n 2017, I wrote a book called Renewed: How Jesus Transforms Your Mind. This is part of a series of articles based on that book’s content. Hope you find them helpful.
The point isn’t the falling. It’s the getting back up.
One of the simplest things a parent teaches a child is to get back up. Fall down, shake it off, keep playing. The point I’m after isn’t the falling — it’s the getting up, the work of keeping up the effort. When we’re young that comes easier; but as the world lands its sucker punches and people disappoint us, the motivation to keep getting up can wane. A culture built on “you only live once” quietly trains us to devalue anything that requires struggle or delayed reward, and that has eroded our endurance. You see it in serial relationship people, serial job switchers, serial victims — broad strokes, but they probably land on most of us at least a little. As a people, we have very low stamina for struggle, and I’d argue it’s a spiritual problem.
Of course, to have spiritual stamina at all, there has to be a spirit alive in you. Before the new birth we are “dead in the trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1), and dead people have zero stamina. But once you’re born again, you can develop the kind of defiance Steve McQueen’s character shows in Papillon — hauling himself up to the bars of his solitary cell to whisper, “I’m still here!” Christ in me is greater than any power outside me, and because of him, I’m still here.
Maybe the best bad example in Scripture is King David. We love to picture the giant-slayer and poet, but David was flawed like us, and here’s the principle his life proves: what happens in your private life always finds its way into your public life. David sought the Lord for battles and kingly decisions, but grew comfortable with his own wisdom at home. His private devotion waned — and it finally surfaced “in the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle,” when David stayed home (2 Samuel 11:1). One glance from a rooftop became adultery, a cover-up, and a murder, and the consequences rippled through his children for generations. Don’t do what we so often do: see the struggles of the saints and take them as permission. Sin is normal, but it should never become something we’re okay with.
So how do you grow in stamina? The first step is the same as building it physically: admit you’re not okay. I’ve been overweight most of my life, and for years I stayed okay with it by never stepping on the scale. The mirror told me, my belt told me, but as long as those hard numbers never crossed my eyes, I could pretend I was big-boned and healthy. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves… If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us” (1 John 1:8-9). When we step away from the Word and stop making regular deposits of truth, we slowly forget — forget that sin is crouching, forget that we’re no match for it on our own, forget that we need daily filling from the Spirit.
The day I finally tipped three hundred pounds and couldn’t catch my breath at the top of a flight of stairs, I started weighing myself regularly, exposing myself to the truth. And here’s what I learned: I only do well when I’m getting regular reminders of the truth. The moment I stopped weighing, the weight crept back. Spiritual stamina is no different. Don’t coast on past growth. And don’t measure your spiritual life by avoiding the big stuff while ignoring the small. I haven’t looked at porn in years… so what! What about the laziness, the gluttony, the dependence on caffeine to take the edge off your mood? A life spent dodging the big sins and ignoring the small ones is lived every day by lost people; it takes no Holy Spirit power at all.
Exposure to the Word will collide you head-on with the reality of your sin, and that should do two things. It should lead you to confession — unconfessed sin is usually a sign of unread Word and unspoken prayer. And more profoundly, it should turn you from self-condemnation toward deeper, more grateful worship, because every one of those sins has already been paid for. “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed” (Romans 8:18). Are you tempted toward vengeance? Jesus is better than vengeance. Money? Jesus is better than money. Have people abandoned you? Jesus is better than their acceptance.
I’ll be honest: writing wrecks me, because I keep colliding with the very things I’m writing about. The only thing that keeps bringing me back is that the fellowship I experience with the Spirit while I write is more precious to me than quitting. I have no greater desire on this earth than to know Jesus and him crucified — and I love my wife and daughters best by loving him more. That, friends, is how you gain spiritual stamina. You’ll never have enough; you’ll always need to grow. But you can say with the psalmist, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you… God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:25-26).
