There is a phrase you hear a lot in sports, “They left it on the field.” 

 

I like that phrase! It means you gave it your all, maybe you didn’t win, but you can still feel good because you left it on the field. It’s a good sign if you get to the place in life where hard work and effort is a reward unto itself. 

 

You can’t win every game. You can’t be good at every subject. You wouldn’t do well in any career. You’re not going to get along with every person you have to interact with, but this isn’t an excuse to lay back and let things crumble to pieces. There’s more that can and should be done to review the film, the study, to develop your skills, and to extend grace and forgiveness. This is true in life. This is also true in our faith. 

 

We are not saved by works, but we are saved for them. There is a lot of work that needs to be done in the kingdom of God! And our hands will be the ones to do it. The goal of that Christian life is not to be comfortable on earth and get rescued into paradise. The life of a Christian should be marked with the sweat and scars of hard work. 

 

And there’s no better place to start training for a life well lived than right now. That’s why your coaches and teachers, your parents, your church leaders, and everyone is encouraging you to leave it on the field. Everyone knows that the very best results in life come on the heels of hard work and in no category is our work more justified and rewarded than in our faith. 

 

Jesus looked at his disciples from where He sat by the woman at the well in John 4, as they came back from lunch and said, “Look, the fields are ripe for harvest.” Get started now fighting the good fight of the faith so that one day you’ll be able to say with Paul, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” 

 

Next school year, we want to thrive, as individuals, in our families, at school, and as a community. We want our work to matter and to produce great results. We want the effort of our minds to give us insight and wisdom. We want our relationships to bloom with love, joy, contentment, and peace. We want our systems to run smoothly, our governments to strike the right balance, our neighborhoods to protect our sense of security. Our money to swell, our possessions to remain pristine, and our moods and emotions to remain under our control.

By contrast, we don’t want to waste time and effort or to have our hard-earned recognition be taken by someone else. We don’t want our investments to diminish or our decisions to result in suffering for us or those we love. We don’t want our deeply held convictions to be dismissed, and we don’t want to find that we’re addicted, or angry, or depressed, or sick.

So, what do we really want? In short, we want the paradise God created back in Eden. How do we get what we want? 

But how did we lose it? Scripture teaches us in Genesis 1-3 that we lost it when Adam and Eve reached out and took the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden. Perhaps you’re tempted to feel cheated by this, thinking, “That’s not my fault. If I had been there, I wouldn’t have doomed humanity to permanent suffering and death.”

Wouldn’t we though? Adam and Eve did it in Eden, but so did the disciples in Gethsemane. The church did it during the crusades, and again in the colonial conquest of the Americas, and when African people were being imported as slaves. Would we have stood opposed to the wicked and destructive actions of those in power? Did the Germans during WWII or the Russians, or Chinese or warring tribes in Rwanda? We can look back and understand with compassion that none of these people, Adam and Eve included, knew what the future would hold. Most of them, at the time, could NOT possibly have understood the ramifications of their complicit silence, and seemingly innocent turning-the-other-way in the moment. But their ignorance does not make them innocent, and it certainly does not reverse the effects of their actions or inactions on the rest of us.

And we are guilty as well, though we don’t like to think about it like that. But sin doesn’t begin with wanton destruction, it begins with avoiding the hard work demanded of us today. It does not begin in bitterness, divorce, betrayal, and scandal, it begins in our choice not to hold back our biting words to those we love when we feel angry, hungry, and/or tired. Cain, in Genesis 4:7, discovered this about sin. It does not come at us in the obvious way that we might resist it; instead, it “crouches at the door…”, and we must resist it or we will find ourselves giving in to our pressing desires for relief, pleasure, and power over others, and in that way sacrificing our futures too, to the devastating effects of sin.

We want paradise back, but our sins have made that impossible, and we’ve got no one to blame but ourselves. So, how do we close the gap?

We don’t! But Jesus did. Jesus never left paradise! He never gave in to His fleshly desires or said something he later regretted. Jesus stayed with God in the garden of Eden and when we found him in the garden of Gethsemane our envy led us to kill him for it. But praise God, He is not resentful, spiteful, vengeful, and malicious like we are, because instead of retribution, which is what we deserve, He extends an invitation to come home.

