by Lindsay Mast
Synopsis: Our willingness to submit to the guidance of a coach (or in the spiritual realm—to our God) is a mark of maturity and will lead to greater accomplishment.
Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey. . .
For the first twenty years of my life, I don’t think a week passed when I didn’t sing this hymn with my home congregation. At some points, I’m sure it felt stale, but the words are now ingrained in my mind for all time. The further along I’ve traveled in my Christian race, the more I appreciate them.
In order to succeed in distance running, there comes a point where you realize you need to trust those who know things that you don’t—those who have experienced things you haven’t. When they talk, you need to listen and act.
Of course, with earthly running, those authorities are the experienced runners and coaches who have gone further, faster, or who have learned more about the sport than you have. In our Christian race, this simple hymn expresses the same fundamental truth. We need to trust the authority: God, and how He has instructed us through Scripture. We need to obey Him—no matter what.
Funny, it’s easier to obey when we trust Him. However, we can’t obey only when our feelings of trust are strong. When we doubt, when we question, when we wonder if another way might be better, the plain truth is we still need to obey.
When a running coach devises a training plan for a runner, it will include weeks of workouts along with periods of rest. There may be some room for deviation, but if it’s raining for a week, and you don’t do the workouts, you won’t get the same results. If rest periods are called for, but you ignore it and add in your own workout, you’ll wind up exhausted, or worse, injured.
A young runner might be tempted to go hard for every workout, not understanding that varying pace leads to long-term success. A cross-country athlete might get upset at a coach whose vision they don’t share, and then refuse to work to the best of their ability—only to find that, of course, they then aren’t making progress.
Trust and obedience can so often seem counterintuitive to self-seeking, inward-focused and vision-lacking humans. It’s hard to accept coaching. It’s hard to accept that someone else knows more than you and possesses wise advice you need to receive in order to reach your goal. It’s hard to trust that someone who isn’t in your exact situation has the answers you need when you don’t know what to do.
Jesus tells us that His yoke is easy, his burden light, and in it is rest (Matt. 11:29-30). This, too, seems counterintuitive when we are steeped in the messages of the world. Yet, those who have trusted God and showed it through obedience will tell you that they’ve experienced that lightness. In running, we will never know how good a coach is if we don’t do what they tell us to do. Likewise, we cannot truly experience how good our God is if we never do what He tells us to do. We rob Him of the opportunity to prove His love when we refuse to obey Him.
If you met an Olympian, you’d likely listen to his advice about how to become a great runner. You would inherently trust him because he has met the goal you want to meet. When we read the words of Jesus, we often have trouble believing He really meant what He said, even though He is the authority—the only authority—on living a sinless life. Living that life took tremendous trust. We need to believe Him. Trust Him. Obey Him.
For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome. For whoever has been born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world: our faith (1 John 5:3-4).
