Specialize in Obedience

I have such vivid memories of what it was like to be on my feet!

Oh, and I love thinking about those memories, I do. Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada for Joni and Friends, and bear with me, please, as I think back on, well, what it was like to pick up a hockey stick and run down the field of my old high school, or remembering what it was like to play volleyball or swing a tennis racquet. You know, that sport was one of my favorites, tennis, and my high school coach was not my best coach. Because back then when I could play tennis, my mother was my best coach. Dear Lindy Eareckson – that woman had great finesse on the court, and she tried very hard to pass good ball-and-racquet skills on to me. But when I was a teenager first getting the hang of the game – about 13 or 14 years old – boy was I a stubborn learner. 

All you’d have to do is take a look at some old home movies of me on the tennis court when I was still in junior high school. I mean, oh, my backhand was so awful. Now, I thought back then I was doing pretty good with my backhand, but my wrist was bent, my grip was wrong, my body position wasn’t square with the net. And when my mother wasn’t looking, and I was playing tennis with my friends from school, I would fall into my standard very bad backhand swing. And after a while, I got extremely good at doing something very bad. Through hours of practice away from the coaching eye of my mother, I became an expert in the art of a poor backhand swing in tennis. Later on when I was in high school, I had to totally abandon, dismantle, my backhand swing because it was so awful. And slowly, through our high school tennis coach, I rebuilt a new-and-improved backhand swing which resulted in a much better score. But it was not easy, letting go and re-learning a new habit. 

Which begs the question – I wonder, have you gotten proficient at doing something very wrong? Have you become an expert in a bad habit? The Apostle Peter in his epistle talks about people who practice doing the wrong thing and become specialists in sin. In 2 Peter 2, he describes how “They never stop sinning…they are experts in greed.” Believers who become good at disobeying really don’t need a whole lot of help, but when you repeat a sin often enough, you end up training yourself to become skillful in disobedience, and that is a habit that’s hard to break. Well, God is looking for people who specialize in obedience – and for that, hey, we need a whole lot of help! I mean, we need to train ourselves to do the right thing. The Apostle Paul tells Timothy to train himself to be godly. He says in 1 Timothy, “For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.”

Friend, life is not a game of tennis. Life is not a day-in and day-out routine, like hitting a ball over the net, waiting to see if someone hits it back. No, life is supposed to be more than that. And training yourself to be godly has value for all things in life, and not just this life, but in the life to come. There’s a whole lot more at stake here than just the score at the end of your day. There’s a final score to consider. So if you want to do what is right, then, please, train yourself in godliness. And that means practice every day. So until next time we meet here for Joni and Friends, don’t get really good at doing something really wrong. Instead, make a choice today to live right. Train yourself to be godly.  

© Joni and Friends