Photo By: Pedro Ribeiro Simões
Chances are that most people reading this remember learning how to ride a bike as a kid. When you learned to ride, there was a progression of skills.
You may have started on a tricycle, building strength and gaining coordination while staying fairly safe from falling over.
Then you graduated to a bicycle with training wheels that helped to increase your stamina and build confidence.
Finally, your mom or dad took off the training wheels and ran alongside while you pedaled, holding you up until you had enough speed and balance to make it to the end of the block on your own.
It was a little bit exhilarating and a little bit terrifying. And in those awkward moments when you weren’t sure you could do it, your parents were right there next to you, cheering you on, picking you up if you fell, and beaming with pride at every new milestone. You never got in trouble for making a mistake. You never really thought about quitting, even when it was hard. And even though there might have been moments when you wanted nothing more than to walk away and go back inside to watch cartoons, you never really gave up.
Eventually, whether it was in a few days or a few weeks, you were zipping around the block on your own two wheels. You gained some independence and some maturity. You had a right to be a little bit proud of yourself because what you learned was hard… but you mastered it.
Looking back, even a few months later, you might have found yourself wondering what the big deal was. And even now, probably many years later, you could still get on a bicycle and take off riding, excited and powerful, with the sun on your face and the wind in your hair.
Just like riding a bike
And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:2-3)
That is what EXCELLENCE looks like in the Kingdom. It’s about making small strides toward your goal. It’s about building strength, stamina, coordination and confidence. It’s about picking up speed and momentum a little at a time, while Father God runs alongside you – cheering you on, helping you stay balanced, encouraging every attempt.
Just like any good father, God is proud of His kids. He doesn’t see our stumbles and setbacks as failures. He sees them as vital steps in the process of achieving true excellence.
This can be hard for us to understand at times. I know that I, for one, truly hate feeling like I’ve failed. And too often, from my perspective, those setbacks look an awful lot like failure. But just think, if a child gave up at every supposed failure, how would he ever learn to walk or talk or feed himself? If every mistake spelled certain doom, none of us would be here. We would never have made it out of childhood.
It’s all downhill
I remember the first time I went skiing. I was in high school and my family went on vacation at a ski resort in the Lake Tahoe area. Learning to ski was hard work. It was cold, and it made my muscles ache from being used in new and unfamiliar ways. But I said at the time and I still think it – it was the most fun I ever had freezing to death. By the end of the morning I was snowplowing down the bunny slopes and feeling more confident with every run.
Then that afternoon I remember being on the large main hill at the resort and coming across my mom, sitting under a tree, skis at her side, watching other skiers heading down the slope all around her. Although it had been many years since she had skied, she had been doing fine… right up until a six-year-old accidentally cut her off as he zoomed down the slope at breakneck speed. She wiped out, and gave up. She collected her skis and planted herself under that tree for the better part of an hour.
So what happened? She saw a miniature downhill expert, compared herself to him, found herself lacking, and stopped the process. Eventually she did get back on her skis for another run or two down the mountain, but she didn’t seem to enjoy it as much as she had before that one little boy crossed her path.
I went skiing a few more times with my dad after that, but my mom never joined us again. Maybe she wasn’t cut out to be a skier – she had the right to make that choice. But I really wonder if she allowed that one moment of “failure” and judgment to steal some of the joy from an otherwise fun day.
Become like a child
And Jesus answered and said to them, “Truly I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘be taken up and cast into the sea,’ it will happen. And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.” (Matthew 21:21-22)
How did that little child become so fearless on the ski slopes? I don’t have a definitive answer since I never met him. But my guess would be that nobody ever told him he couldn’t ski. It probably never occurred to him to be afraid or to quit.
It’s like learning to ride that bicycle – if nobody tells a kid that he can’t learn how, chances are that he can and will. Nobody tells a baby that she’ll never learn to walk or talk. It is taken for granted that little children, barring some kind of medical problem, have an innate ability to learn things. Nobody tells them they can’t because nobody believes they can’t.
The problem is that as (so-called) grown ups, we have forgotten something vitally important. We have forgotten how to believe we can’t fail. But that is exactly what we are told we must do. Excellence in the Kingdom is achieved by doing the impossible. Doing the impossible is achieved by failing to do the impossible, then trying again. Sometimes it’s managed by forgetting entirely that we can’t do something until we are already doing it.
It’s hard, but you might have guessed that. I know it’s possible though, because God told us to do it. He said we should heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons. Just … you know … do the impossible. He must know that we can do it.
And so we need to be like little children. Get on that bicycle. Pump your legs for all they’re worth. Hang on tight. And just maybe, you’ll discover that Dad stopped pushing you three driveways back. He’s still cheering you on, but He has released you to do what He knew all along you could.
And you’re going to be excellent at it.
[custom_author=Amy]