Last weekend I completed the Bryce Canyon 60k Ultramarathon. It was a challenging 38-mile race on incredibly beautiful wilderness trails at high elevation just outside of Bryce Canyon National Park.

I trained for several months over this especially hot and humid San Diego summer. A few weeks ago, my friend Maddie (who is a much better runner than I am) joined me on my long run. For the second week in a row, I found myself really struggling with the heat. My body wouldn’t cool down, and I was feeling dizzy- symptoms of heat exhaustion. As we talked about whether we needed to cut the run short (we did), I was frustrated and a bit embarrassed. Maddie encouraged me, reminding me that we were in an unusual heat wave and that it would likely be cooler for my long run the following week. My response was maybe a little grumpy, “I don’t want it to be cooler; I want my body to be able to handle running in the heat.”

This is the sort of ethos of endurance sports. The goal is not to find the easier path. The goal is to do the hard thing.

On the drive out to the race in Utah, I noticed signs posted in several places that said, “Prayer changes things.” Something about those signs brought into focus the different expectations people have in their spiritual lives. Some people pray, expecting that God will make life easier. Challenges and obstacles will be removed. I’ll get the job. My family members won’t get sick. Money will flow. My addiction will disappear in a poof of smoke. My prayers will bring about the kind of change I want to happen in my world. Life will get easier.

We are certainly invited to pray for God to intervene in our lives, but I think a more consistently helpful expectation is that our spiritual practices will change us in ways that allow us to handle the hardships that we inevitably face in this world. As we pray, gather for worship, build community, contemplate the scriptures, serve, reflect, search ourselves, give, and seek spiritual growth and maturity, we find ourselves growing in our ability to handle whatever comes our way. We become better able to accept hardship, find meaning in it, and persevere. We have more regulated nervous systems that allow us to have more peace, connection, intimacy, and trust. We become part of a community and have deeper relationships that we can lean upon in times of hardship. We have tools to find meaning and growth in our experiences, even the difficult ones.

In other words, attending to our spiritual practices doesn’t necessarily decrease the temperature, but it prepares us to run in the heat.

Life is hard. Right now, in our small congregation, we have someone making the gut-wrenching decision to withdraw life support from her daughter who has lost brain function. We have someone fighting breast cancer, experiencing constant pain and nausea from the medication. We have someone recovering from a triple bypass. We have people who have been trying to find a job for months on end. We people who are separated from their children. We have folks sleeping outside on the street every night. People trying desperately to overcome addiction. Even for folks without a particular crisis happening: Work is hard. Parenting is hard. Aging is hard. Relationships are hard. Middle school is hard.

Life. Is. Hard.

I’d like to encourage you to adopt a bit of the ethos of endurance athletes. The goal of our spiritual life isn’t to gain God’s favor so that the weather will always be good, the trail always flat, and the distance to the finish line short. The goal is to find strength within and beyond ourselves so that we can live faithfully on the sometimes long, hot, hard, rocky trail of life. We want to learn to find beauty in the journey. We want our lungs to be able to breathe deeply the Spirit of God, our hearts to beat efficiently even under duress, our legs to grow strong enough to keep going when we think they are spent, and our minds to habitually focus on the One who calls us forward.

As we become trained, things do get easier. Just a few months ago, it felt tough to run a slow five miles. Today, after consistent training, five miles is an easy warmup. Through intentionality and discipline, we grow a little bit day after day, and many things get easier. Other things remain hard. But we can face our challenges with confidence and strength, and with a stubborn resolve to endure in love and faithfulness. We can see a difficult trail ahead and know that we have the lungs, the heart, the legs, and the mental fortitude to carry us through.

God may move mountains for us from time to time. Don’t be afraid to pray for relief from your hardships. But let’s be a people who see those mountains and think – the view must be amazing up there. Let’s go peak it. A people who are trained for the journey. A people who attend to the means of grace in order to find our strength in God rather than trying to twist God’s arm into protecting our fragility.

We are disciples of Jesus. The calling is high. The path is narrow. The challenges are great. But in God’s grace, God has given us the tools and the support we need to be ready for the journey. Let’s do this.

- Pastor Chris