A couple of weeks ago, we were privileged to attend The Navigators’ Senior Staff Conference. A friend thought we would be with Navigator senior leadership. Nope. These Navigators are “seasoned citizens” – at age 75, we were among the younger people there!

Our theme was “Celebrating God” (two sessions) and “Celebrating Each Other” (two sessions), and the closing session was about heaven – a place many of the 200 of us will be sooner rather than later. I was struck by this verse, quoted by our first plenary speaker, and part of my recent readings:

For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. (2 Corinthians 5.4, ESV)

“What is mortal may be swallowed up by life.” Not swallowed up by death! But by life. As I heard Howard Hendricks say:

People think we’re in the land of the living heading for the land of the dying. Nothing could be further from the truth! We’re in the land of the dying, heading for the land of the living.

Earlier passages in 2 Corinthians affirm and encourage, especially as I was around a lot of Navigator friends and role models who are, well, older than they used to be! (As are we.)

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. (2 Corinthians 3.17 – 4.1, ESV)

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4.16 – 18, ESV)

Let’s get back to Corinthians! I love this little paragraph in the last chapter of 1 Corinthians:

Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love. (1 Corinthians 16.13, 14, ESV)

Let’s bullet it out and note the contrast:

• Be watchful,
• stand firm in the faith,
• act like men,
• be strong.
• Let all that you do be done in love.

I say contrast because the first four are “manly” commands. They sound like an appeal to an army…or a football team! But wait…Do all that in love! Say what?

There’s a battle, and battles require fighting, but we do it in love.

I sent The Message version to our pastor as he was off to a General Conference of the United Methodist Church about 20 years ago (the battles are ongoing). It’s still a good word:

Keep your eyes open, hold tight to your convictions, give it all you’ve got, be resolute, and love without stopping. (1 Corinthians 16.13, 14, MSG)

After the inspiring look at the discipline inherent in the performance of Cirque du Soleil, it’s worth one more blog to bring it back down to where most of us live.

I was rereading 2 Corinthians 3 and noticed again verse 17:

Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

I just thought about my piano playing. I recently played the preludes for The Navigators’ Senior Staff Conference. Freedom. That’s what I have on the piano for a certain genre of music. Freedom to speak. Freedom to write. The Spirit has given me a skillset (see 1 Corinthians 12!), and I have freedom to exercise it. I don’t have that freedom in golf! 

While at the conference I walked 2 miles at a 16:20 pace. Praise the Lord. I have the freedom to do that. At the last conference, back in 2018, I was waiting for my first knee surgery, and I could barely walk. Now I can.

One of Strong’s notes on “freedom” is that “True freedom is to do as we should, not as we please.” But what if what we please is also what we should? As I said, I don’t have that freedom on the golf course, but I do on the piano for some genres. Where does the freedom come from? Discipline! But, “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” And…

God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power, love, and…wait for it…self-discipline. (2 Timothy 1.7) Wow.

As long as we’re talking about discipline, I should tell you about the performance of Cirque du Soleil that our son Mark took us to recently. It’s two hours of watching the impossible. For example, men who walk up poles as quickly and naturally as I can walk down the street:

People whose bodies do what bodies aren’t supposed to:

How do they have the freedom to do that? Only through discipline. The fellow in the blue costume above is Kyle Kragle who discovered at an early age that he was more flexible than most people. He’s 26 years old now, and how does he keep working?

As far as keeping his body primed to contort and balance on one hand or foot, he mostly uses his own body weight to train. That looks like lots of pushups, Pilates, and core work, with some light weights and endurance work. “Even though I’m naturally flexible, my track was learning how to control my flexibility…I was doing strength training to make sure my body was stable enough. I’m doing anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half a day just stretching.” – Colorado Springs Gazette, September 1, 2022

In addition to their elite-level skills, these athletes/performers have one more characteristic: they labor in anonymity. There’s something Biblical about that! (Even though I read the article in advance, I would not have associated it and Kyle’s name with the performance if my son hadn’t pointed him out.)