That person, [who places their faith in Jesus and abides in Him], will be like a prospering tree. We can have what we want this year, by giving up everything we are and everything we have and trusting in and abiding in Jesus, who promises to give us back the desires of our heart. We can reenter paradise with Him, bit-by-bit in this life and completely in eternity. Then, like the psalmist says, we can, “Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and praise His name.” (Psalm 100:4)

Let us, therefore, move toward next year with hope that we can get what we want, and let us discover that what we really want is to be found in Jesus. I invite you to join us in the often difficult and frustrating journey of dying to yourself, that we might thrive together in Christ.

by John Bishop, Director of Spiritual Formation

To the seniors, 

 

I think most of the teachers at Westminster feel about you the way that Paul must have felt about the Ephesian church. He loved them! 

 

There is a touching scene in Acts 20 when Paul is saying goodbye to the people of Ephesus and in verse 37 it says, “They all wept as they embraced him…”. Paul had let them know that he was not going to see them again because he needed to obey God and go on to what, at that point, he understood was going to be imprisonment and death, for the sake of the gospel. 

 

Saying goodbye is hard. Some people deal with it by separating and pulling away. I guess the logic is, “If I make it uncomfortable and messy enough, it won’t hurt so bad.” But I don’t think that really lessens the blow, and it may actually rob some of the joy of those last moments. No, saying goodbye is a normal and necessary part of life. And here you are on the cusp, watching as this season of your life slips away, never to be seen again. It’s very sad. 

 

But just because it’s sad doesn’t mean it’s bad (sorry for the cheesy rhyme). You cannot go anywhere or do anything meaningful in life without allowing what’s known to be sacrificed for what’s unknown. That’s how we grow. That’s how we learn. That’s how we discover our limits and uncover our purpose. We have to let go of the very thing that carried us through. 

 

In an effort to leave you with some final words and help you finish strong or encourage you in how you have been finishing strong, here’s what Paul later wrote to the people of Ephesus, “16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. 20 Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, 21 to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” 

 

And now it’s time to let go. We release you to your future, into the unknown adventures that await. We pray over you what Paul prayed over them. We love you! Now get out of here and go do great things for Jesus! 

 

To the rest of the students, even if this isn’t your senior year, each year is filled with valuable moments. Take inventory of all that God is/has been doing in your life and cherish it. Time moves by quicker than we realize, and each day is an end in itself. Don’t miss it! 

I’ve been a runner my whole life, and I think part of the motivation comes from a man I never met. 

 

When I was a kid, I would look out the window by my bed as I struggled to get up for school. From that position I could see the road that passed by my house. I remember one morning seeing a man walking by. The next morning there he was again. And the next. And the next. It went on for days. You might wonder why I noticed him. Well, he was a big guy! Definitely over six feet tall and overweight, not the kind of person you would typically see walking by, especially that early in the morning. But there he was, walking. 

 

I didn’t think much about him at first, but day after day, week after week, year after year, he passed by my house. He was committed! I was only a kid, but I found myself rooting for him. After a few months he was walking faster, and I silently cheered him on from my room. There was something inspiring watching this guy follow through with his commitment. Eventually, after a few years, he started jogging a little, slowly at first and only sporadically, and then, as his steps got lighter his pace got more consistent. 

 

This is how it goes. The things we do every day eventually become habits. We have the physical, psychological, social, and spiritual ability to adapt and grow to fit the decisions we make for ourselves and our ever-changing lives. It takes a while when you change schools, for example, to build new routines, establish new relationships, understand the cultural dynamics and eventually fit in. The same is true later in life. You move cities, get a new job, get married, have kids, and each time have to rediscover how these changes require a lot of growth and adaptation. But you make it work, because you often don’t have a choice. But does it have to be this way?  

 

Much of life seems to just happen to us and we find ourselves running uphill into a headwind. We’re out of shape and unprepared and often angry about it! “Why does it have to be so hard?” we think. I’m sure it was like this for this guy walking by my house. He didn’t get into whatever situation he was in all at once; he made little decisions every day that resulted in a life he was not happy with. Because the things we do every day eventually become habits. 

 

My sister texted me last July and mentioned she was running the Miami Marathon on January 28. I couldn’t resist the challenge. In August last year I began training. For my first run, I barely made it three miles at a pace I was happy with. It had been a while since I’d had a regular workout routine, and I was out of shape. For a few weeks I just had to grind it out using a motto “5K every day!” for motivation. It wasn’t awesome. 

 

Mario Cristobal found himself in a firestorm of media attention last fall after neglecting to tell his team to take a knee in a game against Georgia Tech. UM ended up losing the game and consequently their undefeated streak. No one was happy about this decision! We want to win! 

