January 29, 2001

CYBERCOLUMN:
Practicing the things of God
___By Berry D. Simpson
___One of the first Bible verses I learned, more than 30 years ago, was 2 Corinthians 5:17: "Therefore, if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away, behold, new things have come." I quoted that verse to myself for years, expecting that my

BERRY D. SIMPSON

old things were passing away, replaced by new things.
___Then one day in 1978 as I walked across the campus at the University of Oklahoma, between a petroleum fluids class and an economics lecture, it occurred to me that I didn’t understand that verse at all. (It usually happens to me that way—a sudden realization that I’m not as smart as I thought. It’s always a disappointment.)
___I did a quick assessment of my life and realized the passing of old and replacement by new wasn’t so automatic, or complete, as I’d thought. Apparently I needed to take a more active part. Maybe the verse meant that God had given me permission to change, or the ability to change, or the grace to change, but I certainly hadn’t become a new person by osmosis.
___If I wanted those new things to come—things like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control—I had to discipline myself and practice.
___ However, I didn’t know how to practice peace or kindness. They seemed to be more byproducts of a disciplined life than actual habits I could learn. So, I decided to focus on things I could learn.
___ It was a relief, actually. I understood prayer, daily reading, meditation, memorizing, attending worship and fasting. They were tangible. I could plan them into my life, and check them off my to-do list at the end of the day. I found it a lot easier to practice reading my Bible every day than to practice loving my neighbor every day.
___ I knew I wasn’t supposed to do spiritual things just so I could check them off my list, but I figured that even if I did God’s things for wrong motives, at least I was doing God’s things. It was better than doing thousands of other things the world had to offer. I believed my motives would eventually change if I kept at it long enough. I also expected to grow in love and joy and gentleness.
___ Phillip Yancey wrote: "I wish the process (of becoming God-like) were spontaneous and natural, but I have never found it so. Indeed, I have found that such a process, like anything of worth, requires discipline." I agreed with him; I kept practicing.
___Pianist Arthur Rubinstein once said: "If I omit practice one day, I notice it. If two days, the critics notice it. If three days, the public notices it." It may not be that critical for most of us to practice good habits every day, but we will not see real changes in our lives if we don’t try.
___ As it turned out, most of the things I do in life that I’m good at, well, they’ve happened because I’ve practiced so hard. For example, I’ve spent hours practicing writing and reading books and attending workshops about writing. Why? Because I want to get better. I need the practice.
___ It’s the same with teaching. I work hard at being a good teacher. I run my ideas past my wife, Cyndi, who is the best teacher I know, and I’m constantly analyzing and re-evaluating what worked and what didn’t. I want to get better.
___ I guess you could say the same thing about running, except that in my own mind I put running in a different category. While I believe I had a beginning level of talent as a writer and teacher, I had absolutely no natural talent or ability as a runner. I run nowadays, not because I’ve gotten better, but because once I started, I never quit. I just didn’t stop. Through the years, I’ve practiced continually (we usually call it training) by doing speed work at the track, and long runs on the weekends, and occasional bleacher workouts. I’ve done that since 1978, but when I look back at my old logbooks, it’s clear that I haven’t improved more than 5 percent to 10 percent since I started. I don’t have much success to show for all that practice.
___ But I still go out every day because I know the daily discipline of running has changed my life in more profound ways than merely lowering my marathon times.
___ And so that brings me back to practicing spiritual disciplines. We shouldn’t practice just the things we are good at. Some of us may have a natural talent for memorizing Scripture, and with practice we could become powerful lions of the word. Others of us have no natural talent, and 25 years of daily practice will yield only marginal improvement. In either case, the daily discipline will change us in ways we cannot measure and maybe cannot even perceive. If we just keep practicing the things of God, our old things will pass away and, day by day, new things will come.

___ Berry Simpson is a petroleum engineer, writer, runner and Sunday School teacher at First Baptist Church in Midland.






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