Training Ground

“The job of a football coach is to make men do what they don’t want to do, in order to achieve what they’ve always wanted to be.”
~Tom Landry

Just as for any great athlete, God’s training ground for us (a process called sanctification) can be very unpleasant. It frequently involves breaking quite comfortable habits or rethinking old familiar thought patterns. Usually, the impetus for us to change must be dramatic-some kind of hardship which forces us to go deeper. It rouses us out of our comfort zone to take a serious look at some aspect of our lives that is crying out for change.

David knew the pain of this process. Early on, Samuel had prophesied David would someday be king while he was still a teen. Yet it would be many years before that promise would be fulfilled. At first, things looked promising. David faced Goliath and brought him down with a single slingshot blow while the entire army of Israel looked on. Saul set him over the army, and David quickly became legendary. Women would dance in the streets at the army’s arrival, singing, “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands.” It must have seemed like God had set the wheels in motion, and the throne was a short time away. But God often doesn’t have the same time table as we do.

Instead of taking the throne, David soon found himself running for his life. Saul had become jealous and felt threatened by David’s successes and ensuing popularity. He could not rest until David had been eliminated. Saul spent the next decade or so chasing David around the countryside, hoping to put an end to the perceived threat on his throne.

David knew God was in control, and knew what had been promised him. He was willing to wait for God. Even when opportunities came to kill Saul and to finally be done with the agonizing wait, David resisted. It would be many years of sleeping in caves and living off the land before David ever came to rule.

Why did God keep David waiting? God had his purposes for the years between anointing and kingship. He brought a group of men together to protect and serve David in his years of exile. “Everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was discontented gathered to him; and he became captain over them. Now there were about 400 men with him.” (1 Sam 22:2) A motley crew at best! David worked with this malcontent group, honing them into an effective and skilled band of fighting men. In their years on the run, David also learned diplomacy skills while dealing with foreign leaders. Most importantly, as God proved His faithfulness to David time after time, David moved into a deeper relationship and level of trust in Him.

Should the Lord have given David the job at the time he was anointed, still a young lad working as a shepherd for his father, we may have been far from impressed at his skills as king. Instead, God used the time David spent in the desert as a kingship boot camp, giving him the experience and training to someday effectively rule.

Those long years in the desert were not a comfortable existence. But they were necessary. God is at work to change us as well. Often that effort places us in circumstances that we would not choose on our own. But the resulting changes they bring about in us are worth the pain. “For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison.” (2 Corinthians 4:17)

Tim Webster, a Maryland pastor, recently lost his beloved young wife to brain cancer. In the agonizing days preceding her death, he wrote on their blog: “We want things now. Father, microwave us into being like Jesus. But discipleship doesn’t happen overnight. Often God forges His children into His image through the long and dark nights of the soul. We must trust His plan and also His timing! When the time is right, He will bring us out of our trial, and we will look more like Him when He does.”

Sanctification, God’s training ground, is a process: often a long and trying process. We yearn for it to end, unable to see past our immediate, painful circumstances. Yet there is glory up ahead. God has a purpose for the pain. Even when we can’t see the final goal, we can trust in His plan as He relentlessly moves us toward becoming like Christ.

“He knows the way that I take; When He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” Job 23:10