 

We were winning the game. There were only 26 seconds left on the clock! The headline on USA TODAY Sports read, “Cristobal Coaching Blunder, Bad Call, Doom Miami against Georgia Tech.” 

 

At the risk of being a little unpopular, I’m going to come to Cristobal’s defense a little. First of all, you don’t get to that level of success by making consistently bad calls; the whole system makes sure we never know the names of people who do that. Secondly, you can’t win in that role, not really. If you have a killer season, you’re a hero and everyone loves you. If you make a bad call, you’re being blasted on the cover of USA TODAY Sports. That’s a lot of pressure! 

 

So, what do we really want from our leaders? We want to win, right? But apparently not enough to run another play with 26 seconds left on the clock. 

 

This is not a new issue. In Exodus chapter 5, Moses goes before Pharaoh and tells him to let the Israelites go. That makes him mad, and his response is to treat them with contempt by taking away their supplies and demanding the same production. When the crowds hear about the call Moses made, they’re not happy and they say in verse 21, “May the Lord look on you and judge you! You have made us obnoxious to Pharaoh and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.” i.e., there were only 26 seconds left on the clock!! Why would you even give them a shot at it? 

I think most of us want to win! At everything. All the time. 

 

Isn’t that why we cut each other off in traffic, and scan the grocery store aisles for the shortest line? Isn’t that why we pay attention to the latest fashion trends and keep up with all the details of our friends’ lives? Isn’t that why we apply for the best college we think we can get into maximizing the impressiveness of the name, while not overshooting and facing rejection? 

 

Being part of a team that is enduring a losing season is brutal! If we don’t start winning quick, the coaching staff starts packing up their offices. 

 

We want dubs! And if we don’t have dubs, we want answers! 

 

At Westminster Christian School we’re winning at a lot of levels! I walked into the gym and took a quick video of all the national, state, regional, and district championships hanging on the walls. If you haven’t looked recently, it’s a lot. We have national and state championships in baseball for 13 years and counting; state championships in softball – six years; boys track – two years; volleyball – two years; beach volleyball – one year. And we have district and regional championships in football, boys’ & girls’ basketball, baseball, softball, boys’ & girls’ track and field, boys’ & girls’ soccer, wrestling, volleyball, cross country, tennis, and boys’ lacrosse. This doesn’t account for the tremendous performance of individual students and teams that won critical games along the way. In athletics, we’re winning! 

 

On the website under “Recent College Acceptances” there’s a list of over 140 different schools to which our students have been accepted. Prestigious academic institutions like Harvard, Stanford, M.I.T., Brown, Berkley, Dartmouth, and many others. Our students have also been accepted at universities that are nationally known for their athletics, design, music, arts, research, engineering, law, medicine and a host of other things. Last year our school placed 100% of its graduates in schools to further their education. Beyond that we offer 27 different AP courses across all core subjects and the arts. In academics, we’re winning! 

 

There’s a bumper sticker that many of us have on our car that simply says, “The Dub” with a sword running through it. Obviously, this stands for “Westminster” and directly, but more subtly boasts of how we feel about our school, #WINNING! 

 

There is another area we’re winning, but it’s a little harder to measure, and so a little less obviously a part of what we love so much about our school. We hear about it on admission open house days when people from around town show up and comment, “Wow! Everyone is so nice!” I saw it last year when one of our athletic teams went out of their way to make some kids feel special in a restaurant. The father was so moved by how kind our students were to his kids that he went out of his way to tell us about it in an email. I don’t remember which team it was or whether we won the game, but we certainly won the game being played in that restaurant with those kids! We get to see it when our community faces tragedy. In those terrible moments we rally together and love each other and grieve well. And, finally, we get to see it at Warrior Week and Gr8 Escape, and increasingly every Tuesday as we open our hearts to God worshipping together in chapels. We’re winning! 

 

“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” - 1 Corinthians 15:55-57 

 

I’m proud of our dubs! 

 

 

In Genesis 3:22 it says, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever. Therefore, the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.” At first glance, this is a strange result. 

 

Adam and Eve are at their lowest and God banishes them from paradise in a final act of what?! What is God doing here? 

 

For the longest time I didn’t understand this outcome. I didn’t think much about it either; It just kind of felt like the end of a story, “…and they lived miserably ever after…” or something like that. It was later in my walk with the Lord that I realized what a profound act of mercy this banishment actually was.   

