy Knight—single mother of Kayla, Ryan, and Alex—attends Whitehouse (Texas) First Assembly and had heard stories of divine healing, but she had never personally experienced or seen one. When 11-year-old daughter Kayla began complaining about ongoing headaches that continued to grow in severity, Amy desperately needed those healing stories to become a personal reality.

The headaches grew in intensity. In May Amy took Kayla to the emergency room.

"They took an X-ray and noted an abnormality," Amy says. "They recommended I see a neurologist."

Neurologists' fees are high. Due to their income level, Kayla qualified for Medicaid, but it took weeks for Amy to find a doctor who would accept Medicaid payment. Two months later, Kayla finally saw a doctor in nearby Tyler who ordered a CAT scan and then an MRI.

By this time, Kayla was spending most of her time in bed unable to get up. Her headaches were nearly unbearable.

The doctor in Tyler noticed a large white blotch on the MRI—a tumor in Kayla's brain. He immediately sent the pair to see a specialist in Dallas. Another MRI confirmed the tumor had grown significantly.

"The doctor took me aside and told me that if it continued to grow at its current rate, within two weeks the tumor would cover her brain and Kayla would be brain dead," Amy recalls.

The other option was surgery, but there was a 95 percent chance Kayla would not survive.

"It was a difficult decision, but I chose to let Kayla at least have what was left of her life rather than take such a long chance on that operation," Amy says. "I told the doctor I was going to leave it in God's hands."

Amy told Kayla everything. "We're going to let the church pray for you tonight," she said. They would believe together that God would remove the tumor.

"During the service that night," senior pastor Michael Fleming says, "Kayla…sat on the front pew, and we gathered around her. We started to pray. We could feel the presence of God. We prayed that the tumor would be removed and the reports would be changed."

Two days later, Kayla was back in Dallas for another MRI. The doctors soon called for Amy.

"I was thinking it was bad news," she remembers. "The doctor put the MRI in front of me and I really didn't know what I was looking at. To me, I didn't see a thing, so I thought the tumor had spread across her brain."

In fact, the doctor was stunned and was struggling for an answer. The tumor had vanished without a trace. And Kayla's headaches? Gone as well. …

"The doctor had told me during our visits that he believed there was some 'higher Being,' but he didn't believe in God," Amy says. "But after he saw these results, he said that if he didn't believe in my God before, he would now. I told him, 'He's not my God. He's everybody's God.'" …

Since the initial report, Kayla has undergone two further exams, both giving her a clean bill of health.

"I wasn't letting God take care of things like I was supposed to. My faith wasn't where it was supposed to be," Amy says. "I now know I don't have to worry about anything. Whatever happens, happens for a reason. God is in control." …

And what about Kayla's thoughts?

"When you put something in God's hands, it's nice to know He's going to do something about it."

Your nature is a hard thing to change; it takes time…. I have heard of people who have life-changing, miraculous turnarounds, people set free from addiction after a single prayer, relationships saved where both parties "let go, and let God." But it was not like that for me. For all that "I was lost, I am found," it is probably more accurate to say, "I was really lost. I'm a little less so at the moment." And then a little less and a little less again. That to me is the spiritual life. The slow reworking and rebooting the computer at regular intervals, reading the small print of the service manual. It has slowly rebuilt me in a better image. It has taken years, though, and it is not over yet.

—Bono, lead singer of U2

A common theme in modern Christianity has been that head knowledge is how one becomes more adept at following Christ: the more you know, the better you'll do. But in fact, that hasn't proven to be true.

Instead, it seems the Christian life is more like being a baseball shortstop: A young player can watch videos, read books by the greatest shortstops of all time, and listen to coaches lecture on what makes a good shortstop; but what will make him a truly good shortstop is getting out on the field and practicing. The only way he'll really get a feel for the game is to field ground ball after ground ball, to figure out when to play the ball on a short hop, when a pull-hitter is at bat, and how far to cheat toward second base when the double play is on. The more practice he has, the better he'll be.

Getting a "feel for the game" in following Jesus is much the same. You can listen to innumerable sermons and read countless books, but the true transformation happens only when you practice the disciplines that lie at the heart of the faith. As the disciplines are practiced, your life becomes more attuned to God's life, and you become more "at one" with the rhythms of creation. Like a finely trained athlete, you can anticipate the movement on the field; like a world-class pianist, you actually inhabit the music as you take notes on the page and give them life; like an expert carpenter, you run your hands over the grain of the wood and see what this rough cut can become.

In his book Thoughts in Solitude, Thomas Merton wrote fifteen lines that have become known as "the Merton Prayer":

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

In an article for Today’s Christian Woman, author Jan Struck writes:

As a child, I was captivated by Jesus' words on prayer [in Matthew 6:5–6]. In the wee ranch house where I grew up, my bedroom was my sanctuary. But my real "inner sanctum," the only space that made me feel uninhibited enough to unload my youthful angst onto God, was my closet. Crouched in its dark, tiny confines, I'd spill tears of anger and words of confusion over childhood slights and perceived parental wrongs. I took God literally at his word, going into the only secret place I had, trusting that my heavenly Father, who saw my hidden heartbreaks, would meet me there.

As I matured and moved away from home, this habit fell by the wayside. After all, how convenient is a literal prayer closet in a dorm room, an apartment with a roommate, or a home shared with a spouse?

But several years ago, I rediscovered the power of closeted prayer. My husband was recovering from a routine, out-patient surgery that had unexpectedly revealed a suspicious tumor. That afternoon, my husband and I were scheduled for a follow-up with the surgeon to review pathology results.

As my husband slept downstairs on a recliner, I stood before our bedroom mirror, struggling to make myself presentable for the upcoming physician visit. My stomach knotted with apprehension, my face haggard from worry, I was so overwhelmed with distress that I walked into our closet, shut the door, flung myself onto its floor, and broke down in the darkness. God! God! I flailed. Help me! I'm frightened my husband has cancer! I'm so afraid of losing him!

Somewhere between my flowing snot and convulsive sobs, God's presence filled that closet. His voice—inaudible, yes, but clearer than any sound I've ever heard—told me, "Everything will be OK."

That stunning and unexpectedly powerful encounter left me almost dizzy. I arose, blew my nose, wiped tears off my face, and suddenly felt electrified by an unassailable sense of God's absolute control over our scary circumstances. God—the God of the universe!—had seen my distress in that secret space and had chosen to personally comfort me. And although my husband's diagnosis turned out to be the one we'd dreaded, God graciously restored my beloved to health, fulfilling what God had told me he'd do in the secrecy of my closet.

I'll never forget that experience. Since then, whenever I need to process and pray with a candor I'd feel uncomfortable sharing among others, I head toward my walk-in closet. There I momentarily shut out distractions and concentrate on seeking God alone, in secret. For the last few weeks, I've been going there often, agonizing over some transitions in my life, seeking his guidance and grace. But I'm confident that as I surrender myself, surrounded by clutter and chaos and funk, my heavenly Father, who sees what is done in secret, once again will be faithful.