What Are We Playing For? Training for Eternity

I believe just as much as Indiana needs IU to win this national championship, the world needs the Olympics right now to bring us all back together to remind us that we are on the same team, and this happens when we hear the stories of the athletes who have trained for years. Sometimes they train their entire lives for moments that might only last a few seconds. We watch people give everything that they have, body, mind, heart. Well, I hope not their soul, but they give it all for something they believe is worth it. [00:49:31] (41 seconds)  #WorthTheTraining

Because beneath all of it, beneath all of that excitement is a question that most of us are already asking whether we realize it or not. And I don't think that we have to be world stage athletes yet. We still can ask ourselves the very same question that they do. What are we playing for? Meaning, what is worth our effort? What deserves our energy? What shapes how we live when no one is cheering, when no one else is ringing a cowbell for us? What shapes the way that we live? [00:50:27] (46 seconds)  #WhatsYourWhy

``You know, athletes understand something that faith communities, we sometimes forget. Nothing meaningful happens by accident. No one wakes up on Super Bowl Sunday and suddenly decides now it is time to train. No Olympian stumbles into competition without years of discipline. No championship season is built on talent alone. Everything that lasts is shaped over time, including our spiritual formation. [00:51:39] (41 seconds)  #DisciplineShapesFaith

Our dedication to faith, it will take us that sense of time. It will take intention. It will take focus. It will take sacrifice. It will take commitment the same as an athlete would commit to their sport, and that's where the apostle Paul meets up with us in today's scripture. Paul knows athletic imagery well. He talks about sports because he knows people will get it. I talk about sports because I know people will get it. He wasn't trying to glorify competition, but he understands discipline. He understands purpose. He understood what it meant to give himself fully to something that he believed mattered more than anything else. [00:52:20] (48 seconds)  #FaithTakesDiscipline

Paul starts with freedom, but not the kind that we usually talk about. Paul tells us that he's free to choose whatever life that he wants to choose, and so he chooses restraint. He limits himself. God did not ask him to do this, but Paul did this because he decided that's what mattered most and this is what's important. It isn't self discipline for the sake of just having self control. He did all of this for the sake of love. He becomes all things to all people. Not trying to be fake, not trying to manipulate. He's simply trying to remove barriers. [00:55:01] (45 seconds)  #FreedomToServe

Paul is not criticizing athletes. He's honoring their discipline. He's saying if people are willing to give that much of themselves for something that is temporary, how much more intentional might we be about something that is eternal? That's the heart of the passage. [00:59:09] (24 seconds)  #TrainForEternity

Most of us are not intentionally choosing against god. We're just busy. Distracted. We get pulled in about a 100 different directions. We drift. We doom scroll. You know what doom scrolling is. Right? We get stuck in some AI driven algorithm designed to keep us on our phones and away from everything else that really matters. Paul didn't know what doom scrolling was, or Paul didn't understand watching TV all day and every day, but he does remind us that drifting shapes us just as much as discipline does. [01:01:08] (47 seconds)  #ChoosePresence

Remember, faith is not a competition. Paul is reminding us that faith is a choice, a choice about direction, a choice about purpose, a choice about what we will give ourselves to. [01:04:26] (17 seconds)  #FaithNotCompetition