And do you seek great things for yourself? Seek them not… (Jeremiah 45.5, ESV)

Every athlete exercises self-control in all things…But I discipline my body and keep it under control… (1 Corinthians 9.25, 27, ESV)

I closed yesterday’s blog with the phrase: drudgery, discipline, delight, and when I looked to find where I had blogged about that, I discovered that I haven’t! So here it is.

You have probably experienced this common progression: drudgery, discipline, delight. And the progression is strongly linked to this principle:

You will not want to do something unless you first did it when you didn’t want to!

Exercise, for example. If you’re not now exercising, you could answer test questions about the value of exercise. But you won’t want to exercise until you’ve done it and begin to experience the benefits for yourself.

When you start, you’re likely to be sore the first few times. Soon, however, you’ll notice you have more energy than you did before. You’ll feel better when you exercise and worse when you don’t. You’ve progressed from drudgery to discipline. You value the discipline of it. Soon, if you keep doing it, you don’t want to miss a day! Drudgery…discipline…delight. And you’ll exercise, not because you have to but because you want to.

A man named Steve once asked me to mentor him, and at our first meeting, we talked about daily time with God as I often do here. At our next meeting, he confessed that he wasn’t doing so well on his time with God habit so we discussed what time he would have to go to bed in order to get up early enough to spend, maybe, 15 minutes with God before his day got going. He began to form the habit.

Two years later, I was sharing “drudgery, discipline, delight” at a meeting of men, and Steve was there. He stood up and told his story. He ended with, “It’s taken two years, but I can honestly say that I’m in the delight phase. I wouldn’t miss it.”

For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12.11, ESV, emphasis mine)

At the risk of overusing sports, this is the place for this story. We observed yesterday that the elite are elite because they train. And they train, presumably because they want to train – they want to be better than they are. Hence the oddness of this story:

Kyler Murray’s New Contract Includes A Clause Making Him To Do 4 Hours Of ‘Independent Study’ Each Week – Robby Kaland, writing for UPROXX, July 25, 2022

I know nothing about Kyler Murray, the quarterback for NFL’s Arizona Cardinals, but I doubt that requiring someone who wouldn’t study film because he wanted to, to study film will work. As Mr. Kaland writes:

Now, for most elite quarterbacks, this is not a significant ask as many of the best are film junkies (sometimes to an upsetting and, potentially, unnecessary degree) who will watch far more four hours on their own. That the Cardinals included this section in the contract seems to indicate that wasn’t exactly the approach of Murray previously, and they don’t just expect that to change now that he’s being paid $46 million per year but are demanding so. (emphasis mine)

I can’t imagine requiring Peyton Manning, for example, to watch film. He’s done it since he was in college. Brian Costello wrote in 2014:

Manning is not the most athletic quarterback. He is not the strongest quarterback. He certainly is not the fastest. But no one can debate he is the most prepared.

Maybe requiring Murray to study film will lead to his appreciating the discipline and then doing it on his own. As we say in teaching daily time with God, the progression is sometimes, “Drudgery, discipline, delight.” If not, there are no guarantees of effectiveness.

For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12.11, ESV, emphasis mine)

Related to the deficiencies of a legalistic approach to the Christian life is the discipline required to compete at a high level in a sport. Recently, the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament was held in New York. People don’t usually lose a tennis match because they don’t know or obey the rules of tennis. They lose because their opponent was better that day.

My son David made this observation:

I don’t watch much tennis. But hey, I’m on vacation and I love sports. This is Coco Gauff, #12 in the world. What’s she doing? Warming up for her match? Nope. She just won her match in straight sets. She’s out there with her coach working on her serve, which wasn’t that good today. You wanna know what it takes to be elite? This. #PutInTheHours #RealSkillTakesRealTime #putinthehours #realskilltakesrealtime

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. (1 Corinthians 9.24, ESV)

Train yourself for godliness. (1 Timothy 4.7, ESV)

Yesterday we observed that attempting to live by laws is always futile. Laws are incomplete. There’s a funny story illustrating that principle in Philip Yancey’s memoir, Where the Light Fell.

