Persistence

Spiritual Training Cycle: Presence (wk. 7/13)

Reading: Psalm 23:1-6

I love coaching people through their first CrossFit workout. First, I must get them over the anxiety that comes with showing up to a new place for the first time. I’ll get them signed into our athlete management software and officially checked into class. I’ll show them little things like where they can put their bag and where the equipment is located. Then we get into the workout. Now I get to see their mental fortitude, their movement patterns, and how they respond to various exercises. It’s all about opportunities to grow. After the workout, I’ll give them a fist bump and a little encouragement. At this point, most first-timers ask the same basic question, “How do I get better?” The answer is simple – spend quality time in the gym doing quality work. The answer is persistence.

Persistence is not just consistency. You need consistency because consistency is the precursor to intensity. But persistence is something more. It’s consistency in the face of adversity. Adversities like soreness or illness or all the little challenges life throws your way. You must persist in the journey of fitness otherwise you’ll fall victim to only training when you feel like it, which is proof that fitness is not a priority. You also need persistence when you work out. When you go one more rep or one more round or knock out one more quality strength session you are proving to yourself that you have capacity. Persistence is staying the course in spite of opposition.

Persistence is vital to our spiritual lives as well, especially when engaging in the spiritual exercise of stillness. We define stillness as a quiet body, a slow mind, an open spirit, and a focus on God. Stillness is the absence of movement. This spiritual exercise has been used for thousands of years to create space to connect with God. Think of stillness as a spiritual pause button in your life. Now, most of us can probably be still for a few minutes. That is, until the phone buzzes or the boss texts or the school nurse calls. Without realizing it, stillness can quickly evaporate in exchange for busyness. You get so focused on accomplishing all the tasks, taking care of all the needs, or providing for yourself and your family that you lose your connection to God. In life we must learn spiritual persistence – staying the course in spite of opposition.

So how do we do that? By learning to discover and recover stillness throughout our day. First and foremost, you should start your day with stillness. Spend the first ten minutes of your day with God. It makes a huge difference! Then throughout the day look for ways to discover stillness by taking a brief pause before you do the next thing. Take a pause in your car when you get home from work (or in your home office) and let your connection with God prepare you for a great evening with family or friends. Take a pause after you finish that Pulitzer Prize winning email before you start paying bills or shopping for cars. Program rest in the transitions of your day.

Sometimes we need to recover the best version of ourselves with stillness. Take a pause during a conflict and ask God to help you find a resolution. When you’ve made some poor decisions let stillness redirect you to better ones. Use stillness to silence the negative self-talk in your brain and allow you to see who you are in God’s eyes.

Stillness is a seemingly simple spiritual exercise. Yet at the speed life moves it can be hard to engage in it. Don’t miss the magical moments with God in exchange for the busyness of the world. To be still, you need more than just consistency. You need persistence.

Questions for Reflection:

If you were just going to hang out with God, what would that look like?

Where do you need more stillness in your life?

Be Still

Spiritual Training Cycle: Presence (wk. 6/13)

Reading: Psalm 46:1-10

“Take a moment to reflect on what you just accomplished.” The familiar phrase emerged from Coach’s mouth as I walked into the gym. Open gym was coming up, the time when most of the coaches get together and train. The previous class had just finished their WOD. Taking those words to heart, I saw some athletes standing, some sitting, and others laying on their backs spent from all the work they had completed. All of them were reflecting, taking a moment to just be still.

This month we turn our focus to the spiritual exercise of stillness. Let me ask you this, how hard is it for you to be still? For many of us being still is one of the toughest things we do. Why? Because we live in a world that’s in constant motion. Culture is always moving, going from one trend to the next. Technology is moving. Think about the last time Instagram told you that you were all caught up in your feed. It seems like we’re never caught up. And our communities are in motion too. Major life events, new jobs, kid’s sports. Keeping up is the workout of the day! So, how is that we are to take in all life is bringing us if we’re doing nothing? Stillness is more than doing nothing, it’s a discipline.

We define stillness as a quiet body, a slow mind, an open spirit, and a focus on God. Stillness is the absence of movement. This spiritual exercise has been used for thousands of years to create space to connect with God. Think of stillness as a spiritual pause button in your life. When you’re still, the space you create allows you to do some pretty cool things. Like linger with God. How awesome is it to just hang out with the Creator of the universe. Stillness also allows you to rest. We have watches and other devices that measure the quality of our sleep and being restless drives your score way down. There’s something intrinsic to humans and their need for rest. Stillness is programmed rest in your day. And finally, stillness teaches us to wait. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve found myself moving ahead of God. I’m at the tip of the spear like, “Come on Big Guy, we’ve got things to do. Let’s go!” Meanwhile, God’s revealing that my pace and my rhythm aren’t leading me to His ultimate purpose and plan for my life. Stillness is letting go and letting God.

