That captures part of the story, and while salvation is a gift that is accomplished by the work that only God can do, actually claiming it by faith is a process that involves hard work on our part. It’s just not the kind of “hard work” we expect.

Easter reminds me that I don’t need to earn God’s favor or save myself. His Spirit can save me and make me holy. However, tearing myself away from distractions and opening myself to God’s saving and sanctifying power is where the hard work comes in.

Whether it’s rising early for prayer, setting aside lunch time to read scripture, sitting still to meditate in the evening, or fasting from a meal in order to wait on the Lord, the hard work and disciplines lead to discipleship.

I like how the words discipline and disciple look so similar in English.

Our day to day decisions have everything to do with how we experience God’s saving work and power.

During the days leading up to the cross, Jesus worked hard at prayer, challenging his disciples up to the last moment in the garden to sacrifice physical rest for the sake of spiritual exercise—praying that God would protect them from temptation.

He didn’t tell his disciples, “Take a nap fellahs. I’m going to be crucified tomorrow anyway. I’ve got this sin thing taken care of. You don’t need to worry about sin and temptation since you’re going to be saved by faith!”

We can never add to our salvation, but we can neglect it and fail to receive the power that comes through the cross, leading to our deliverance from sin, and through the Resurrection, raising us to new lives in Christ. During Easter I remember that Jesus saved me, but in delivering me from sin, he has called me to the hard work and daily sacrifices that discipleship requires.

For more thoughts on Easter, read Bonnie Gray’s post: Sometimes it gets worse before it gets better.

When playing baseball in Jr. High, I used to watch with relief when a ground ball streaked toward shortstop or a fly ball soared into right field. So long as I didn’t have to deal with it at second base.

If I didn’t make any errors and at least hit the ball once, I could usually go home happy.

This is not the attitude you want if you plan on actually winning a game.

While the members of a youth baseball team can coast through a season within thinly veiled disinterest, the stakes change significantly when we start dealing with the Christian life. In fact, half-hearted interest is a huge problem.

Paul speaks of the Christian pursuit of God as something we throw ourselves into with complete devotion, straining to win. We aren’t just in the race. Being in the race as a Christian won’t do much for us.

In fact, if we aren’t actively trying to win the race, we may be in trouble.

We need to be careful that we don’t allow the results or numbers focus of the business-world to influence us. We don’t have to freak out about bringing verifiable data to God. A PowerPoint presentation of our quarterly spiritual growth and progress is not required. 

I have the sense that God is searching for people who are deeply committed to him. That means besides believing in him, we are reordering our lives in the short and long term around him.

God is looking for commitment on par with Rocky: rising early for an egg drink, charging up the Philly art museum steps, and pounding hunks of meat at the local packing plant. His life revolved around his goal. I doubt anyone would punch meat for the fun of it.

Our time in the car, waiting in line, or lying in bed before falling asleep are all opportunities to draw near to God. We can find moments to advance throughout our day, and other times we’ll need to change our schedules in order to make God our top priority.

Drawing near to God is our goal. 

If we aren’t making progress toward giving ourselves completely to God, we are in danger of being distracted by an unhealthy focus on things such as money, sex, power, or listless amusement. That isn’t to say we can’t have those things in their proper place. However, if we aren’t moving toward God, we run the risk of being pushed away from God.

I see the Christian life as this ongoing process where we’re continually learning to surrender more and more of ourselves to God. We don’t arrive at a place of complete surrender or deep holiness overnight. It’s a long-term training process with some short term rewards leading to the greatest reward at the end.

Ask God where you should begin.

I started swimming laps back in November. It was more like splashing a lot and drowning a little. I needed lots of breaks, and I couldn’t do the freestyle/crawl stroke too much. I mixed all of these made-up strokes together. A few months later I still struggle to keep a fast pace during my laps—“no pain” is my unofficial work out motto—but I can swim relatively well for 30 minutes with a few breaks.

Training myself to exercise regularly has been a difficult process, but it’s paying off in the short and long term with better health, less stress, and sound sleep. Those rewards were not apparent at the beginning, and there were moments of frustration, but winning the mental battle of the first few swims was the worst of it.

God can help you ask those first questions, take those first steps, and sort out what needs to change. God wants to be found—at least eventually. Finding God may not be easy sometimes, but I’ve often found that those times of waiting and uncertainty were generally part of him breaking down unhealthy patterns in my life or teaching me something I’m not expecting.

God wants us to thrive, experiencing the full peace and joy that he gives us. If we want those things too, we won’t find them by doing the bare minimum.

We’ve focused a lot this week on our personal struggles to run the race of discipleship—keeping our eyes on Jesus and giving everything we have to pursue him and his calling. However, there’s a lot more to this than our personal struggles.

Christians run their race in packs. Think of it like a cross-country race.

How we interact with our teammates says a lot about how we’re progressing as runners and whether we truly are becoming more like Christ, remaining on course, or straying into the pursuit of our own goals.

In fact, there’s a lot at stake when we interact with our fellow runners. We could play a crucial role in how fast they can progress, let alone whether they finish at all.

There’s a familiar phrase for doing something that prevents or inhibits others from running: stumbling block. It could be a careless word of judgment, a well-meaning but critical attempt at encouragement, or poor choices that lead others to imitate us.

The opposite of causing someone to stumble is helping someone run better.

When we meet someone with beliefs different than our own, whether Christian or not, are we helping this person move in the direction of God? Are we modeling what running a race toward God looks like?

Too many times I’ve been confrontational or given in to my desire to look smart or correct. Attacking a runner will not help him continue to race. An attack will only slow him down.

And so we have to think of ways we can both model good running for each other, while nudging our fellow runners toward God. When they ask us for help, we have an opportunity to share the good things God has done in us.