 

The consequence of eating the fruit was knowing good AND evil, whereas before the fruit we only knew good. If God allowed us to then reach out and take eternal life, we would exist for eternity knowing evil – that is not what He wanted for us. Death is introduced so that our suffering from evil (sin) could be limited to our lives on earth. And after that act, a drama unfolds through all human history depicting all of the ways that God has attempted to reach us and bring us back into a right relationship with him. 

 

 

And despite all of that we failed! 

 

No matter what God did to lead us, rescue us, guide us, protect us, we all like sheep, went astray, each to his own way and turned our backs on God. All, that is, until Jesus, the lamb of God, went willingly to death, even death on a cross to fulfill the plan of God from the beginning, to reopen paradise and invite us into eternity with Him. 

Next week we will be celebrating the story of Easter - the central story of all human history. In the article next week, we will focus on how Jesus is the fulfillment of a story God has been telling from the beginning of time. As a setup to this climactic story, we have been outlining different symbols and images used in Scripture. We’ve already discussed the tree and the garden. Today we’ll look at the thorns. 

 

Without the saving work of Jesus, sin rules our lives. And there are consequences to sin that cannot be avoided or erased. The Bible describes these consequences by using the imagery of the thorns. In Genesis 3:17-19 we read, “God said to Adam, Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’” “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” 

 

How many times have you poured your heart into something only to see some of your effort wasted? You practiced all summer but didn’t make the team. You spent six months saving, but by the time you had enough, it was out of style. You invested time and effort into the relationship only to be betrayed. Thorns! 

 

We are so accustomed to the effect of sin that we even anticipate failure in our planning process. Airlines over-sell their seats because people don’t show (and maybe because of greed, too). If you’re smart, you have a contingency plan anytime you’re counting on someone following through. When you’re saving for retirement, you must account for inflation. You must carry insurance on everything. Thorns!! 

 

This is not the way God intended it. He put us in paradise without need or lack. It was sin that introduced brokenness and wasted effort. It’s not work that we hate; it’s wasted effort. Work isn’t even the curse, it’s the thorns. 

 

 

Last week we discussed our hearts (our will, motivations, thoughts, and decision-making center). We do the things we don’t want to do and don’t do the things we should do. The Bible calls this sin, and we all must deal with its effects in our lives. Instead of being Wholehearted, we are Hole-hearted. Then we looked at the problem and the solution using the image of “the tree.” This week we want to look at our hole-heartedness through a different lens, that of “the garden.” 

 

There are certain places we find ourselves (or put ourselves) that make doing the right thing much more difficult. There are also certain places where the possibility of something bad happening is much more likely, like South Beach after dark, for example. But we need to be careful giving too much credit to the place (context/circumstances) for how it affects our life. 

 

For example, we all know people who’ve come through bad places but made something very good of those experiences. We have also known people who have been given every advantage and have, nevertheless, ended up in a rough spot. How our heart chooses to direct us, regardless of where we are, is the central issue in navigating our lives. 

 

Consider the Garden of Eden. Genesis 3:1-5 says, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”” 

 

There could not have been a better place to be. It was literally paradise. Everything was provided in abundance, even meaningful work. There was no brokenness, sin, shame, addiction, natural disasters, just God’s perfect creation. And in that context, Adam and Eve were hole-hearted. Even though they lacked nothing, they felt something was missing. The hole in their heart caused them to exert their will and take what was not theirs, even in a place where they had no need. This one act introduced sin to all of humanity. 

 

There seems to be something wrong with our hearts (that is, our will, motivations, thoughts, and decision-making centers). This shows up in our life all the time. For example, we struggle to follow through, even when it’s something we want to do. Then when we give it our best effort, we often fall short. We love things we shouldn’t and resist things that are good. We get angry, tired, distracted, bored and then instead of taking ownership and doing better, we blame, get bitter and resentful and multiply hurt to ourselves and others. The Bible calls this sin, and we all must deal with its effects! 

 

Instead of being wholehearted we are hole-hearted. 

 

The Bible gives us a helpful image to understand both the problem and the solution to our hole-heartedness: “the tree.” 

 

Consider how the image of a tree works its way through Scripture. There are no wasted words in the Bible. 

 

There was a tree planted in the garden of Eden. In Genesis 2:17 it says, “But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” The obvious question you might want to ask is, “Why did God put it there?” It’s a good question! But be careful, asking it can quickly become a way to blame God for our behavior. Here’s another question to ask, after God made the consequences so clear, why did Adam and Eve do exactly what He told them not to? Why do we? 