One of the best places in the Bible I’ve discovered to study stillness is the book of Psalms. The Psalms are a collection of wisdom writings by multiple authors. More than just writing, Psalms are poetry – Hebrew poetry. The Greek title of the book is “scared songs sung to musical accompaniment.” The Psalms are music – the lyrics for the hymns of ancient Israel. The Psalms are also praises. Even in the midst of difficulty or despair or depression, the writers always point back to God, His goodness, and His promises. And one of things God called his people to was stillness. If you want to experience God in new and exciting ways, join me this month in learning to be still.

Questions for Reflection:

How you ever tried to just sit still with God? What was your experience like?

Where would stillness best fit into the rhythm of your typical day?

Unified as One

By Bruce Sampson

Spiritual Training Cycle: Presence (wk. 5/13)

Reading: Ephesians 2:11-18

In the sport of fitness, CrossFit athletes from all over the world compete in one of the most unified competitions done around the world. It’s called The CrossFit Open. No matter if you’re a seasoned veteran, a part-time fire breather in your morning class, or someone who daily quotes “It’s just a part of getting old” in every workout, The Open was made for you. I’ve seen more personal bests, friendships, and fist bumps of encouragement come from The Open than in any other time in my seven years of CrossFit. It’s truly inspiring and unifying.

People love being unified. To know we are accomplishing the same mission, to be a part of something great, to share common interests and enjoy the company of those we love. Unity gives us a sense of belonging and purpose. Without it, we can find ourselves lost and desperate for something more.

Though unified by one leaderboard in the CrossFit Open, not everyone that competes has the same results. It can be disheartening to see you haven’t made the progress you thought you would make in a year. When you can’t go RX (prescribed) on the workouts it can feel pointless to try and attempt for a score that “wouldn’t count.” If you tried year after year to get to the level of athletic achievement as every other competitor who’s made it to the next step, but you fail, you are left stuck in a place of frustration. We can easily find ourselves losing sight of the positive outcome of unity by getting lost in comparison, achievement, and personal gain.

Often in our best efforts to find unity, we encounter division. These divisions can start within us with our own personal standard, or it can lead to divisions amongst others. Good and pleasing things made for unity like our workplaces, our gym communities, and families can turn into internal conflict, insecurities, or hurt. What’s in our human nature causes these things to come to the surface.

The Bible describes the state of our nature in Ephesians 2:1 as being “dead in [our] trespasses and sins.” This comes as a result of living for the passions of our flesh, meaning we take what looks good, feels good, and gives us control. What makes unity so difficult is that when everyone is living life for themselves, in the end, no one is unified at all. While we see the same leaderboard, just like The Open, we have mixed results.

In the leaderboard that makes up our lives, we are all in an individual competition to the top that inevitably leads to the bottom. We can be competing for the lifestyle we’ve always envisioned for our families but fall to the demanding workload that causes us to lose time with them. We can compete by means of diet, exercise, or attraction for the sake of being healthy but deep down we can still struggle with our body image. Even if we feel like we are not competing in the race we are lost in the middle with no way to tell if there’s a race, so we do nothing and spend most of our days just getting by.

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.” You see, when we put our hope in Jesus, He competes in our place. Not only does he compete on our behalf, but He claimed the victory! Jesus took on flesh, like ours, to do what we could never do on our own. While we look to the top of the leaderboard as the center of our focus, Jesus saw the bottom. By making himself low and taking on the form of a servant, he chose death on a cross for the sake of our sins so that we may be made one in Him.

For He Himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in His flesh the dividing wall of hostility... Ephesians 2:14

This is what it means to be unified. It’s to have peace. It’s through the peace that Jesus gives us alone that makes us whole, that makes us one. If you are far off the leaderboard, if you are struggling to find where you fit in, if you’ve been tired and weary from performance, Jesus gives you His place, His peace. The mixed results are now unified into one.

I know this sounds offensive to some who are competitors who have worked hard to get where they are. How can someone else who doesn’t deserve to be where they are receive this gift from God? That’s the point. Jesus died for us when we least deserved it! Having the humility to know this allows us to continue to receive God’s grace. For it is by grace we have been saved and it is by grace that we have peace with God.

This peace allows us to give everything we’ve got on the leaderboard knowing that our true place is already secure in Christ. We can have the peace to make mistakes because God’s perfect plan included my imperfections. Knowing the peace of Jesus unifies us makes Him our focus so that we can focus less on ourselves to love others more. The peace of God gives us the glue that binds all things in unity under Him.

If you’re stuck trying to find your way on the leaderboard, just know that Jesus wants to offer you peace today. We can have the peace to compete without comparison, without fear of others in the lane next to us, and without a fear to fail because of the victory Christ has already won. Let us hold fast to His peace for the sake of bringing unity to the communities around us.

Questions for Reflection:

Is there a community in your life right now that is unified? How can that unity flourish even more in Christ?

Who can you share peace with today in order to find unity with them?