The Wilderness Day 4

We talk with Pastor Josh about why trials expose our lowest level of training and what our faith defaults to when stress hits. We challenge ourselves to stop chasing comfort and start building spiritual muscle memory through daily habits. 
• joy as a surprising response to trials in James 1 
• why comfort keeps us from changing 
• the crisis principle from law enforcement training 
• how stress reduces clear thinking and pushes us to muscle memory 
• spiritual habits as the default when marriage, work, or temptation hits 
• why failure teaches recovery and resilience 
• a simple audit of daily disciplines that shape faith under pressure 
Stop praying for an easy life and start training for a faithful life.

Transcript

Welcome And The Big Idea

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Welcome back to the Field Notes. It is day four here with Pastor Josh, and today we're going to be talking about your lowest level of training. Not your high level, not your good functioning, but your lowest level of training. See, in James chapter one, we are told this count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. Now let's be honest. Joy is usually not our first reaction when things in our lives are blowing up. Like normally our reaction to crisis and all of that kind of things is to beg God to immediately take away the trial, immediately get rid of the pain, immediately put us into a different position where we don't have to deal with it, where we're safe from it. But God allows trials and temptations in our lives because He knows how we grow. See, growth does not happen when we are comfortable. If you think about it, we get like two days of cold weather here in Florida, but what happens on those cold mornings when you're wrapped up in your blanket with your space heater on? You don't want to take that blanket off. You're comfortable. You don't want to go anywhere. You don't want to get up. You want to call into work. You don't want to change anything about what is happening right then because you're comfortable. See, and we don't change anything in our lives until we hate it enough to change it. Until it makes us so uncomfortable that the thought of that becomes more than we want because it's going to rob our comfort. See, we need to understand that God uses trials to push us out of our comfort zones and reveal to us what we are actually made of. In law enforcement and in the military, there's a principle that we learn easy or easy early on. In a crisis, you don't rise to the occasion. You actually sink to your lowest level of training. Think about that, your lowest level of training. We we like to pride ourselves in being able to think through things. The problem is, is the more stressed you get, the lower brain function you can use. Until it's just your amygdala reacting to in what we call your fight or flight. See, think about it. If you're at a firing range and you're calm, you can shoot a pretty tight grouping, especially with training. But when you add someone shooting back at you, ooh, your brain senses the danger and it drops your logic and reasoning, you revert to muscle memory. And that's why you would sit in your patrol car for hours just practicing pulling your firearm out of its locking mechanism in your holster because you needed it to be automatic. Spiritually, we operate the same way. When your marriage hits the wall or you lose a job or temptation kicks the door in, you default to your daily habit. You default to your lowest level of training. And if you haven't been in the word, if you haven't been praying, you will panic and fall apart. And listen, falling isn't the end of the world. We too often treat failure like we have lost everything. When I would argue psychologically, philosophically, or theologically, that you will learn more in failure than you ever will in success. See, walking, something simple, is just controlled falling. You move your weight forward and put yourself off balance, but your other foot catches up and keeps you from falling. See, God lets us face trials so that we can learn how to catch ourselves. Stop praying for an easy life and start training for a faithful life. So our action step today is this audit your spiritual muscle memory. If a major crisis were to hit your life today, what daily habits do you have that you're going to fall back on? What is your lowest level of training? Pick one spiritual discipline to train today. Maybe it's praying before you react in anger. Maybe it's going back and reminding yourself of the promises that God gives you through Scripture when you feel like there isn't another thing you can handle. Whatever it is, fall back on that training. Train hard so that tomorrow you're ready for whatever it's going to bring to you. Speaking of tomorrow, we can't wait to see you as we talk about how not to bleed out.