Warning! This post is kinda deep.
Are you like me? Have you felt too busy and really tired at some point in the last day, week or month? I was there, running and running, one activity to the next. Mostly positive, good, wholesome activities, but that’s what they were…activities.
As Coaches, there’s no doubt we often have a lot on our plates. Practices, games, families, athletes, athletes’ parents, game planning, and the list goes on. But just recently I had a breakthrough. Really, I did. I was reintroduced to a Great Invitation. This Invitation promised rest; rest for my soul. Sounded good to me. My soul was tired. But wait, this was a Jesus deal wasn’t it? “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened…….Take my yoke upon you and learn from me…….and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matt. 11) I’d heard that one before, it helped a little, sometimes, but then I found following Jesus to be tiring too. So what’s the deal?
The deal is I was going about it all wrong. Following Jesus is not about activity, not about having more stuff to do. I began to see that taking that “yoke” upon me does not restrict me, it sets me free. I can see some of your eyes rolling already. Try this on:
If you had a bowl of soup in front of you, and I gave you a fork, could you eat the soup? Yes, you could. You would slurp it up, knock it down a few drops at a time, until finally the bowl was nearly empty. It can be done, but it would be frustrating and inefficient. You would vow never to eat soup again.
What if instead, I give you a spoon? Suddenly, although it requires effort and attention, eating soup is a fabulous experience. Because soup was intended to be eaten with a spoon. Similarly we were created to exist a certain way. We were created to accept this Great Invitation, to exist inside the yoke of Jesus.
I’m not foolish enough to think I’ll never feel tired again or that I’ll get this right all the time. No way. But I know this much: I’ve tasted the soup for the first time, I know what it tastes like, I know where to get it, and I really like it. What about you? How you livin’? How’s your soup?
Extra Credit reading ———Check out this quote at your own risk
“In 1937 Dietrich Bonhoeffer gave the world his book The Cost of Discipleship. It was a masterful attack on ‘easy Christianity’ or ‘cheap grace,’ but it did not set aside – perhaps it even enforced – the view of discipleship as a costly spiritual excess, and only for those especially driven or called to it. It was right to point out that one cannot be a disciple of Christ without forfeiting things normally sought in human life, and that one who pays little in the world’s coinage to bear his name has reason to wonder where he or she stands with God. But the cost of nondiscipleship is far greater – even when this life alone is considered – than the price paid to walk with Jesus.
Nondiscipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated throughout by love, faith that sees everything in the light of God’s overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances, power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil. In short, it costs exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring (John 10:10). The cross-shaped yoke of Christ is after all an instrument of liberation and power to those who live in it with him and learn the meekness and lowliness of heart that brings rest to the soul.”
From Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines (Harper, 1988), p. 263