Olympic Discipline

Heard a great analogy yesterday:

When an Olympic athlete wakes up, his mind is only focused on his training for that day. His mind is also conditioned to “say no to ice cream” or any other activity that impedes his training and Olympic goals. Olympic athlete and ice-cream simply do not mix. It is discipline of Olympic proportions.

In the same way, we as Christians, must wake up every morning and consciously choose to align our daily actions with our identity: children of God. This means we must be as disciplined and focused as the Olympic athlete is towards activities that help us become more Christ-like each and every day. More importantly, we must be steadfast in our resistance of activities and thoughts that impede that progress – in other words, we must resist the “spiritual ice cream” in our lives.

I thought it would very helpful to frame my mind this way going forward – to wake up every morning thinking that I must attack the day and prepare for battle, to do the HARD TRAINING that is required of us in our identity, and to RESIST my old, sinful, default way of acting, thinking, and living.

And make no mistake about this – it is GRUELING training – but if our goal is to be “Olympic Athletes” in the spiritual sense, we must embrace and welcome such training if we ever hope to be all God wants us to be.