 

There are many times in our lives that we know full well the consequences of the decisions we’re about to make. We’ve made the same decision before and suffered the same way every time. Yet, when faced with the decision again, we ignore the consequences and do it anyway. Then we get mad at God and others for putting the “tree” there. 

 

 

The formula for building a satisfying and life-long marriage does not primarily hinge on picking the right person. 

 

If that sentence causes you to bristle a little, I get it. It directly contradicts a popular idea about relationships that suggests there is someone out there who perfectly “fits” you, and all you need to do is find them and you will know, “They’re the one.” We all long for a, ‘happily ever after,’ and it would be awesome if it could simply be found. This romantic idea makes for a touching movie plot, and maybe a sentimental anniversary card, but it is not biblical; it is not even realistic. 

 

Here are some statistics about marriages in the U.S.: 41% of first marriages in the U.S. end in divorce. For second marriages it’s 60%, and 73% of third marriages end in divorce. And yet, no one shows up at the altar to get married because they’re hoping to suffer a lot of pain! What’s going on here? Most of us have been deeply affected by broken marriages. It is painful, disruptive, and costly on every level. 

 

Here’s the sobering reality: you cannot enter the most important human relationship you will ever have with a short-term, shallow, romantic, fleeting, ideological sentiment. And you cannot experiment with sex and sexuality, the glue that is intended to hold this most central relationship together, without consequences. It’s going to take everything you and your future spouse have to make it work, and it will still be hard. The Bible does not pull any punches on describing the level of commitment required in marriage. 

 

Genesis 2:24 says, “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.” 

 

You cannot get anymore committed than, “one flesh.” 

 

Jesus was asked about marriage and divorce, in Matthew 19:2-9, here’s what He said,  

 

“Some Pharisees came to test Him. “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” they inquired. “What did Moses command you?” He replied. They answered, “Moses permitted a man to write his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away.” 

 

But Jesus told them, “Moses wrote this commandment for you because of your hardness of heart. However, from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So, they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate.” 

 

So, what can we take from Jesus’ teaching about the answer to our issues in marriage and intimacy, i.e., what is the thing that a satisfying, life-long marriage primarily hinges on? Well, it is NOT some squishy idea about finding the one. All human relationships and interactions have the potential to be enriching, fulfilling, enlightening, fun, challenging, satisfying etc. The thing that moves any relationship in this direction is commitment! This is most essentially true in marriage where we take it all the way to the level of a spiritual covenant with vows and everything. 

 

 

Have you ever met someone and after a brief interaction felt like you’d known them for years? Maybe they love the same sports or have read the same books. Maybe you found out some little things you have in common like playing dungeons and dragons or playing pranks on others. Maybe you share a birthday, or your families come from the same country or hometown or neighborhood. When you meet someone like this, there is an instant connection, like you’ve found a long-lost sibling. You might call a person like this your soulmate. 

 

There is something profound and powerful about being with someone you can relate to and connect with at this level. Being known and understood is a deep, deep desire of our heart and a person like this often leaves us feeling known and loved. Do you have a soulmate? 

 

I think there is a romanticized idea floating around saying there is a soulmate out there for all of us. But is that a realistic idea? We’ve all stood in grocery store checkout lines to see the tabloid covers advertising the latest breakups and dramas playing out between famous people who just a year ago had been labeled as soulmates. 

 

What’s going on here? Who’s lying to us and what’s their aim? For the tabloid editors the motive seems clear, to sell magazines and make money. Maybe it’s easy to dismiss their use of soulmate to make a buck. But what do we do about our own genuine experience of betrayal, our wounds, and the times we’ve been abandoned by those we at one time thought of as soulmates? 

 

by John Bishop, Director of Spiritual Formation

What makes someone your bestie? Common interests? Similar outlooks on life? Your families have been friends your whole lives? Trust? Or maybe it’s something less innocent like peer pressure, proximity, or guilt. There are a lot of complicated reasons why we choose to spend time with people; why we might throw around a term like Bestie. 

 

Relationships are central to most everything we do and think about. From the moment we’re born and look up to our parents, and every day after, our lives are filled with relationships. We are bound to each other, for better or worse. Because of this it is important to formulate our beliefs about relationships. So how do we think about what we want from others and what do we think about our responsibility to others? And where do we turn to formulate these beliefs? 

