The olympics have been going on the past couple of weeks and as I have watched parts of them I can’t help but admire the ability of these athletes! Swimmers have sped through the water, gymnasts have performed all sorts of amazing jumps, twists, and moves, runners have sprinted across the track. All of it has been super impressive.
The current olympics became even more impressive when I came across a video from one that took place about 100 years ago. The moves they were making compared to what athletes do today was like watching a kids soccer game after watching a Fifa match!
What makes athletes so good? They certainly have good genetics that help them in their sports. But there is something even more: focus. World class athletes are focused. So focused that they don’t let distractions get in the way of achieving their goal to become some of the greatest athletes ever.
With that in mind, listen to what Paul writes about this same idea from a spiritual perspective:
24 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. 25 Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. 26 So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. 27 But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. (1 Corinthians 9:24-27)
Paul recognized that his life was a race. Not a literal race, but a race to the end. A race to Jesus, so to speak.
What he means is that his life was not given to him to simply go around doing whatever he wanted. He had been given a mission and he was going to accomplish it. And in order to accomplish it, he needed to stay focused and work hard.
Can I be blunt for a moment? Many of us would not make very good olympic athletes. We are just not focused enough! We have too many things distracting us.
But sadly, the same is true for us as Christians. We have been called to a mission and the only way we will accomplish this is to stay focused. To keep to the task. This is true individually, in your family, and in your church. Distracted Christians make for ineffective Christians. And Satan would love for us to become so distracted that we miss the prize.
Being distracted often seems innocent enough. But from a spiritual sense, distraction can be just as bad as being involved in some huge sin.
Listen to how C.S. Lewis put’s it in his book, The Screwtape Letters. This book is written from the perspective of a demon giving advice to another demon on how to tempt and derail humans.
As the uneasiness and his reluctance to face it cut him off more and more from all real happiness…you will find that anything or nothing is sufficient to attract his wandering attention. You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a column of advertisements in yesterday’s paper will do. You can make him waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes, but in conversations with those he cares nothing about on subjects that bore him. You can make him do nothing at all for long periods. You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and out-going activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at least he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, ’I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.’ The Christians describe the Enemy [God] as one ’without whom Nothing is strong’. And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.
You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy [God]. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing.
This demon hit the nail on the head! A wise, mature Christian will not just seek to avoid the “big” sins of life. He/she will seek to avoid ANYTHING that keeps him/her from living out the Christian life.
What has been distracting you recently? Be careful, because it may just be a tool of the devil.