Training for the Big Moments (Friday Devotional)

As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

- Colossians 2:6-7

For the last few days, my family and I have been spending our spring break in sunny Phoenix, Arizona. We’ve gone to the Musical Instruments Museum, we’ve eaten Indian fry bread, and we’ve (mostly) kept our laptops stowed away so we could truly vacation instead of working in our downtime. But primarily, the last few days have been devoted to watching Major League Baseball’s Spring Training, the annual rite of passage when players make their way to Florida’s Grapefruit League and Arizona’s Cactus League for daily practices, workouts, and exhibition games in preparation for the upcoming season.

For those who don’t care about baseball, the idea of this being a spectator experience is inexplicable. You drove 1,000 miles with two small kids in tow to watch players practice? Well, yeah. After all, even when the games don’t count for anything, these are still the greatest players in the world. And there’s something special about watching them hone their craft when the cameras are off.

When we think about some of the heroes of the Bible, we’re immediately drawn to climactic points in their lives, those miraculous moments when their faith was rewarded with a clear and present display of God’s glory. When we think about Joshua, we think about the walls of Jericho tumbling down; when we think about Daniel, we think about his rescue from the lions’ den; when we think about Mary, we think about the day an angel appeared in her living room. The titanic figures of the biblical narrative are, in our memories, defined by singular moments.

But when the Bible talks about the life of faith, it is clear that a relationship with God is not just about the moments you’re in the spotlight, but also about the moments when you’re toiling away on the backfields. Scripture repeatedly refers to discipleship as a “walk”—something slow and methodical and continuous, defined not by showy surges of sanctification but by daily growth.

We long for biblical theophanies and historic revivals, for our spiritual lives to be as cinematic as the ones we read about in the Old and New Testaments. But remember this: just as the Major League season is built upon spring training’s foundations, the next Great Awakening will be built upon prolonged, quiet seasons of faithfulness. God isn’t just there when the cameras are rolling—he’s there during practice too.