I grew up as a gymnast from age 4. My last year as a gymnast I was 16 and spending 6 hours a day in the gym 4 days a week, 4 hours on Saturday. It was normal and awesome for me, I wanted to be there, I knew I had a different childhood from others, and I was proud of that.
Being an athlete from the beginning, gave me a wonderful perspective on pain, discipline, working hard and perseverance for a cause. I learned how to work even thought I was in pain. Have you ever seen the little hands of a gymnast? At my gym, the first time any little gymnast gets her first blister ripped off by the wooden bar as she or he swings on it, we all see the pain and suffering welling up in her little eyes. Do the coaches let her sit out for the rest of the workout? No, the whole gym stops what they are doing and cheers for her calling out her name! “Way to go! Your first rip!” they say. This is not to torment little child athletes, the practice of celebrating, is to show this little one that this is the sport he or she chose. And more of this kind of pain will come, a lot more. The one that can get back up on those bars, is the one that learned a real-life lesson. Pain comes, pain is normal, we keep going.
I learned that the stronger and more focused I could be, the less likely I was to get hurt. I learned that I will fall off the balance beam a million times. I learned that I needed great perseverance to get through a floor exercise routine. I learned to sacrifice my time, to choose to practice over other teenage activities. I learned that sore muscles were good, that means I’m getting stronger. I learned that practice does not make me perfect, but perfect practice makes me perfect. (Thank you Rich and Marilyn Trevino) I learned to give my all. To do well in gymnastics, we had to embrace the hard, love the hard, endure the hard.
My experience as a gymnast was a great foundation for life following Christ. This idea of a sacrificial life, of dying to oneself, is easier to understand for someone who knows sacrifice already. For someone who finds good in the pain, the hard times seem kind of normal. I was trained to endure.
When I decided to dedicate my life to Christ, I did it completely. I was so thankful for his sacrifice to me, for including me in the Kingdom! That I wanted to give him everything. I discovered the pearl! Serving the Kingdom would be the only think to bring me joy in life. So symbolically, I gave Him the only thing I had, my gymnastics career. I told my coach that since I will not be attempting to do gymnastics in college because I wanted to attend a Christian Univeristy, then I need to find another path for myself.
I was all in! With everything I gave to be a gymnast, I took that energy to serve my Lord and savior. I started preaching at my high school Christian club. I started leading in my youth group, I found a Christian College to attend, and began searching for what I can do to serve the Lord with my life.
As a 17-year-old I started reading my Bible daily, I would start in Genesis and work my way through Revelations, I would read for 30 minutes, pray for 20, and listen for 10. That is when I thought I had more to say than God. But that was my routine and in his incredible Grace he started opening my eyes to spiritual truths. I would like to note here that even though I was so committed, my character and ability to love others was so crude, probably still is. The discipline of an hour a day, doesn’t seem like much, unless you have infants in your care, and during those years of my life I forgave myself for choosing sleep. But God uses that little time and teaches me and pours into me, and leaves me thirsty and hungry for more.
Spiritual disciplines, like fasting, solitude, prayer, and loving the poor are called disciplines because they are challenging. Spiritual disciplines are especially hard to understand for those of us that have “everything”. It’s like motivating a person that loves their body exactly like it is, to start restricting calories or exercising, Why would they? The focus of these disciplines is to just get us away from the physical world. To bring us to a point of realizing that the worldly stuff will never fill us like the spiritual stuff. The more time we spend and invest in spiritual disciplines, the more we allow ourselves glimpses into the spiritual realm. Even Jesus said to the woman at the well,
“23 But the time is coming—indeed it’s here now—when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way. 24 For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.” John 4:23
How can we worship him in spirit, or do anything in spirit, if we are not in tune with the spiritual realm? Prayer, fasting, solitude, and spending time with the poor are spiritual disciplines that help us stop relying on the physical world as we seek understanding of Spiritual things and how the Spiritual realm can fulfill us. None of this is easy, but all are certainly suggestions of how we can draw closer to the Triune God in understanding of Him and His character. We are Spiritual beings, detaching from the spiritual realm will always leave us wanting.
Timothy Keller said, “Prayer is simply the key to everything we need to do and be in life.” When Keller found the truth in prayer, he said, “I began praying with greater expectation.”
Remember when Jesus describes what the Kingdom of God is like. In Mathew 13:45,
Jesus said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.”
Do you know anyone who has sold everything they had, for anything? Missionaries are people that give up all their stuff, their friends and family, their house and culture, to lie in another land as a way of serving the King and giving their lives as “living sacrifices”. They must understand the Kingdom in a brilliant way. The pearl or the Kingdom that they have discovered must be more tangible than the things they gave up. If that is not the case, the missionary burns out quickly.
