Time for Spring Training!

 Jesus says that if we are to follow Him we need to deny ourselves.  As someone who desperately wants to follow Jesus, I want to be able to deny myself.  But as my wife, kids, students and close friends know, I am inclined to put myself first.  I am good at thinking about it afterwards, but I tend to fly off the handle or get first in line before I think about it. Later I am able to reflect, “Argh, I did it again, I did not deny myself.  Father, please forgive me.”  That reflection (repentance) is good, but it is too often after the fact.  I want to be predisposed to deny myself.  I want self-denial to be my automatic reaction. I want self-denial to be in my “spiritual muscle memory.”  Right now every fleshly part of me screams out, “Give me what I want!” It is like having a temporary blindness to what is really good.

This struggle, and the fact that it is March, draws my mind to one of my favorite subjects:
Baseball!

Tony Gwynn was one of the best hitters to ever play the game of baseball.  He is in the hall of fame for his incredible ability to bat the ball.  He described hitting as a reaction.   When you have a 3 inch sphere flying towards you at near 100 miles per hour you do not have time to weigh out the pros and cons of whether or not to swing at the ball.  Tony Gwynn learned to train his reactions.  He did this by practicing, taking thousands of swings exactly the same way.  He trained his body to know which pitches to swing at and which pitches not to swing at.  That is muscle memory! Gwynn was described as a very disciplined hitter. He spent thousands of hours in the specially built batting cage underneath Jack Murphy Stadium.  Gwynn’s  lifetime batting average was .338. He won the National League batting title eight times. One season he hit .394 only 3 hits shy of the “magic” .400!  Gwynn was good because of how much he practiced. He was ready for the heat of the battle in the game because he practiced outside the heat of the game.  (George Will, Men at Work)

Currently my reactions are trained to put myself first.  I want to practice myself out of this habit.  If character is partially made up of habits then I want to get rid of my “me first” habits and take on the habits and reactions of Jesus. This takes more than my efforts alone, but I must play a part in my retraining.  Transformation is not a completely passive process. (Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines)

Fasting is my “spiritual batting cage.” 

Fasting is a choice to deny one’s self of food.  It is a planned and deliberate choice of self-denial.  Initially I cannot choose my reactions in the heat of a moment.  But through the intentional practice of fasting I slowly learn and train myself to give up what I want. Fasting is deliberately practicing self-denial outside the heat those battles where I ordinarily choose myself first.  Through practice I learn that I don’t have to be first in line.  Slowly, I hope to become less enslaved to my selfish desires. There is so much freedom in not having to get my way!  Hopefully my “self-denial batting average” will get over .200 someday!

But fasting on my part will only take me so far!  After all, “Having begun in the Spirit why do we strive to be perfected by human effort.”  (Apostle Paul paraphrased)

The best part of fasting is that it draws us to the Spirit.  Fasting puts us on the operating table so Jesus can perform surgery on us and so the Spirit can be formed in us. I often fail when I fast!  I get even more irritable.  My feelings are even more on the surface.  How is that good?  Because being aware of these negative feelings I am driven to the cross.  I am broken before the feet of Jesus whose wondrous blood and soothing, forgiving, peaceful words drip into my soul.  Fasting lets us get in between our feelings and actions.  It helps us question our feelings before we let them control our thoughts and actions. When Paul talks of “mortifying the flesh” this is what he means. Fasting draws us to Jesus.  And He heals our soul!  We learn to trust Him more to meet our needs and to satisfy us. When Jesus meets my needs I realize that I do not need to fight to get my way.  In fact our wants actually change.  We begin to want what Jesus wants.  Jesus gives us new “wanters!”  Less blinded by our wants we see Him more clearly.  This vision of Jesus draws us to Him. Fasting is not an end in itself. But as a result of fasting and other disciplines We are less in the grip of my fleshly wants and more in the grip of Jesus and His way of loving others.  Jesus is the end.  Fasting is not righteousness.  But fasting is a means to becoming more like Jesus.  Fasting puts ourselves on the cross with Jesus and we say with the Apostle Paul, “I have crucified myself with Christ.”  That is how we train or learn to follow Jesus.