22 Mar Champs

I know of no sport that exists where the championship happens at the top of the season. It would make some sense. At the beginning of the season your roster is usually at its healthiest. You’re usually missing the least number of players to injury. The team is fresh and rested. As with the beginning of most new endeavors, excitement and anticipation are high which often produces a spike in morale. 

Wouldn’t this be the best time to evaluate which team is truly the best? Why allow injury and fatigue to play a factor in the most important games? If players are out due to injury or worn out due to the rigors of the season, are you even really getting an accurate picture of the best team? 

No and yes. No, you aren’t getting a truly accurate representation of a team as constructed in a vacuum. Yes, you are getting a picture of what a team is really made of when inevitable adversity strikes.

I believe sports leagues ultimately fashion their schedules this way because of the principle of endurance and how this endurance proves character. We all know that anyone can win under all the right circumstances. However, it’s rare that life presents us with an ideal environment. We call it character when a team or individual endures the harsh, often seemingly random realities of life and holds to virtue in order to achieve a worthy outcome.

Michael Jordan winning an NBA championship is hard enough. MJ having to lead his team to a championship win while dealing with food poisoning is a whole different level. He was so compromised that doing normal functions would have been difficult. Add to that the task of having to achieve an athletic feat even most exceptional athletes cannot accomplish at full strength.

Similarly, I’ve found that I have the fiercest battles with temptation when I am in my most vulnerable emotional or physical state. Temptation is hard enough when things are great, but the toughest battles come when I’m stressed, sad, lonely, or overwhelmed. 

During these times, it is most difficult to see my way clearly. It’s very similar to the story of Michael Phelps breaking a swimming world-record despite his goggles filling up with water. The literal absence of sight forced him to rely solely on his training to deliver him a victory. 

When temptation is at its strongest and I am at my weakest I have to rely on the game plan to get me through. This tests my true mettle. I’m forced to rely on my training which exposes how effective that training really was.

The expectation of inconvenient adversity is a large motivating factor in why I train the way I do. Part of why I train is so that when all of the resources that make it easy are expended, my character can sustain me through the toughest part of the battle.

Mental fortitude is an important expression of character. Both the food-poisoned Michael Jordan and the water-blinded Michael Phelps relied on the mental aspects of their training when their basic physical faculties failed them.

When it comes to the temptations of life, perhaps the most important part of my mental training is that of surrender. More specifically, I mean honestly surrendering all the elements to God. By all of the elements I mean telling God about what I’m really feeling, what I’m desiring on the surface, and what I’m truly desiring beneath it. It takes practice to even be aware enough of these factors to articulate them. 

The all-important next step of surrender is to leave those emotions and desires in God’s hands while embracing a choice that lines up with His desires for me. This presupposes a knowledge of what God wants for me, another thing to practice making myself familiar with. It is choosing to obey His guidance in the face of the opposing forces that make it particularly difficult to do so. 

And why do we bother with any of this? Because, at the end of the day, our freedom rests on our ability to choose to do things the way God wants them done, especially when our desires most strongly oppose what He wants.

As in any endeavor, this starts small and builds. I hesitate to give examples because what is big for me might be small for you and vice versa. The bottomline is that effective practice of any sort fosters a gradual progression. Over time, you build the character to sustain you against your toughest opponents. When you deplete your most helpful internal resources, you can lean on this character to bring you to victory.

How do we know that God’s desires even lead to freedom? Because that is the promise… life and that most abundantly. He promises us life to its fullest. Obviously this doesn’t mean life without unpleasant realities. That would contradict this entire writing. It does mean the ability to navigate any of life’s realities in a healthy, life-giving manner. 

What compels me even more about this promise is that God is love. His motivations are always loving towards us. Our desires so often lead us towards actions that seem good in the moment but lead to destruction in the end. God’s desires for us always lead us to true life and freedom. 

The reality of this notion is proved through practice. The truth becomes self-evident through the fruit. I’ve found it best to invest in it when you feel you need it least so that it is available when you need it most.