Disciplines for Life/Train Yourself to be Godly
From Gospel Translations
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Developing a relationship with God involves the same dynamics as any skill we might seek to develop. What does it take to master skydiving? The saxophone? Shuffleboard? The same three things it takes to become intimate with God: discipline, practice, and sacrifice.
Now, try to hold your applause. Is that what you expected? Many Christians, whether they would admit it or not, have some vague sense that intimacy with God will miraculously and effortlessly evolve. (Miraculously? In a sense, yes. But effortlessly? Absolutely not.) They believe in the power of the Holy Spirit and grace—as they should—but fail to see the importance of their own effort...
Discipline...
Practice...
Sacrifice.
Practice Precedes Performance
Once when I was a young boy the NCAA college basket- ball finals were held nearby at the University of Maryland. Because my friend’s father had tickets, I was able to go to the game as well as the practice session the day before. John Wooden, one of the greatest coaches in college bas- ketball history, had again led his UCLA team to the semi- finals. The opportunity to get right down on the court and watch this team practice at this level was the closest thing to heaven I had experienced up to that time.
I was a serious sports fan even then, and these UCLA players who came out of the locker room and began their drills were some of my heroes. But the practice session turned out differently than I had expected. There were no slam dunks or behind-the-back passes. Instead, for two hours Coach Wooden rotated his players through numerous drills up and down the court, timing each drill and then moving on to the next. It wasn’t exciting. There was no applause, no roar of a capacity crowd. This was all taking place primarily outside of public view.
Think of certain young people who idolize an outstanding baseball player. They want nothing so much as to pitch or run or hit as well as their idol. So what do they do?...The star is well known for sliding head first into bases, so the teenagers do too. The star holds his bat above his head, so the teenagers do too. These young people try anything and everything their idol does, hoping to be like him—they buy the type shoes the star wears, the same glove he uses, the same bat.
Will they succeed in performing like the star, though? We all know the answer quite well. We know that they won’t succeed if all they do is try to be like him in the game... The star performer himself didn’t achieve his excellence by trying to behave in a certain way only during the game. Instead, he chose an overall life of preparation of mind and body, pouring all his energies into that total preparation, to provide a foundation in the body’s automatic responses and strength for his conscious efforts during the game.
Those exquisite responses we see, the amazing timing and strength such an athlete displays, aren’t produced and maintained by the short hours of the game itself. They are available to the athlete for those short and all-important hours because of a daily regime nobody sees. [1]
Their practice was simple and unimpressive—but it’s what prepared UCLA to be so effective as they swept their final two games and won the national championship.
Announcers usually overlook details like that. Instead of describing all the sweat and practice that went into a brilliant performance, they tend to focus on the talent and ability of individual players. Now there’s no doubt today’s star athletes are gifted. I could spend the rest of my life in training and at no point would I be able to do an effective job of covering Michael Jordan. But if you talked to Jordan or Coach Wooden’s UCLA team, they would tell you their public display of astonishing basketball was made possible by the practice which took place in private.
Because such truths so often go ignored and unappreciated in our culture, we can fail to see that skill is of little value without practice and sacrifice. Apart from a private life of sacrifice, discipline, and daily practice—no matter how monotonous—even the most gifted individual will never reach peak performance.
World-class performers are those who count the cost and press on. They don’t pity themselves for having to
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