 

I think most of us would say that what we want from our bestie is to be acknowledged. To be seen, known, understood, loved, accepted, treated justly and kindly etc. But, often, even with our best friends, this is not always the case. You get (or at least feel) rejected. You must navigate complicated situations where being associated with one person gets you in trouble with another. Loyalties shift, interests wane, tensions arise, people change. This catches us off guard because it’s not what’s presented on social media feeds, movies, and music. Even though the closing scene of Grease shows Sandy and Danny riding into the sunset like everything is going to work out, we all know that the drama will continue tomorrow. It always does. 

 

I think if you ask 10 people what the best cardio exercise is you will get 10 different answers, and you might get a lot more information than you bargained for. In fact, I typed, “The best cardio” into Google to see what might come up and there was an endless list of options. Of course, that’s because there are endless ways to get your body moving and your heart pumping. It also depends on your goals. If you want to lose weight, that’s very different from if you’re trying to build muscle while decreasing your BMI. 

 

There is, after all, a wide gap between HIIT and dance classes, but both activities will get your heart pumping, both are great cardio options. You can swim, run, do burpees, row, jump rope, get a membership in a climbing gym, walk around your block briskly, or go to bootcamp to join the Marines. Every one of these activities will get your heart pumping and will benefit you physically.  

 

But with all our focus on health, fitness, and physique, have we forgotten that our hearts are more than a muscle? 

 

Have you ever been startled by something and discovered that your heart was racing? Have you ever held your breath and found after a little while that your heart was pounding in your ears? Have you ever had a near miss in traffic and experienced that flood of adrenaline and struggled to “calm your nerves.” 

 

Your physical heart is connected to your emotions, thoughts, relationships, successes and failures, fears, and hormones. Your heart beats like you’d just done ten burpees even while you’re sitting on a roller coaster or laid back in a soft chair in a movie theater. 

 

Considering all of this, I think we need to aim a little deeper when considering the question, “What’s the best cardio?” If you strengthen the muscle of your heart so you can run a marathon, but you never deal with the strife at home, you won’t have peace. Maybe you can sprint to the top of the stadium steps ten times in a row without slacking your pace, but how does your heart do when it’s rejected by your best friend? Perhaps you’ve had success trimming the inches on your waistline, but do you trust God with your finances, safety, and future? 

 

I got frustrated the other day after realizing that I’d forgotten to turn on Strava before the three-mile walk I’d just finished. I said out loud in frustration, “I don’t get credit if it’s not tracked!” The people I was with laughed at me, rightfully so. 

 

On the other hand, I find that tracking metrics like distance, speed, or reps is an essential part of building and maintaining an effective fitness plan. And when I look back on my week, it helps me to stay more consistent if I’ve tracked what I’ve done. For me, I don’t know if I’m pushing myself to an appropriate stress level if I don’t know how far, how fast, or how many I did last time. 

 

A few years ago, I was training for a big race and picked up a book I thought might be helpful called The Triathletes Training Bible, By Joe Friel. You’ll need to read the book to get accurate technical details, but here’s one of the things I took away from it: to build endurance you need to maintain peak exertion over a set distance largely independent of time. And central to all his biometrics is an accurate heart rate. 

 

If you walk three miles and your heart rate never picks up, then you can say you had a nice stroll. You can celebrate that you were active, and perhaps the casual walk is significantly better than sitting in a desk chair with respect to overall health choices, so it is an unequivocal success! On the other hand, if you walk three miles today and your heart rate skyrockets – your Apple Watch, Fitbit, Garmin, Vital or whatever reads 125 bpm, that is an entirely different story! You are working hard, and your body is telling you through your heart rate that it is responding to accommodate the effort.  

 

 

One of the great challenges we face in achieving our goals is inconsistency. Here’s the pattern: you lay out a good goal. “I’m going to work out!” “I’m going to do better in math.” “I’m going to spend less time on social media.” 

 

Then you start with great momentum. Somewhere along the way, however, you miss a workout. Maybe you got injured and had to take a break, maybe you stayed out too late and couldn’t get up, or maybe something more enticing distracted you. Whatever the reason, now your perfect streak is an inconsistent one, the beginning of the end - it’s so much easier to stop altogether once you’ve practiced stopping once. 

 

You start by getting all your homework done for math and a couple weeks later you’ve reverted to your old habits.  

 

You deleted Snapchat and Instagram, but then a friend told you a story and you just had to see, so you reinstalled them…the beginning of the end! 

 

This is true in our spiritual pursuits as well. You might come back from a beautiful Christmas service with a strong desire to be closer to God. You start praying every day and commit to being in church more. You make it a week, two weeks, a month, but inevitably something happens.