I conclude, that when anyone finally discovers the kingdom of God, or finally understand a portion of the reality, nothing in this world would be worth hanging on to, if it meant not having the kingdom of God. Nothing.
Jesus said out of frustration, “You faithless and corrupt people? How long must I be with you? How long must I put up with you?” Matt. 17:17 He was clearly here to guide us to embrace our spiritual side, and he didn’t think it was out of our reach. Jesus was understanding more of the tangible nature of the spiritual realm than everyone around him. He was a “seeing man” living among the spiritually blind. An element of needing to gain faith exists, but faith cannot be gained through human achievement, it is a gift. At some point, when we pursue the Kingdom, our eyes will be opened to this other dimension. But those who can believe in the other dimension without having their spiritual eyes opened are living by complete faith.
According to Strongs Concordance, “Faith is always a gift from God, and never something that can be produced by people. In short, faith for the believer is “God’s divine persuasion”—and therefor distinct from human belief yet involving it. The Lord continuously births faith in the yielded believer so they can know what He prefers, i.e. the persuasion of His will.”
It says in Proverbs 20:12, “Ears that hear and eyes that see—both are gifts from the Lord.”
Jesus did say multiple times that we need to have eyes to see and ears to hear--insinuating that we don’t yet have eyes and ears. Well, of course, we do have physical eyes and ears, so he must have meant spiritual eyes and ears. A gift we would all do well to ask the Father to give us in our own lives. May God reveal himself to us so that we can have the eyes to see and the ears to hear in order to understand these things of the Kingdom.
We must at least come to the point of realizing that we do not have ears or eyes that would give us access to understanding the Kingdom of God. First we recognize this lack in our lives and start praying that God would give us eyes and ears. Recognizing that more is out there to know, is the first critical step.
Romans 12: 1-2 will lead us in the beginning of this journey, as it reads, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
According to this passage, written by Paul, if we expect to be transformed, we should be willing to sacrificing our living bodies. Discover how to give over our lives to the King--allowing him to form our futures, instead of worldly ambition. Giving our lives, means putting aside our worldly desires for comfort, security, even stability. Giving your life over to another with a completely different idea of success will be a most challenging task. The Lord wants us to trust Him with our future. To not trust in the things of the world, but rather spend our efforts getting to know him as our Creator, Lover and faithful King. To learn how to spend our time seeking after him, and not the treasures of the world.
A practical example of the disciples not completely trusting Jesus with their futures is the time when they forgot to bring food on a journey.
Mark 8: 14-21, But the disciples had forgotten to bring any food. They had only one loaf of bread with them in the boat. As they were crossing the lake, Jesus warned them, “Watch out! Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod.”
At this they began to argue with each other because they hadn’t brought any bread. Jesus knew what they were saying, so he said, “Why are you arguing about having no bread? Don’t you know or understand even yet? Are your hearts too hard to take it in? ‘You have eyes—can’t you see? You have ears—can’t you hear?’ Don’t you remember anything at all? When I fed the 5,000 with five loaves of bread, how many baskets of leftovers did you pick up afterward?”
“Twelve,” they said.
“And when I fed the 4,000 with seven loaves, how many large baskets of leftovers did you pick up?”
“Seven,” they said.
“Don’t you understand yet?” he asked them.
As I write this blog, it all seems so obvious, but reading about faith and the struggles that Jesus’ very own disciples, that were with him, in the flesh for 3 years—I must forgive myself for also not understanding. There is no way that I have the kind of faith that Jesus spoke of, not unless one can have faith smaller than a mustard seed, and I don’t think that is the case. Although it does seem like Jesus can measure ones faith. The point is that the faith of a mustard seed would be just the tiniest bit of faith. We must pray for the breakthrough, pray for the gift of faith. Pray that He will open our eyes and ears.
For the hearts of these people are hardened, and their ears cannot hear, and they have closed their eyes— so their eyes cannot see, and their ears cannot hear, and their hearts cannot understand, and they cannot turn to me and let me heal them.’
“But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear. 17 I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, but they didn’t see it. And they longed to hear what you hear, but they didn’t hear it.” Matthew 13:15-17
Jesus didn’t think obtaining faith was out of our reach, but he did make it seem that we need to be in touch with the spiritual realm in order to have eyes and ears and understanding.
Therefore, start somewhere. Start pursuing your Creator, by applying the disciplines of study, prayer, fasting, meditation, and generosity to the poor.