Posted on 11/23/2014 4:33:04 AM PST by SoFloFreeper
I have spent my life being coached or coaching. I’ve played most of the major sports and some of the more unusual ones as well. I’ve learned that coaches face one major perennial challenge. It is the difficulty of motivating your athletes when pain and fatigue are urging them to quit.
I’ve found that there are three basic coaching styles that seek to answer this challenge.
The first coaching style asserts that true athletes don’t feel pain. It simply doesn’t exist; it is a figment of the imagination. This is the mind-over-matter rationale. Pain isn’t a challenge; or, it isn’t even to be considered. To feel pain is to be weak, these athletes are told.
Nonsense. Everyone feels pain.
The second coaching style asserts that true athletes love pain. They eat pain for breakfast. They seek pain out. They smile when their fast-twitch muscle fibers are on fire. They love to receive and deliver concussive hits, they are taught.
Nonsense. No one loves pain.
The third coaching style asserts that true athletes, successful athletes, find pain to be a necessary experience in the sport they love. Pain is the friction of growth toward accomplished goals and skill development. These athletes are taught to expect pain, respect pain, and listen to pain as a sign they are progressing. Coaches who adopt this coaching style toward pain tend to produce the healthiest athletes.
Christianity has a point of contact with these coaching styles and the presence of pain and suffering in the life of every Christian. Despite the vain thoughts of the early convert, the life of faith in Christ is not an ascent to heavenly bliss on a pillow of protection and prosperity. The way up is often the way down, a cross before a crown. Whether you are that early convert or a saint seasoned in trials, you will experience pain and suffering in the Christian life with a deep tension—a spiritual, emotional, cognitive, theological, and eschatological tension.
The psalmist in Psalm 44 leads us into just such a tension.
In the first eight verses, he asserts the give-and-take of redemption and growth. God has saved His people. And He has grown His people through that redemption into a trusting and grateful bunch who continually boast in the Lord.
But by the ninth verse, the shadow falls and boasting mouths become stilled with confusion. The psalmist provides us with words most of us would be too embarrassed to pray. Verses 9 through 22 chronicle the bewildered poet’s struggle with suffering. Despite their receptive and grateful response to redemption, the people of God are now suffering—intensely suffering. Where is the Lord? Verse 22 summarizes the plaintive pleading of the psalmist: “Yet for your sake we are killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
The psalm ends with a soul-stirring cry to God for help. Suffering has come. The stillness and clarity that the psalmist once knew is now turbulent and cloudy. How could this be happening?
Has God’s grace now run out? It is a simple question. “Lord, if you have loved us, redeemed us, and covenanted yourself to us—well, then, why this suffering?” The Bible not only asserts the truthfulness of Christian doctrine but also affirms the experience of Christian confusion. The Lord has ordained suffering for just such a purpose, to draw His people to Him with a “Why?” on their lips, but to draw them toward Him nonetheless.
And that is why it is fascinating to see the Apostle Paul quote Psalm 44:22 in the eighth chapter of his letter to the Christians in Rome. The citation seems out of place considering the context. In the verses immediately preceding the quotation of Psalm 44:22, Paul asks the rhetorical question, “Who shall separate us from the love Christ?” He then follows the quotation of our psalm with the statement, “We are more than conquers through him who loved us.” We are forced to ask the question, “Why was Psalm 44:22 on the lips of Paul when such amazing promises are being made?” Wouldn’t Romans 8 be so much more encouraging if Paul left out such a depressing quotation?
What we find is that what was confusing for the sons of Korah has been clarified by the Apostle of Christ. We have a suffering Savior. Suffering in the life of Jesus was God’s declaration that plan A was under way. As His crucifixion illustrates, Jesus felt pain. As His Gethsemane prayer illustrates, Jesus didn’t enjoy pain. Jesus’ approach to pain and suffering was one of necessity that would eventually give way to glory and joy. For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross (Heb. 12:2).
And so the Christian is invited to do the same. Pain and suffering are a normal part of the Christian’s growth toward glory. Suffering is bookended by God’s inseparable love and our status as more than conquerors. And one day, when pain and sorrow are no more, God Himself will wipe away every tear.
Thank you, I have been in intense spiritual pain for about 6 years. This was helpful. I just hope there is an other side.
PFL
I developed a fourth method. I realized early on that most kids who participate in a sport will never play beyond a certain level - most likely high school. I taught kids that my job as coach was first and foremost to teach them how to be good adults.
Sure, we would work on the intricacies and special talents needed to play the game. They also had to learn how to win AND lose graciously. The most satisfying to me were the thanks at the end of the season. Some wrote personal notes, like the young lady who went on to play girl’s varsity in prep school.
Wonderful Article, Thank you.
I sent it to everyone on my email list.
Thank you for posting! No one likes pain, that is certain. The world teaches us to avoid it - maximize pleasure, minimize pain - go for the gusto - yet we know that it is common to the human experience. It seems to be unfairly distributed, as well. Something I wish I had learned much earlier in life, was a statement put succinctly in one of Larry Crabb’s books, “Do you want relief or do you want to know God better?” It’s not an easy question to answer when you are at your depths and when your dreams, often legitimate human needs or desires, are in the process of being crushed. I don’t know all of God’s reasons for pain but one is surely to wean us away from our love of this life and this world, a world He knows will never fulfill us, until we find our true fulfillment in Him. Then... we will truly be fit for heaven. It seems true faith desires God’s glory no matter what we are feeling or going through. Where we can say, “...not my will but thine be done.” Again, thanks for posting a great reminder of what it takes to run the race and do it well.
Imagine the pain as a something that appears on a highway as you are driving along, it seems to be blocking your way and you get off the highway trying to avoid it and take another route.
In your mind are visions of massive accidents, tragedy and other reasons that your mind gives you to justify “avoiding” the pain and getting back on the road you were on safely
You may find yourself driving totally off course looking for alternate routes, and while doing so either get a glimpse of the “cloud” on the freeway or hear of it on the radio. It was a very small bank of fog, it may slow you down which is in itself a message but the real learning is one of faith. Cars that kept going may have slowed but they were still heading in the right direction while you are wandering looking for alternate paths.
Trials in our lives are Gods way of tempering us like steel to serve him and show us our need to depend on him and whatever is put in our path as a necessary part of our spiritual growth.
In a word - FAITH
In HIM or our perception of what might be, which is of the flesh
Choose!
Drive into the cloud and take appropriate precautions but stay on the road going forward. Scripture says look neither to the left or the right, and never back but a;ways forward with your heart and mind fixed on where God is leading you. Keep the eyes of your heart firmly fixed on Jesus and he will never lead you astray, he is the Good Shepherd and cares for all of his flock.
After all, if you are on the wrong road he would give you a real detour which is again a loving way of showing (coaching) you and never beyond what you can handle
So do not try to avoid the “pain Cloud”, it is for your benefit and in Gods time you will see if was perfect and just what you needed!
God Bless
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