The more I think about encouraging fellow Christians to run toward God, the more I’m convinced that we must be gentle, encouraging, and redemptive to one another. This would rule out some of what passes for “Christian” content that’s online these days.

Attacks, challenges, arguments, open letters, angry comments, and the list goes on. These things don’t strike me as a good way to help someone run a better race toward God.

If I was running off the main trail and taking sloppy strides, I know that I’d prefer someone to run alongside me and to personally explain how to get back on track and to improve my form, rather than shouting from the road, in front of everyone around, that I’m a bad runner who is going to endanger other runners with my choices.

Are we worried about making ourselves look good and right and smart and holy sometimes?

Are we a little too jumpy about differences of theology rather than the practice of the basics?

I have plenty of my own issues to sort through, but don’t we all? We really don’t need anyone to dump on us as we try to follow Jesus today. The truth is that I need you, you need me, and we all need one another.

We’re running together in a pack toward Jesus.

When one of us stumbles, we pitch in and offer a shoulder.

When one of us strays from the trail, someone seeks that person out and guides her back to safety.

When one of us falters with discouragement or exhaustion, we trot by his side, hear him out, and share from our lows.

We’re in this race together. It’s hard, fulfilling, dangerous, and beautiful. And perhaps the most beautiful thing in the world is when we can let God use us to encourage or heal another person. That is when we truly fulfill our reason for being here.

We continue to look at how Christians can stop sinning. Previously we identified persistent sin as a problem and then talked about the information we need and the desires that drive us. Today we’ll talk about the spiritual battle of sin.

If that sounds a little far out or unnecessary to you, then you really need to keep reading and give this some thought and prayer…

Solving The Enforcement Problem with Sin

So, if you’re following me now and you have your facts and desires straight, perhaps you still feel like sin has you under its dark, smudgy thumb. I’m with you on that. It’s nice that God wants you to be free and that God is able to offer us greater intimacy and joy than anything we can find here on earth, but don’t you wish it was easier to wipe the power and effects of sin from our lives?

He’s given us everything we need for godly living and we love him deeply, but somehow we still can’t connect our facts and desires with reality. Sin is a tricky little bugger.

This is where we need to get spiritual. We are in a spiritual struggle with evil spirits that want to wreck us, as in that guy prowling like a roaring lion seeking to devour us. Peter knew a thing or two about that when Jesus warned him that Satan wanted to tear him apart. There are spiritual forces in this world who desire to control us, who want nothing more than to become idols who receive worship and loyalty.

Now, in moving forward we can make two mistakes. One is the intellectual mistake of ignoring this spiritual warfare business because we once saw a preacher on the television wearing a snappy suit who hit a lady over the head with her crutch to heal her.

I’m from the intellectual tribe, and I’ve been in churches where I’ve had to dodge flailing plastic swords and waving flags while people shook and wept—stuff that has left me suspicious of this spiritual warfare business at times. However, whether we encounter the fraudulent or the odd, the scriptures make it abundantly clear that we are engaged in spiritual warfare that requires God’s spiritual resources if we want to win.

You do want to live a holy life in intimacy with God, don’t you?

The other extreme leaves the intellectual behind and moves more according to emotion, feelings, and finds spiritual significance in things like rocks, a word from God, and, if you’re really a lost cause, toast. That isn’t to say that God can’t speak through prophetic words or through unusual means. A charismatic friend of mine once said that God used a donkey to speak his message and he’s been using asses ever since.

Speaking of which, God has even used to share specific messages with folks.

However, we can lose our grip when delving into the spiritual. Some have clung to a supposed “word from God,” that only ruined their lives completely. We have scripture and fellow believers to keep us grounded, and while we should fight sin by spiritual means, we should not forget the teachings of scripture and the church when we engage in these spiritual struggles.

And so, keeping these extremes in mind, we can engage in the enforcement of God’s will and power with the sin that plagues us. Christ has broken the power of sin with his Resurrection, and so we have his power at our disposal because the Spirit is in our lives. So, for starters, we can claim the power of the cross and Resurrection. And even more than that, we are free from the dragging influence of sin when seeking out God. And this is where we will find the victory over sin.

We don’t defeat sin by fighting it ourselves. We defeat sin by letting God defeat it as we cling to him. Sin cannot touch us when we our heavenly father is residing in our bodies, his new temple. Therefore, the trick to living in holiness is to seek God with stubborn tenacity whether or not we feel like it.

We have the information at hand: he loves us and desires that all people should know him. There are no caveats, no loop holes that exclude you or me. And therefore, we are welcome into his presence because of his Son’s work and the Spirit’s ongoing influence.

As we enjoy intimacy with God, we can ask him to expose sin for what it is. In other words, as I’ve prayed about my own struggles with lust and anxiety, they have been revealed as spirits of adultery and fear. Claiming the biblical truth of Christ’s victory as my own, I told the spirit of fear and the spirit of adultery to leave.

While they pester me from time to time, in the years that followed those decisive moments of revelation I have experienced new-found freedom from these sins that nagged me for years because I’m entrusting the spiritual battle against sin with God. My time with God that resulted in renewed spiritual insight into my sin struggles brought about a decisive breaking of sin’s hold in my life.

Now we know the facts about holiness and sin, the emotional end of things, and the way we fight sin, but must sin always be an ongoing struggle? Can’t we move beyond this daily fight against sin? I’d suggest that we can, and that’s what we’ll discuss tomorrow…

We will never represent God unless God is able shape us into his kind of people.

So in our daily work to live holy lives, to discipline ourselves, to hear God, and to let God work in us, we are no longer acting as individuals just trying to better themselves. We are drawing near to God in order to be more effective as God’s people, as his ministers, as his body.

When it comes to spirituality and holiness, we have a lot more at stake than our own salvation. The world is depending on it.