Recently I started working out again. It is something that is not always what I would consider fun. Our gym gives you two free sessions with a trainer and it gives you a taste of what it would be like to have one regularly.
Trainers don’t care about your comfort. They care about helping you achieve your goals. They intentionally make you uncomfortable. Each time you meet with them you are put into different situations and your body is pushed in a different direction. They are able to help you do things that you aren’t willing to do on your own.
In our journeys of faith we need trainers. We need a community of people to come alongside us and help us to do things we won’t normally do. We need people who care little about our comfort but care deeply about our souls.
Josh, the guy who is training me. Is very kind, encouraging, and tough as nails. He wants me to achieve the goals that I have set for myself. He gives me truth and then sets a plan in motion to help me take another step. Between you and me, I think he enjoys watching me cry.
In our current Christian setting we don’t typically stick around long enough for people to have that role in our lives. Or, the leaders around us care too much about our comfort and less about our souls.
Our churches are organized around our wants and not our needs. Our needs are in spiritual formation and discipleship. But too much of our Christian constructs are about creating comfort and not disciples.
When we exercise our bodies we have to put them in uncomfortable positions and we have change the way we exercise or we stop moving forward. The same is true spiritually. We must be pushed and stretched and called into the life of following Jesus. As we do, we grow.
Discipleship is fundamentally training in righteousness. We all must be trained. Don’t take my word for it,
If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed. Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.
Movements are built because people are not satisfied with comfort. They dive deep into relationships in the midst of community for sake of growing in maturity. People stick around when it gets uncomfortable because the goal of multiplication is more important than their own comfort. This is the kind of community that is being built here at the Antioch Movement. A community where real people are getting deeply involved in the lives of one another. We train one another for godliness and it is not easy.
