This is a title that I would have NEVER thought I would write. While I have always liked active things (hiking, skiing, climbing, playing sports) I never liked preparing for such activities. Thus, I look like what I do today because I never did any exercise unless it was something fun. After 6 months of Crossfit, I do like exercise now and am doing it regularly, so this has really changed my life.
But I was also a night person, and now I am waking up each day without an alarm clock between 5:00 and 6:00 each day and am work at 7:00. This too has been a significant change in me. This shift back in April has been such a foundational change in me, that it is hard to even imagine how radical of a turn I made AND have sustained, which honestly is the big surprise. I have always wanted to be different, and planned so many programs that would revolutionize my life. I would implement them and they were awesome for a while, but I would always fail.
This was a deep pattern in my life, especially spiritually. Have always had a passion to be a great and wise follower of Jesus, but I have always been bad at spending time with Him. I have had a lifetime of starts and fails in my devotional life and the gaps between my efforts got longer and longer. It is hard to be like someone you don’t spend time with. While I knew a lot ABOUT Jesus, I didn’t know Him very well. So I developed a life that was built on knowledge and not relationship.
The pattern of starting a new “program” and failing after a few days or weeks was a pattern in many areas of my life. I wanted to Love my wife better and serve her. I wanted to exercise and be in better shape. I wanted to be a better father and spend more time, and better time, with my kids. I had great aspirations and great ideas and I was challenged by reading and listening to people that told me of the importance of doing all of this and I wanted it all so badly. It seemed like I ached for it. So I tried harder and harder, but ended in more and more failure. And this is where my great lie comes in.
This is a lie that I have bought into most of my life. It is hard to recognize because it makes sense. It fits with what my ears like to hear as my hurting and broken heart is looking for an answer and it latches on with a death grip. It explains why I fail, and leaves me hopeless and frustrated, and that is exactly where the Father of lies wanted me. This lie seems so trite and small, but many lies have the power to be life altering, if you believe it. This lie is, “Randy, you are just not a disciplined person. It is part of your personality.” It makes sense, and it is true. I am not, by nature, a disciplined person. Clearly some people are and some aren’t, so it seems my gene pool is simply shallow here and I can’t do anything about it. This is just how God made me for some reason. And everyone has a “thorn in the flesh” and mine, I guess, is that I am not disciplined.
It sounds so logical and it fits my life experience and it seems very clinical, so it must be true. And I guess the real issue is that I didn’t believe I could change, because no one can change their personality, right. But the issue with lies is that they don’t stand alone, they start multiplying. So I am not disciplined and now I can’t change that, I am what I am, and God made me this way. See, now it is getting personal, and I start to remove responsibility from me to others for why I am not what I know I should be. Lies build on one another and, for me, each is filled with darkness, and I feel like I have been sitting in a room and the lies get darker and darker and they compound and pretty soon it is hard to see truth in the darkness.
What does this have to do with Crossfit? Well Crossfit has been a light into that darkness of lies. I have changed. I am doing something I have always wanted, but never been disciplined to do. Actually, Crossfit has not been the light, but it has been Jesus. I have no ability to be disciplined enough to do Crossfit, but Jesus has changed me. All the reasons for my successful change here do not add up, and so I give all credit where it is due, Jesus and His ability to change what I could not.
You see, all my other efforts have been me. I am not sure it was an intended teaching of the churches I have gone to, but I learned it from church, culture and family. When you know what you need to do to be different, mussel up and do it. I know they always meant for it to be Jesus, but somewhere along the way, it became that Jesus would only pick up where my efforts failed. I mean why waste His time changing me when I can do most of it myself, right? This makes me feel better about myself (I can change me) and I don’t have to “bother” Jesus when He has others that need Him more. Of course I would have never voiced this or thought it consciencely, but I have now realized that is how I was acting.
The problem with this approach, besides that it doesn’t work, is two-fold. First, it makes me look and feel better about myself than I should, and secondly, it puts me on a par with Jesus as having some power to change a person.
I like being good. I also like taking credit for being good. The better I think I am the more content I am. This is the deception that I bought into. It is a lie, because I am NOT good. My capacity for sin and self deception grows each and every day. And the better I am, the less I need Jesus. See how this feeds my ego and my pride? I mean, if I can change much of what I need to without Jesus, and and I am not all that bad anyway, then I am well on my way and better than most. What arrogance this all is for me. How egotistical. Again, I would never had said I believe this, but it is how I act, and we all know that our behavior tells us more about what we believe than our mouths do. I was lessening my need for Jesus so that I could be more equal to Him. Equal, but not like. Big difference.
So Crossfit, and what God is teaching me through a regular diet of my need for the Gospel everyday of my life, were bolts of light into the darkness of my lies and self deception. I was changed by Jesus and BAM, suddenly I see the deceit. Suddenly I recognize the lies. I am a pitiful human and a worse believer and I, for the first time, identify with Paul when he says a he is chief among sinners. A little light pushes away darkness and the light allows me to see clearly what was so contorted before.
That shaft of light is also hope. With all of this revelation I have been made aware of, I feel like I should be devastated and curled up in a corner in the fetal position. But I am not. I have more hope than I can recall having in years. I look forward to having my hear pierced and challenged at church as God speaks through faithful men. I go to Crossfit most days, and in a microcosm of the whole lesson, I love to be there in pain and misery as I work out. I love hating Crossfit! Just as I love it when Jesus rips into my flesh and exposes another sin, because NOW I have hope that He will heal it fully.
This is how Jesus used Crossfit to bring light into my darkness and revel how I had distorted the faith in an effort to feel good about who I am. Now I don’t feel good about who I am because Jesus has shown me that I am far more sinful than I ever imagined, and He is far more loving than I ever dreamed.
Colossians 1:29 – To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.
Letters from a Fathers Heart 