More by Running Than by Considering

When I worked in print years ago, every shift started the same way. The lead would put a job into production by stacking all the marked-up hard copy on a central table, where typesetters would queue up to grab themselves a handful of pages and go to work coding or correcting the content to produce the desired output.

One of my fellow employees became notorious for loitering at the table, picking through the hard copy looking for what we referred to as the ‘cake’: pages of straight text with no complex tables to code and no graphics to insert, or corrections that amounted to nothing more than adding a few periods to the end of existing paragraphs.

You couldn’t miss what he was doing; he was always holding up the line. The only time ‘Norm’ ever attempted anything more challenging was if you put it right in his hand and assured him he had no other option.

Falling Short by Choice

Of all the keyboarders I ever worked with, ‘Norm’ was also the most fearful of an imminent layoff. Of course he was! The man had never learned to do the job for which the company was paying him, and his annual reviews reflected that reality. He understood that he was falling short, and he made the obvious connection between ineptitude and the potential for losing his job. He just never made the other obvious connection: between his own shortcomings and his persistent habit of seeking out the easiest work available. He never competed, so he never achieved. Having never accomplished anything difficult, he had no confidence in his ability to do the job.

It’s sad to fall short, but sadder when you do it by choice. I used to train new hires, and my first priority was to make them aware of all they didn’t know and needed to learn. The second task was to make bridging the gap between where they were and where they needed to be look achievable. One of the ways I’d reassure them during their first week in training was with this: “In twenty years, I’ve never seen more than a tenth of our workforce laid off at one time. Never. That means you don’t have to be the best of the best to keep your job. Just pick out four of your co-workers, and make it your goal to be noticeably better at the job than they are.”

Competing for the Prize

It got a morbid laugh, and it made a point. I encouraged them to think of their work as a competition, because it was, but I also wanted to set them a goal that they would believe manageable. In a staff of forty, you will always find at least four ‘Norms’, and, unless you’re completely hopeless, you can blow by them one by one in short order.

I’ll tell you something else too: to this day, none of my trainees has ever been laid off.

Christians are not immune to the creeping temptation to look for “the easiest pages in the stack” when it comes to our service for Christ. Why would we be? The next time your local church stages a spring cleaning, pay careful attention to who is doing what. Mature believers will arrive on time, deliberately choose the less desirable jobs, work away until their chosen task is complete, then help others finish theirs. My estimation of my fellow believers rises considerably when I see them voluntarily and diligently performing thankless, unpleasant tasks with a smile. Less-mature believers smile too. They also appear later, spend most of their time chatting, and are first in line for coffee and donuts. If you are not paying attention, you will simply remember both types showed up. Closer observation shows who is being genuinely helpful.

Achievement Through Action

Hard work is no fun, at least not at first, but challenging yourself regularly comes with an excellent reward. Even if nobody notices, there is far greater satisfaction in accomplishing something useful than in receiving credit for simply showing up. There is also something else: certainty about who you are, what you are doing and where you are going. Concerning the relationship between spiritual effort and assurance, Jonathan Edwards observes:

“Assurance is better achieved through action rather than self-examination.

The Apostle Paul primarily sought assurance in this way: by ‘forgetting the things that were behind, and reaching forth unto those things that were before, pressing toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus; if by any means he might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.’ And it was mainly through this approach that he gained assurance: 1 Cor. 9:26, ‘I therefore so run, not as uncertainly.’ He obtained assurance of winning the prize more by running than by considering. The swiftness of his pace contributed more to his assurance of victory than the strictness of his examination. The Apostle Peter advises us to give all diligence to grow in grace by adding to faith, virtue, etc., as a way to ‘make our calling and election sure, and have an entrance ministered to us abundantly, into Christ’s everlasting kingdom.’ He implies that without this, our eyes will be dim, and we will be like people in the dark, unable to see clearly things past or future, including the forgiveness of our past sins or our heavenly inheritance that lies ahead, as mentioned in 2 Pet. 1:5-11.”

Now, I’m not convinced self-examination of the sort we are often encouraged to engage in serves much useful purpose at all, nor do I believe Paul’s primary motive in serving so diligently was the desire to obtain assurance of his standing before God. Don’t get me wrong, he received plenty of assurance as a by-product, but I sincerely doubt that was his main interest.

A Valid Point

Nevertheless, Edwards has hit on something valid. Throughout the New Testament, when we come across words like “sure”, “certain”, “assurance” or “confidence” with respect to the issue of our standing in Christ and our hope for the future, these terms frequently appear alongside encouragement toward doing the work and will of Christ. In the event we are tempted to interpret Edwards’ use of “action” as referring to good works only, let me clarify: our confidence in our position comes from remaining in the thick of the battle between light and darkness, whether actively, through service inspired by love, or passively, through standing firm when under assault. Enduring suffering and hardship is also a source of personal certainty. The writer to the Hebrews talks about both.

Concerning labors and service, he puts it this way:

“For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do. And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end.”

The by-product of loving service is “full assurance of hope until the end”. That’s a strong statement.

Confidence and Reward

Concerning the positive effects of endurance, we find this a few chapters later:

“Recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.”

In order to maintain their confidence, it was necessary to interpret their difficulties correctly. These Jewish believers were struggling not because of their own sins and failures, but because they had provoked the enemy and were under attack. Therefore, they ought not to doubt that they were on the right path, but to persist in doing good even in the face of continuing abuse.

There are times when we don’t get to choose our place in the battle. Sometimes the fight comes to the believer unexpectedly, and the choice is between running and standing our ground. But when given the option of an easy task and a more challenging one, I say leave the ‘cake’ on the table. Let the younger believers behind you get their feet wet, and dig into the tougher challenges that present themselves, setting an example for others in the process. You won’t regret it later.

Paul obtained his assurance of the prize “more by running than by considering”: by gasping, sweating and persisting, not by meditating on how fast he was going, how his performance to date compared to historical norms for the distance, and when he might hit the finish line.

We will not do badly by following his example.