I love Yancey’s work: his What’s So Amazing About Grace? should be required reading. That said, this memoir is difficult to read since he talks mostly about growing up in an extremely legalistic environment. If you grew up in such an environment and want to see how God can redeem someone out of it, read the memoir.

Philip grew up in Atlanta, and I grew up just up the road in Greenville, South Carolina, also in a legalistic environment. I could identify with many parts of the book although my life was not nearly as tough as his.

Philip does not name the “South Carolina Bible College” he went to so I won’t either. But the school was very legalistic as he describes it, which makes this story about the failure of legalism funny.

Philip’s older brother Marshall was more than a bit rebellious and while attending that same school, he decided to drink alcohol just to violate a rule. He was under age so he couldn’t even buy alcohol so he got two upperclassmen to help, and they procured a bottle of wine. Marshall had one cup. He felt terrible about it. When Marshall confessed, the dean said he had to say who helped him.

This presented a problem. If he identified his co-conspirators, those guys would be thrown out of school just before they graduated. What to do? They discovered the student rule book (66 pages) had no reference to alcohol! (Just like there was no reference to murder, Philip says.) The guys went to the dean and pretended that they didn’t know anything was wrong with drinking alcohol. After all, they said, Jesus changed water to wine. The Episcopalians serve real wine at communion, etc. The school couldn’t expel them for a non-existent rule!

Of course, the next year’s handbook included a prohibition against alcohol. As I wrote yesterday, we’re always adding to the rules, usually while missing the important stuff.

Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.” He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? (Matthew 15.1 – 3, ESV)

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel! Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean. (Matthew 23.23 – 26, ESV)

Continuing in 1 Corinthians 10, he circles back to the eating food offered to idols that he started in chapter 6 and again in chapter 8. Here Paul makes the point that taking communion is participating in the body and blood of Christ; therefore, eating food offered to idols is participating with the idol, who represents a demon: 

Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. Consider the people of Israel: are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. (1 Corinthians 10.14 – 21, ESV)

Pretty clear-cut, right? Don’t eat food offered to idols. Not so fast. He makes it NOT absolute; it has to do with what the person you’re eating with thinks:

“All things are lawful,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor. Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience. For “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.” If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. But if someone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for the sake of conscience—I do not mean your conscience, but his. For why should my liberty be determined by someone else’s conscience? If I partake with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of that for which I give thanks? So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God. (1 Corinthians 10.23 – 32, ESV)

Wow. “All things are lawful” but not all things are helpful or edifying. And if we need any evidence that legalism doesn’t work, this is it. Why not just make a rule? Life would be easier. That’s why systems of legalism develop, isn’t it? But law is always incomplete. That’s why legislatures continue to meet. Legalism as a way of life doesn’t work.

Principles: 

• Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.
• Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
• Give no offense to Jews, Gentiles, or the church.
• “Be imitators of me” – “I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved.”

We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. (Romans 15.1, 2, ESV)

I should get back to Corinthians! I have seen a lot that I haven’t written about yet. For example:

For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. (1 Corinthians 10.1 – 4, ESV)

The metaphors are clear: the Israelites, when they left Egypt and were in the wilderness on their way to the promised land, were “baptized” and “took communion.” But “with most of them God was not pleased.” (See verse 5 below.)

Heavy language with a clear message. Participating in the ordinances or sacraments of the church is not enough. 

Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things took place as examples for us, that 

• we might not desire evil as they did. (See Numbers 11)
• Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.” (See Exodus 32) 
• We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. (See Numbers 25)
• We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, (See Numbers 21)
• nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. (See Numbers 14)

Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. (1 Corinthians 11.5 – 11, ESV, bulleted for clarity)

Then the warning:

Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. (1 Corinthians 10.12, ESV)

There is always a “take heed”…”watch and pray” No participation in church or its sacraments is a guarantee. Walking with Jesus is daily.